Canadian mining companies are desperate.

That’s about the only possible conclusion to be drawn after monitoring the federal lobbying database for more than eight months.

Since the election in October, companies such as Teck Resources, Rio Tinto Canada and Iamgold — mining the likes of gold, copper, uranium, coal and diamonds — have racked up 164 “registered communications.”

Such meetings have involved MPs 78 times, ministers 16 times and chiefs of staffs another 20 times.

Even those impressive efforts pale in comparison to the Mining Association of Canada, which has met with federal officials in 123 separate meetings.

(For some context, that number matches the combined number of meetings that three heavyweight oil and gas lobby groups — the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Canadian Fuels Association — have had in the same span of time: 52, 45 and 26, respectively.)

The Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada has chipped in another 30 meetings; all together, lobby groups representing the mining industry have totalled 173 meetings.

That means that since October 19, mining companies or associations (excluding oilsands operations and mining for industrial minerals such as potash) have lobbied federal office holders 337 times.

And that doesn’t include communications relating to the “enforcement, interpretation or the application” of legislation, meaning the actual number is likely far higher.

Mining Companies May Be Nervous Due to Environmental and Indigenous Priorities

Jamie Kneen of MiningWatch Canada suggests two things may account for the high number.

For starters, companies and associations “may be a little bit nervous” about the new federal government.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have indicated an interest in environmental reviews, a nationwide carbon tax and at least symbolically respecting Indigenous rights.

Compounding such possible changes is that the industry is “in a bit of a crisis globally.” Iron ore prices, copper and gold prices are down. And massive trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) loom on the horizon, something mining companies certainly have an interest in.

“Commodity prices are down,” Kneen says. “The customary level of relationship and support they have from the government is that much more important. And that affects everything from royalty and taxation rates to access to land and permits and so on.”

South of the border, a new report by Western Values Project noted that five mining companies, including the massive Peabody Energy, spent $95 million on lobbying U.S. legislators prior to their respective bankruptcies.

Kneen also said a lot of lobbying efforts were put into seeing an extension on the controversial mineral exploration tax credit, which was granted in the federal budget.

Lindsay Tedds, tax policy expert at the University of Victoria, has argued the mechanism “only serves as a tax planning tool for wealthy investors,” leading to high-risk investments. It costs taxpayers between $40 and $150 million per year.

Why is the #Mining Industry on a Federal Lobbying Spree? https://t.co/F7s7JWsDgq #cdnpoli #bcpoli #Alaska pic.twitter.com/gvWXXus6kf

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 5, 2016

Mining Companies Coping With Plummeting Credit Ratings, Allegations of Tax Avoidance

Domestic metal mining activities might not draw quite as much attention as the oil and gas industry, but there’s certainly lots going on.

The Mining Association made waves in April when it called for a national carbon price, although Kneen suggests “there wasn’t a lot of substance to it” as it didn’t make any commitments to any particular form of carbon pricing.

Regardless, he says it was a “very politically astute” move. And the industry certainly could use some good press.

The uranium giant Cameco Corporation is currently facing serious allegations of tax avoidance. Teck Resources’ credit rating continues to plummet due to low commodity prices (it’s currently sitting at a B3, in the realm of “high credit risk.”)

The annual conference hosted by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada, held in early March, witnessed a far smaller attendance than in previous years. Barrick Gold is under fire for five cyanide spills in Argentina.

Ontario and Quebec Beefed Up Mining Regulations in 2013

Some provinces are slowly beefing up their mining legislation: in 2013, Quebec increased taxes, environmental regulations and protected areas, and made the review process more rigorous while limiting expropriation opportunities. Ontario also tweaked its Mining Act, but Kneen says it didn’t go very far.

“Ontario did a reasonable improvement on access to land so it was no longer possible for people’s property to be drilled without them even knowing about it,” Kneen notes.

The pressure on mining companies is increasing. But there’s still enormous growth potential for the industry: in 2013, the Conference Board of Canada predicted a 91 per cent increase in mineral output in Canada’s North between 2011 and 2020.

The Liberal government will have plenty of time before then to augment regulations, taxation, carbon pricing regimes and concepts of Indigenous sovereignty.

If the first nine months of its term is any indication, mining companies and associations will have plenty to say about such matters.

Image: Teck Resources

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We’re living in a time of records. More renewable energy came on stream in 2015 than ever — 147 gigawatts, equal to Africa’s entire generating capacity — and investment in the sector broke records worldwide. Costs for producing solar and wind power have hit record lows. Portugal obtained all its electricity from renewable sources for four straight days in May — the longest achieved by any country — and Germany was able to meet 90 per cent of its electricity needs with renewable power for a brief period. Clean energy employment and job growth now outpace the fossil fuel industry by a wide margin.

That’s just a portion of the good news. Oil prices have fallen so low that some more damaging activities are becoming unprofitable, a record number of coal companies are going bankrupt or filing for bankruptcy, and fewer coal mines are operating in the U.S.

But are the good records enough to help us deal with the bad? Global average temperatures are hitting record highs every recent month and year, and atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are rising steadily, to levels unheard of in human history. Arctic sea ice is vanishing at unprecedented levels, mass bleaching is killing the Great Barrier Reef, and record-setting droughts, floods, heatwaves and extreme weather are happening around the world.

As Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research told the Guardian: “These are very worrying signs and I think it shows we are on a crash course with the Paris targets unless we change course very, very fast. I hope people realize that global warming is not something down the road, but it is here now and is affecting us now.”

The Paris Agreement, accepted in December by most nations, offered hope that world leaders are aware of this serious problem and know that unless we quickly employ a range of solutions — from renewable energy to reducing consumption to changing dietary and agricultural practices — humanity is at risk.

Despite overwhelming evidence for human-caused climate change, the fossil fuel industry continues to employ shady people and organizations to fool fearful and apparently blind followers into believing the problem doesn’t exist or isn’t serious enough to worry about. Their messaging follows a pattern: Spread a simplistic lie until it becomes so discredited that few people accept it and then move on to another simplistic lie.

The most recent from Canadian industry propagandists like Patrick Moore, Tom Harris (of the misnamed International Climate Science Coalition) and their pals at organizations like the U.S. Heartland Institute is that CO2 is not a pollutant, just a benign or beneficial gas that stimulates plant growth. It’s true CO2 is good for plants. So is nitrogen, but when it runs into waterways and the oceans, it pollutes them. Overwhelming scientific evidence proves that increased atmospheric CO2 is a major cause of global warming. The profound effects of that warming are already here, and new and frightening aspects are also coming to light, such as ocean oxygen depletion.

Recent bankruptcy filings for Peabody Energy showed the U.S. coal company owes money to a range of deniers and their organizations, including the also misnamed Calgary-based Friends of Science. It claims the sun and not human activity drives climate change (and that the world is cooling, not warming), a ridiculous assertion, often repeated by coal companies, that real scientists have thoroughly debunked. Extensive research shows coal, oil and gas interests have pumped huge amounts of money into these denial campaigns, all the while knowing that human-caused climate change is real and dangerous.

It’s good that deniers’ voices are being drowned out by evidence and rational arguments and that solutions are becoming better, cheaper and more readily available daily. But we no longer have time to allow compromised politicians, greedy industrialists and dishonest organizations to stall progress. We need record numbers of people to do all they can — develop solutions, write letters, sign petitions, talk to politicians, vote and take to the streets — to demand that governments, industry and society treat climate change with the seriousness it deserves.

Humanity’s fate depends on the choices we make today. We can’t let a polluting sunset industry and its minions block progress to a cleaner, healthier future.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Senior Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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By Charles Mandel for the National Observer.

A Canadian climate change denial group has popped up in a U.S. coal giant’s bankruptcy proceedings that have lifted the curtain on the funding of a sophisticated continent-wide marketing campaign designed to fool the public about how human activity is contributing to global warming.

A document, nearly 1,000 pages long, lists the Calgary-based Friends of Science Society as one of the creditors expecting to get money from the once-mighty coal company, Peabody Energy.

Climate scientists and environmentalists have long suspected that the so-called “Friends” group was a front for fossil fuel companies trying to block government action to reduce carbon pollution, but Friends of Science members always declined to reveal their source of funding.

The bankruptcy documents show that the coal giant — known for aggressively lobbying against environmental regulations — had some kind of financial arrangement with their “Friends” from Calgary. But when asked, the Calgary group’s spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of the connection.

“That would be news to us,” wrote the Friends’ communications manager, Michelle Stirling, in an email response to a query about the funding from National Observer.

The document does not show the amount of funding provided, what it was for, when it was given, but only lists creditors.

Stirling said she would need to review the document, which she believes was filed by a party other than Peabody, and said the filing could be a “spurious attempt” to connect the Friends of Science to the coal company: “Until I review the full document and check the source I can’t say much more.”

Coordinated effort to attack climate science, says Greenpeace

Keith Stewart, head of Greenpeace Canada’s energy campaign, said the documents provide proof of what industry has been trying to do to manipulate public opinion.

“There has been for decades a coordinated effort to attack climate science as a way to delay action on climate change,” Stewart said.

Peer-reviewed scientific evidence has demonstrated that human activity, mainly through the burning of fossil fuels and land-use changes, have largely contributed to warming temperatures on the planet in recent decades. Governments from around the world have also accepted that the science shows humans must move off fossil fuels in the coming decades to avoid irreversible damage to ecosystems and life on Earth.

Friends of Science is made up of a core group of earth, atmospheric, solar scientists and engineers, as well as citizens “who challenge the catastrophic view of climate change.”

The Friends group says it has spent a decade reviewing a broad spectrum of literature on climate change “and have concluded that sun is the main driver of climate change, not carbon dioxide.” The group was created more than a decade ago, using “research” accounts from the University of Calgary to finance its operations, including trips, wining and dining, for several years. But the university, which was issuing tax receipts to donors, later decided to shut down the accounts following an audit.

They created their organization, kickstarted by a $175,000 donation from Talisman Energy — another fossil fuel company — to lobby against the Canadian government’s decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change in 2002.* Friends of Science also ran a sophisticated public relations campaign, including advertising in the 2006 federal election that challenged the Liberal government’s position.

A Friends of Science advertisement that appeared on public billboards. Image: Friends of Science

The court document also revealed that Peabody Energy owed money to many Americans groups that cast doubt on whether humans are responsible for the recent warming observed on Earth.

The Centre for Media and Democracy reported in mid-June that Peabody gave funds to a “network of individuals, scientists, non-profits and political organizations espousing climate change denial and opposition to efforts to tackle climate change.”

Other recipients included Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer who argues sun spots and not CO2 is causing climate change, and who has previously received funding from ExxonMobil; and The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), whose recent film, Climate Hustle, contains misleading information about climate change.

“Derail the science and you stop the train”

The centre noted that the filings “demonstrate for the first time that Peabody Energy has financial ties to a very large proportion of the network of groups promoting disinformation around climate change.”

Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center and one of the researchers who uncovered Peabody’s links to the U.S. climate denial groups, told National Observer: “Peabody’s funding of groups like Friends of Science and others like CFACT shows a clear intent by the company to intervene in the climate public policy debate by casting doubt on the science. They know full well that science is the engine that drives environmental policy; derail the science and you stop the train.”

​The revelation around Peabody’s funding of climate denial groups has sparked outraged reaction among Canadian scientists and environmentalists.

Danny Harvey, a professor of geography at the University of Toronto, said: Peabody’s funding of the Friends of Science confirms that the latter group was in a conflict of interest and could not be believed. “It confirms what we knew all along. It’s not surprising at all.”

Harvey, who is a past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, noted that ExxonMobil is currently in hot water for climate change denial after covering up what it knew about the disastrous effects globally of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

“I sort of suspect they would be doing something dirty like that,” he said of Peabody.

Stewart, from Greenpeace Canada, added that the Peabody bankruptcy proceedings show that the coal industry is in decline because they failed to embrace the science and plan for the future by developing more renewable forms of energy.

“The coal companies didn’t see this coming in time and they went bankrupt,” he explained. “What we need to do now is make sure that oil companies in Canada see this so that we can begin the orderly transition to a climate-friendly economy rather than lurching in that direction through a series of bankruptcies and rearguard political actions like funding Friends of Science.”

Competition Bureau Proceeding with Friends of Science Probe

At the same time, National Observer has also learned that the Competition Bureau is moving ahead with an inquiry into a complaint against the Friends.

The complaint cited the Friends for propagating false and misleading representations related to several billboards, website representations and a poster made available as a free download on a website. It also included The International Climate Science Coalition and the Heartland Institute.

Ecojustice, on behalf of a group of prominent Canadians (one of whom was Danny Harvey), filed the complaint with the Competition Bureau in December 2015. Charles Hatt, a lawyer with Ecojustice, said the bureau’s decision “validates the thrust of the application,” something he finds particularly gratifying given the “push-back” the application received.

Michael Osborne, a partner in the Toronto-based legal firm of Affleck Greene McMurtry LLP, wrote a withering opinion piece in the National Post.

“Ecojustice’s complaint not only is not within the ambit of the Competition Act, it is a blatant abuse of the Act’s six-resident complaint provision and an invidious attempt to deprive people of freedom of speech, which is not just protected by our constitution, but lies at the very core of our democratic system,” Osborne opined.

Hatt noted the Competition Bureau’s inquiry doesn’t come with a specific timeline and that it is conducted in private.

* This article previously stated Canada ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2003 rather than 2002. It has been updated to reflect the correct year.

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An undercover investigation by environment group Greenpeace has found some of the world’s most vocal climate science denial groups were willing to accept cash from fossil fuel interests in return for writing articles and reports that reject the impacts of greenhouses gases.

Greenpeace operatives posing as representatives of coal and oil companies were told that while the reports could be produced, there were ways that the sources of funding could be hidden.

Academics affiliated with leading US academic institutions Princeton and Penn State universities are implicated in the Greenpeace research.

According to a report on the investigation at Greenpeace's EnergyDesk website, Princeton's Professor William Happer had revealed he had accepted cash from coal company Peabody Energy in return for providing testimony to US congress but had routed the cash through a climate denial group. Happer also offered his services but said that a new climate science denial group, CO2 Coalition, should be used to channel the funds.

Groups including the Global Warming Policy Foundation and Donors Trust are also alleged to have been complicit in providing "peer review" services for fossil fuel clients and, in the case of Donors Trust, in providing an untraceable route for the fossil fuel payments. 

The story comes as Happer is preparing to give evidence to a congressional hearing of the Senate Subcomittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness, chaired by Republican and presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. That hearing is scheduled for Tuesday December 8 and also calls fellow "sceptics" Dr John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr Judith Curry of Georgia Institute of Technology and conservative commentator Mark Steyn.

A DeSmogBlog investigation into Donors Trust and its partner group Donors Capital Fund found that between 2005 and 2012, some $479 million of income to the two groups was untraceable. Of the amounts that were traceable, DeSmog found that $7.65 million had come from the Knowledge and Progress Fund (KPF). 

On the KPF board are oil billionaire and major Republican benefactor Charles Koch, his wife Liz and son Charles Chase Koch. Richard Fink, a Koch company director and long-standing aide to Charles Koch, is also a KPF director.

The Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the use of the Donors funds in financing climate science denial groups.  Donors Trust, together with oil giant Exxon, have also funded the work of Harvard-Smithsonian affiliated researcher Dr Willie Soon, who claims carbon dioxide cannot change the climate. 

Greenpeace also claims that CO2 Coalition board member William O'Keefe, a former Exxon lobbyist, had suggested in an email to Happer that Donors Trust be used as a route to conceal cash from a fictional Middle eastern oil and gas company.

The investigation also targeted Happer's work with the London-based contrarian group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by former UK chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Greenpeace wrote: 

Professor Happer, who sits on the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council, was asked by undercover reporters if he could put the industry funded report through the same peer review process as previous GWPF reports they claimed to have been “thoroughly peer reviewed”. Happer explained that this process had consisted of members of the Advisory Council and other selected scientists reviewing the work, rather than presenting it to an academic journal. He added: “I would be glad to ask for a similar review for the first drafts of anything I write for your client. Unless we decide to submit the piece to a regular journal, with all the complications of delay, possibly quixotic editors and reviewers that is the best we can do, and I think it would be fine to call it a peer review.”

Asked for comment by Greenpeace, the GWPF said in a statement that it rejected Greenpeace's investigation, saying any claims it had offered to put a fossil fuel commission report through its own version of peer review were a "fabrication".

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Access Denied: Ministry of Environment Vetoes Interview Request on Oilsands Toxins in Animals

How the Ministry of Environment Vetoed Our Interview Request

Feds stifle media questions around oil sands' toxic effects, FOIs reveal

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Coal Companies Talking Out Both Sides Of Their Mouths When It Comes To Climate Change

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While every year is crucial when it comes to reducing the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases polluting our atmosphere, 2015 is looking to be a super year and a possible turning point in which a few big decisions could make all the difference.

Here are five big things to watch in 2015:

1. Paris UN Climate Conference

Let's start at the end of 2015, when global leaders are expected to show up in Paris, France, in early December to negotiate a new global agreement on global warming pollution reductions. A preview of what is to come was on display in Lima, Peru, in early December when environment ministers and their delegations cobbled together the draft of what will be negotiated in Paris. The major sticking points in the negotiations were the same as they have been for a while now.

The first big issue is the commitment of funding from developed nations, such as the U.S., Canada and the EU, to less-developed nations such as Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Philippines, to help build renewable energy sources and avoid the use of coal and other carbon-intensive fossil fuels as their economies grow. While the goal is $100 billion in financial commitments, developed countries have so far only put up $10 billion.

The second big issue on the negotiating table is the level of cuts to carbon emissions and by when they will be reached. Some countries want to commit to a shorter time period, like 2020, while others want a longer one. Any good project manager knows that clear, measurable objectives are the key to success. So nailing the percentage of carbon reductions countries will commit to, and by when, is crucial to success at the December 2015 Paris climate talks. 

But prior to these talks, there are some other big moments on the horizon that will likely play a role in deciding whether the Paris talks are the final note in a year-long crescendo or if it will all fall flat.

2. Keystone XL Pipeline

U.S. President Obama has a big decision to make on the Keystone XL pipeline in 2015. If approved, Keystone XL would mean a massive expansion of the oilsands in Alberta, Canada. The big issue here is that the oilsands are very carbon-intensive to produce. A typical barrel of oilsands oil produces three to four times more greenhouse gas emissions than a regular barrel of oil.

President Obama has been saying and doing all the right things when it comes to climate change lately, penning a greenhouse gas reduction deal with China and his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposing new regulations for coal plants that would see sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. 

However, Obama's recent positive moves on climate will be for naught if the president goes ahead and approves the Keystone XL pipeline project. For what it's worth, I would bet good money that Keystone XL is rejected. 

3. U.S. Congress of Denial

While the rest of the world deals with important issues like the fate of the human race and major disruption of the global atmosphere, the U.S. Congress, which is now completely controlled by the Republicans, is still grappling with understanding (or denying) the basic science. In the most recent elections, the Democratic party lost control of the U.S. Senate, and with that we'll see a comeback of the climate deniers running key committees. Most notably, Senator James Inhofe will most likely again be chairing the powerful Environment and Public Works Committee. Watch Inhofe, who claims climate change is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated," call all sorts of hearings around the issue of climate change and embolden like-minded conspiracy theorists and deniers-for-hire.

With 2015 being such an important year, the U.S. Senate will be a circus act with consequences when it comes to the issue of climate change. 

4. Big Coal's Last Stand

There is a shake-up underway in the coal industry and while I don't think this most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels is going away any time soon, 2015 will be a decisive year in which coal will either rise from the ashes or continue a course to extinction.

In June 2014, President Obama's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a set of proposed new regulations that would see the U.S. coal sector reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030. Barring any new game-changing technology, these new regulations effectively stop the construction of any new coal-fired power plants in the United States. This also means coal companies just lost a big customer, and will have to look elsewhere to expand their market.

Unfortunately for Big Coal, one of the other big markets for their product, China, is also having second thoughts about expanding its use of coal for energy production. There have been rumblings for quite some time now that coal consumption in China has peaked, and it appears that may in fact be the reality.

With China dealing with civil unrest and bad international headlines over air quality issues, the country recently penned a joint greenhouse gas reduction agreement with the United States and also announced in September that it would soon ban the import of coal with high sulfur and ash content.

All of this is hurting the coal industry big time and you need look no further than Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world. In September, Peabody was dropped from the Standard & Poor's 500 stock index and the company has seen its stock price slide from a high of $72 per share four years ago, to today trading around $7.74. In reaction, Peabody has started an over-the-top new PR campaign called "Advanced Energy for Life" with the intent of softening the bad image of their dirty product and framing it as the savior for developing nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Big coal is wheezing on its own fumes, and unless it successfully finds new markets for its products, 2015 will likely be the start of a death spiral. 

5. Down Under and the Great White North

With a collective population of roughly 58 million, Canada and Australia are relatively small countries, but when it comes to the issues of energy and climate change, they play an outsized role on the global stage.

Canada, with its tar sands deposits, has the third largest proven oil reserves in the world. Australia is the fourth largest coal producer in the world, with much of it exported to the Asian and South Asian markets. Both countries also have leaders bent on making their countries into energy superpowers, climate be damned. 

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper is in his eighth year of power, with a federal election to be called by October 2015 at the latest. There remains a real chance that Harper could be re-elected, bringing with it another four years of inaction on climate change and cheerleading for the expansion of export pipelines and the tar sands. If that isn't bad enough, if he wins another term in office, watch Harper completely regress (if that is possible) on his country's commitments at the UN negotiating table in Paris in December. 

In his second year of power, Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbot is making Stephen Harper look like a lightweight when it comes to punching holes in efforts to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Since taking office, Abbott has, among other things, scrapped Australia's carbon tax and shut down his country's climate commission. At the same time, Abbott has been clear on where he stands on fossil fuels, recently proclaiming that "coal is good for humanity." 

This summer, Harper and Abbott stood together and announced they had formed a pact to fight action on climate change and invited the leaders of the United Kingdom, India and New Zealand to join them. None followed, and nothing more has been heard of the Abbott/Harper pro-carbon coalition. What Harper and Abbott are doing may be political suicide. We are no longer in the heyday of climate denial and pro-oil pacts, and the electorate may punish Harper in the 2015 Canadian election for his outright disdain for the issue of climate change. 

If the electorate does punish Harper in 2015, Abbott will no doubt be watching and who knows what he will do in response. But what I do know is that the best way to get to a politician is either money or the threat of losing votes. 

When I first started working on climate issues, 2015 seemed so distant. At one point, I naively even thought that by 2015 we would have finally dealt with climate change once and for all. But it turns out that when dealing with an issue as big as climate change, there is no "once and for all" solution. Instead, climate change is an issue that will be dealt with through peak moments of big change and flat-lines of political morass. 

If we play our cards right, 2015 could be a big, great peak year for climate. 

Image credit: Abac077 on Flickr.

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