In this episode of DeSmogCAST, Farron Cousins, Carol Linnitt, Kyla Mandel and Brendan DeMelle kick things off with a discussion about corporate spending in Canada and how the oil and gas industry is moving money to influence political decisions and public debate.

Next Kyla Mandel explains the significance of a new law in the UK that will expose park lands to the dangers of fracking.

Finally Brendan DeMelle discusses new revelations of Rick Perry's ties to the pipeline industry in Iowa and how these connections may influence his chances of winning the Republican nomination for the 2016 Presidential run.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

Canada’s Public Companies Should Disclose Political Spending: Report

Edelman’s TransCanada Astroturf Documents Expose Oil Industry’s Broad Attack on Public Interest

Edelman and TransCanada Part Ways After Leaked Documents Expose Aggressive PR Attack on Energy East Pipeline Opponents

Fracking Go-ahead For National Parks as Controversial Infrastructure Act Becomes Law

Climate Deniers Help Tories Weaken Fracking Rules

Facing Felony Charges, Rick Perry Joins Board of Energy Transfer Partners, Owner of Proposed Oil Pipeline Across Iowa

Fact Check: Rick Perry Already Advocated Publicly for Bakken Oil Pipeline In Iowa

GOP Activists: Rick Perry's Bakken Oil Pipeline Ties Could Cost Him Iowa Caucus Support

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DeSmogCAST is a weekly online show that features DeSmog writers, experts and guests covering breaking news and in-depth analysis on politics, energy and environment issues in the U.S., Canada and around the world.

For more visit DeSmogBlog.com, DeSmog.ca, and DeSmog.uk.

DeSmogCAST is a joint project of DeSmogBlog, DeSmog Canada and DeSmogUK.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

In today's January 15, 2015 episode DeSmogCAST host Farron Cousins joins DeSmoggers Carol Linnitt, Kyla Mandel, and Mike Gaworecki to discuss Canada's efforts to prevent a NAFTA-led investigation into the management of Alberta's oilsands tailings ponds.

We also discuss a clause in the UK's new Infrastructure Bill that mandates efforts to "maximize economic recovery of UK petroleum" and what that means for the nation's climate policy.

Lastly we discuss recent developments in the denier/skeptics debate and a recent open letter to media, calling on journalists to reserve the favourable term 'skeptic' for those engaged in truly scientific critical investigation.

To read more about these topics, check out these stories covered in today's episode:

Canada’s Fight Against NAFTA Investigation of Oilsands Tailings Get Political, Wins Allies

Calls For Media To Accurately Label Climate Deniers Growing Louder

Duty to Maximise Oil and Gas a ‘Dangerous Addition’ to the Infrastructure Bill

New Infrastructure Bill Puts UK Climate Ambition at Risk

DeSmogCAST is a weekly online show that features DeSmog writers, experts and guests covering breaking news and in-depth analysis on politics, energy and environment issues in the U.S., Canada and around the world.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Despite political infighting and a flagging economy, electricity generated from renewable energies in the U.K. met almost one-fifth of the nation’s electrical needs during the first three months of this year, an increase of 43 per cent compared to the same period in 2013.

U.K. energy statistics compiled by the Department of Energy and Climate Change and published Thursday show that the share of electricity generation (hydro, wind and other renewables) increased from 12.4 per cent in the first quarter of 2013 to 19.4 per cent in the same quarter of 2014.

The statistics show that wind power generation was up 58 per cent, due to increased wind generation capacity as well as large increases in wind speeds.

They also revealed that coal accounted for 37 per cent of electrical generation, natural gas made up 23 per cent and nuclear power produced 18 per cent of total U.K. electricity generated in January, February and March.

RenewableUK, which represents wind power and marine energy in Britain, noted in a media release that the total renewable electricity generation was a record 18.1 terawatt hours in the first three months of this year, enough to power more than 15 million homes for the quarter. Coal, gas and nuclear production all fell in the same period.

“Once again, wind delivered strongly for the U.K. in the first quarter of the year — when we need power most — providing nearly 12 per cent of all our electricity,” RenewableUK’s Director of External Affairs Jennifer Webber said in the media release.

“At a time when some politicians were finalizing their plans to rule out any future support for onshore wind, it was quietly generating enough electricity for the equivalent of over five and a half million homes. Offshore wind also made a significant contribution to getting us off the hook of fossil fuels and reducing our dependence on imported energy.”

The U.K. statistics were released a day after a Bloomberg news report quoted former Mexico president Felipe Calderon saying that fighting climate change can be profitable but there must be business incentives for low-carbon growth to reduce fossil-fuel reliance.

Calderon said nations must act jointly to target the energy industry, cities, agriculture and forests as the main areas where runaway greenhouse gas emissions can be reined in, the report said.

“It’s completely possible to both get economic growth and to tackle climate change,” said Calderon, now chairman of the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. “The traditional trade-off that a lot of people talk about between growth and responsibility to the environment is a false dilemma.”

Meanwhile, a different Bloomberg story noted Thursday that the European Commission is considering proposing a 2030 energy-savings target of 27 per cent to 30 per cent.

Noting that the energy-savings plan would become the third pillar of the EU’s energy and climate strategy for the next decade, the story said “the commission in January proposed that the 28-nation bloc adopt a binding goal to cut greenhouse gasses by 40 per cent by 2030, accelerating the pace of emissions reduction from 20 per cent in 2020 compared with 1990 levels. It also recommended an EU-wide target to boost the share of renewables in energy consumption to 27 per cent.”

By way of comparison, Canada and the U.S. committed under the Copenhagen Accord to cut greenhouse gas emissions 17 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Image Credit: Nick Cross via Flickr

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In the coming months, European Union environment ministers are set to vote on the proposed Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), which would label tar sands oil as 'dirty' because of its higher GHG emissions in comparison to other fuels, bringing the Harper government and Alberta's years-long lobbying against the law to a decisive point.

As Jason Fekete writes for Postmedia News, this is "a critical few months for the future of Canada's oilsands industry and the environmental movement that has targeted the development."

It's hardly surprising that two senior Alberta government ministers depart Saturday "for a weeklong trip to Europe to trumpet what they say is Alberta and Canada's solid environmental credentials, and have EU countries reject a proposal that would "discriminate" against oilsands-derived fuels," as Postmedia News reports.

Canada has been actively fighting the EU proposal for years now for its labelling of tar sands oil as leaving an especially high carbon footprint. A July 2011 report by environmental group Friends of the Earth Europe documented over 110 lobbying events organized by the Canadian government on the tar sands and FQD between 2009 and 2011.

For example, in October 2011, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver wrote to the EU Commissioner for Energy, Gunther Oettinger, warning that "if unjustified, discriminatory measures to implement the FQD are put in place, Canada will not hesitate to defend its interests."

In December 2011, David Plunkett, Canadian Ambassador to the EU, wrote to European Commissioner for Climate Action Connie Hedegaard saying that "Canada will not accept oil sands crude being singled out in the Fuel Quality Directive." He added that the Canadian government would "explore every avenue at its disposal to defend its interests, including the World Trade Organisation."

Hedegaard has called the FQD a "science-based and non-discriminatory proposal," and stressed that “studies on the lifecycle GHG intensity of various fuels have been conducted" for it, in a 2011 letter to Minister Oliver.

A 2013 briefing by Friends of the Earth Europe details more recent instances of Canada's lobbying for the tar sands in Europe, including sending two Albertan government ministers on tour in Europe this January to hand out fliers assuring the 11 countries visited that Canada was showing "global leadership in the fight against climate change" despite leaving the Kyoto Protocol and pushing for the tar sands.

The aggressive lobbying efforts by Canada and its EU supporters like the UK have continued unabated since reduction targets were decided on in 2009, forcing the European Commission to undertake an Impact Assessment on the FQD and delaying the vote on the proposal from June 2012 to later this year.

"It has got to be fair, it can't be discriminatory, and it should be based on the facts and the science – and this is not. This is my definition of bad policy," Minister Joe Oliver said of the FQD in an interview last Friday.

Oliver made a similar claim that the proposal "is not based on science and so discourages disclosures and will not achieve its stated objectives," last month in an email to the Canadian Press.

The repeated refrain from the Canadian government that the FQD is not scientific doesn't address the fact that the proposal is based on a 2011 Stanford University study commissioned by the European Commission. The study found that average lifecycle GHG emissions from tar sands oil are 23 per cent higher than conventional fossil fuels.

Image: 'Upstream greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from Canadian oilsands as a feedstock for European refineries,' by Adam R. Brandt.

Since then, research by NGO Oil Change International has indicated that emissions from tar sands oil could be even higher than thought before, because of emissions released by the burning of tar sands refinery byproduct petroleum coke, or petcoke, which is also used as a cheap fuel.

According to the Stanford study, "GHG emissions from oil sands production is significantly different enough from conventional oil emissions that regulatory frameworks should address this discrepancy with pathway-specific emissions factors that distinguish between oil sands and conventional oil processes."

The Pembina Institute also published a June 2013 report confirming that "average oilsands production is significantly more GHG-intensive than conventional oil production," and calling tar sands GHG emissions "the fastest growing source of climate change pollution in Canada."

The FQD sets a mandatory six percent reduction in GHG emissions from transport fuel suppliers by 2020, and assigns default emission values to different fossil fuel feedstocks (the raw material from which the fuels are made).

Tar sands oil production requires more energy than conventional fossil fuels because of its extraction and refining process from bitumen. Because of this, the FQD would give tar sands oil a higher default emission value, making it unattractive to European fuel suppliers, who would be hit with financial penalties and higher carbon offsets if importing it.

The Harper government's plan of making Canada a global energy superpower by opening up the tar sands oil reserves via international trade would be adversely affected by the FQD, which guarantees that the federal government and the Albertan oil industry will continue lobbying against it, and for the tar sands, in full force in the months to come.

Postmedia News reports that EU environment ministers are set to vote on the FQD in mid-October or mid-November. If approved, the proposal would need to be ratified by the European Parliament in 2014.

Image Credit: Pembina Institute / Flickr  

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As promised, multiple protests against the tar sands greeted Prime Minister Stephen Harper Thursday in London, where he became the first Canadian prime minister to address British Parliament since 1944. Harper has been using his UK trip to lobby against the proposed European Union (EU) fuel quality directive, which would label oil from the Albertan tar sands as 'highly polluting' to deter imports into Europe.

Linda Solomon writes for the Vancouver Observer, that "50 campaigners representing 30 environmental groups gathered outside the UK Parliament [to] greet Prime Minister Stephen Harper's car with anti-tar sands banners, placards and chants." One of them, Suzanne Dhaliwal, was dressed as Bridgette DePape, the Senate Page who was fired in 2011 for holding up a "Stop Harper" sign on the Canadian Senate floor.

The group protest outside Parliament was organized by the UK Tar Sands Network (TSN). Jess Worth of the TSN is quoted as saying that Thursday's protests "demonstrate just how strongly people in the UK feel about the Harper government's attempts to force their dirty tar sands oil onto Europe."

The TSN posted a YouTube video of the protest.

In a separate protest, members of an activist group calling themselves "Love Canada, Hate Tar Sands" (LCHTS) attempted to "block the Sovereign's Entrance Gate to the room where Harper was speaking," and scaled the roof of the Parliament building to try and interrupt Harper during his speech.

According to the BBC, "shouting was heard" inside, but the "speech went ahead." They also report that two women were arrested outside "on suspicion of criminal damage," and three others "detained" by Parliamentary security for trying to get into "non-public rooms."

On their tumblr blog, LCHTS posted videos of their protest on the rooftop of Parliament. They also posted a statement, saying:

"From further marginalising historically shunted Indigenous people, to muzzling world class climate scientists, Prime Minister Harper has shown time and again that nothing will stand between him and developing dirty tar sands, even though tar sands will create unprecedented global warming. Now Harper brings his circus of oil peddlers to Europe to interfere in EU climate legislation, to push his monstrous industry onto Europeans."

They add that by staging Thursday's protest they "have acted, in solidarity with those resisting Harper everywhere, to STOP CLIMATE CRIMINAL HARPER."

British Prime Minister David Cameron's government has proven a staunch supporter of Harper's tar sands push. But some in the UK government are pushing back.

The TSN reports on their site that British MPs have tabled an Early Day Motion to recognize the damaging effects of tar sands exploitation, resist Canadian lobbying against the EU fuel quality directive, and keep tar sands oil imports out of Europe. 7 MPs from 4 different parties have signed. Solomon notes that "other MPs will now be encouraged to sign, in the run-up to an EU Member States' vote later this year."

Harper's final destination in Europe is the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland this week. At G8, Harper is expected to continue lobbying against the EU fuel quality directive. He's also likely to advocate for the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which, according to citizens' organization the Council of Canadians, could support tar sands expansion by "[empowering] European corporations to attack environmental and health measures" and "[restricting] our Internet freedom [by criminalizing] certain online behaviour."

Image Credit: Rajan Zaveri / No Tar Sands Facebook Page

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For a while now, the UK government has been dragging its feet behind other European countries trying to deter future imports of Canadian tar sands oil into the EU. The UK, home to British Petroleum (BP), has an oil industry with vested interests in the Albertan tar sands, and opened a new consulate in Calgary in 2011. Recent papers leaked to the Guardian by Greenpeace may be the clearest sign yet that the UK will support Canada in encouraging tar sands oil imports to Europe.

John Vidal writes in the Guardian, that "in EU negotiations on laws intended to encourage the use of low-carbon transport fuels, the UK has rejected language that would class tar sands oil as more polluting than conventional crude or other fuels."

In its fuel quality directive, the European Commission has proposed that fuel produced from tar sands bitumen be designated "highly polluting," contributing 22 per cent more GHG emissions than conventional fuels. Under the directive, suppliers have to make a 10 per cent cut in GHG emissions from their fuels by 2020. Officially labelling tar sands oil as a high polluter would keep European suppliers away from it to help reach that goal, which the Commission hopes will "cut emissions by a cumulative total of 500 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020."

Faced with six options to implement the above proposal, the UK reportedly rejected all but "the two that would make no differentiation between the carbon content of fuels," citing these as least likely to lead to "unexpected consequences." It's likely that the UK fears the more expected consequences of the directive–the curbing of tar sands oil trade in European markets.

Norman Baker, a British minister for the Department of Transport, has denied Greenpeace's allegations that the UK government isn't committed to reducing GHG emissions. Vidal quotes Baker as saying that the UK "[wants] an effective solution to address the carbon emissions from all highly polluting crudes, not simply those from oil sands… I take this issue seriously and that is why I have arranged to meet Jim Hansen this week to discuss the matter."

Baker made the same point in 2011, saying that the Commission's proposal "should be tackling all high polluting crudes equally, not simply oil sands from one particular country." This even though, as the Guardian pointed out then, the proposal doesn't single out any one nation. A Stanford University study for the Commission also confirmed tar sands fuel to be a higher polluter by a clear margin.

Former NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen, whom Baker was preparing to meet in London when the papers were leaked, has been a strong opponent of tar sands exploitation. In a 2012 op-ed piece for the New York Times, Hansen said that "it will be game over for the climate" if Canada continues to extract oil from the tar sands.

Despite British Prime Minister David Cameron's claim that his would be the "greenest government ever," it seems the UK will remain a staunch ally of the Harper government when it comes to putting the oil industry above the need for proactive action against climate change.

Image Credit: NFWBlogs / Flickr

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Prior to the release of the Canada Revenue Agency’s 2003 guidelines on charities and political activities, individuals from Canada’s voluntary sector expressed the belief that Canada’s policy should look a lot more like England’s.

The rule that says Canadian charities must limit political activities to 10 percent of their time and resources should be scrapped, they said, and a Canadian charitable commission, similar to that which exists in the UK, should be set-up to regulate the sector.

Charitable organizations in England have historically enjoyed both government support and the legal right to speak out, and the Third Sector (voluntary sector) has a track record of making social change. The past decade, though, has been one of massive change for law and policy on charity in England. In some respects, Canada does seem to be taking some cues from England when it comes to the voluntary sector, but probably not in the way those who asked for it back in 2003 had hoped.

As Australian legal scholars Kerry O’Halloran and Myles McGregor-Lowndes have written, philanthropic activism was a fact of life in Victorian England.

[view:in_this_series=block_1] The children’s charity, Dr. Barnardo’s, which remains in operation today, led protests against the conditions of young children forced to work as chimney sweeps. An organization known as the Infant Life Protection Society provided services for babies born into workhouses, while simultaneously campaigning for an act forcing people taking in infants for more than 24 hours to report them, and report deaths of such infants within 24 hours. This didn’t change until the 1917 case, Bowman v. Secular Society, when it was deemed that: A trust for the attainment of political objects has always been held invalid… the law has no way of judging whether a proposed change in the law will or will not be for the public benefit…

In the UK, this decision translated into the policy that charities can undertake campaigning activities and political actions aimed at securing, opposing, or changing the law or policy or decisions by government so long as the purpose of those activities further the charitable purpose for which the organization exists. So, when, in 2012, the organization Save the Children called on the British government to stick to its targets on child poverty as part of a campaign to help children in the UK, the organization was well within its established charitable rights. Save The Children was attacked by Conservative MPS and the right-wing press, and so was the right of charities to engage in political campaigning.

The Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) published a paper called Sock Puppets: How the Government Lobbies Itself and Why. The author, Christopher Snowdon, said that the changed relationship between the Third Sector and government amounted to a Labour Party strategy that ensured the left would maintain political power even given a change in government. Financial support for charities (in the last 15 years, the report says, government funding of UK charities increased dramatically) and relaxed regulations on political campaigning meant that the former Labour government had essentially turned the voluntary sector into a public relations mouthpiece.

The ideas in the IEA’s sock puppet paper were quickly picked up by government, notably, the Department of Communities and Local Government which published a paper titled, “50 Ways to Save: Examples of Sensible Savings in Local Government" in December, 2012.

Among the recommendations is number thirty-seven: stop funding sock-puppets and fake charities that call for more state regulations and more state funding.

The IEA, it should be noted, is itself registered with the UK Charity Commission as an “educational charity.” 

Founded in 1955, this think-tank’s stated purpose is to “promote the intellectual case for a free economy, low taxes, freedom in education, health and welfare and lower levels of regulation.” It is not funded by government, but does accept corporate donations, and free-market philosopher Milton Friedman has stated that the influence of the IEA’s founder, Anthony Fisher, during the Thatcher administration was so strong that "the U-turn in British policy executed by Margaret Thatcher owes more to him than any other individual."

The IEA also has funded the writing of a long list of books, such as Climate Alarmism Reconsidered, which describes environmentalists as climate alarmists who use global warming as a 'justification for failed socialist policies' and Life’s Adventure: Virtual Risk in a Real World, a book that lists ozone depletion, climate change, tobacco, pesticides and nuclear power as 'junk science-based scares.'

The Labour governments led by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did indeed make their mark on the UK’s charity laws.

Following a five-year review of the Third Sector and more than 80 hours of parliamentary debate, Tony Blair’s government passed the 2006 Charities Act.

For the first time since Queen Elizabeth passed the Charitable Uses Act in 1601, the meaning of charitable purpose was given a statutory definition including a list of 13 examples, including new additions such as the advancement of human rights and the the pursuit of impartial investigative journalism. Under this law, there are no limits to the amount of campaigning for political change a charity can undertake, so long as the political actions 'remain incidental or ancillary to the charity's purposes.'

Following the campaign against poverty in the UK launched by Save the Children, the right-wing press picked-up on the themes of the sock-puppet paper and accused the former government led by Gordon Brown of “changing the rules so charities could join political campaigns” in 2008.

The truth is that in March of that year, the UK Charity Commission published new guidelines to navigating the law on political activity for charities, but these guidelines did not change the law – the Charity Commission does not have the power for that.

However, the guidelines do explicitly state that a charity can use most or all of its resources on a political campaign, so long as political campaigning does not become the sole reason for the organization’s existence.

As Alison Dunn states in her article Charities and Restrictions on Political Activities in the International Journal for Non-Profit Law, the guidelines are perhaps an imperfect attempt at clarifying a very confusing body of law and of defining terms which are determined by the courts on a case-by-case basis, but the guidelines “overall are more encouraging to trustees, emphasizing that political conduct can be a legitimate and beneficial course of action for a charity.”

That said, even with these seemingly encouraging guidelines, studies from within the charitable sector claim the sector is losing its independence. On January 22nd of this year, the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector released its second annual report investigating the willingness of charitable organizations to speak freely. The panel’s main finding is that the independence of the sector has become increasingly threatened, and the source of that threat is the government.

The stated purpose of the “Big Society” project launched by David Cameron’s government has been to “re-invigorate civil society” in part by promising a bigger role to nonprofits in the delivery of public services.

This has indeed happened, as government has cut back on public services and contracted the work out to whoever wants the job – non-profits, social enterprises, and even corporations – creating a situation which has been described by some as a “race-to the bottom.”

According to the Panel’s recent report, this has led to a situation in which the voluntary sector “is increasingly being treated as interchangeable with the public and private sectors.” The loss of identity has led to less support from individual donors, and self-censorship on the part of organizations that fear the loss of contracts if they criticize the government.

Many of those contracts come with “gagging clauses,” and the report by the Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector provides an example of one such clause:

X.3 The Supplier shall pay the utmost regard to the standing and reputation of the Prime Contractor and the Contracting Body and shall not do anything (by act or omission) which may; 39.3.1 damage the reputation of the Prime Contractor or the Contracting Body 39.3.2 bring the Prime Contractor or the Contracting Body into disrepute 39.3.3 attract adverse publicity to the Prime Contractor or the Contracting Body 39.3.4 harm the confidence of the public in the Prime Contractor or the Contracting Body

The problem of being hindered by government funding is echoed in an article titled, “Unchaining the Wolf,” written by Dil Daly, director of Age Concern, an elderly assistance organization. Daly explains that medium-sized charities like his have come to rely on government contracts for their income. Today they faced reduced funding from all sources, and higher demands from a population in need. He offers no solution to the financial challenges but does assert that reduced public sector funding could actually be a good thing:

"In the recent past, a certain element of self censorship has existed as charities have been wary of 'biting the hand that feeds.' In essence we have tended to become a little too cosy with our funders and respond like lap dogs, doing our master’s bidding on demand. In future, the golden chains of funding won’t be there to make us think twice and I can foresee charities being far more prepared to challenge statutory authorities more vigorously."

So it seem that the IEA has support for its view from within the voluntary sector, on some level at least.

It is doubtful the organizations working on poverty relief and environmental protection would agree with the reasons the IEA seems to find the diminishment of independence so appauling, the reason being, as surmised by one writer:

"charities daring to point out that the often vulnerable people they represent might be suffering and that governments (of any stripe) might have a role in ameliorating or avoiding such harm. Instead, the IEA seems to prefer that charities work to clear up the mess created by ‘free markets’ but without making a fuss.”

With ongoing cuts to public services, England’s charities are struggling more and more to do even that. According to a 2012 survey, 90 percent of charities in the UK say their futures are at risk due to cash-flow problems and the uncertainties of results-based contracts.

It is this model that Canada seems keen to follow.

The 2012 budget was called a re-shaping of Canada’s social policy, with inspiration taken from Britain’s “Big Society.”

This is happening, moreover, in the wake of government attacks charities for political action, and tightening of the rules.

Our “Big Society” (otherwise described, in the UK context, as the biggest wave of outsourcing since the 1980s) will take its own form, but its hard to imagine that our voluntary sector will actually be strengthened by it.

That might sound just about right for the Conservative government, who likes to paint politically active charities as representatives of special interest groups.

If charities are made incapable of carrying out their essential tasks – holding government to account or demanding the relation between business and environmental protection is in the public interest – then their ability to bring benefit to the public will be severely limited.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.