The Alberta government, flailing and on the defensive for the past three years or so about alleged pollution from the oilsands industrial complex, has now taken the hardest blow, so far, against its environmental solar plexus. Legitimate science, as opposed to mindless capering and stunting by the likes of Greenpeace, has examined the oilsands and found them wanting.
Now, by citing “legitimate” science I don’t claim its conclusions are correct in whole or in part: I have no qualifications for such judgement, but I do say Dr. David Schindler from the University of Alberta cannot merely be dismissed an academic crank with no concept of the “real” reasons toxins are burbling from the oilsands into the Athabasca River. On the contrary: Schindler and several colleagues have put together an exhaustive analysis which raises serious and worrisome questions about the standard government contention that pollutants flow from natural sources – and not from the industrial plants scattered around the vicinity.
When Schindler’s research was published this past Monday, Alberta environment minister Rob Renner was dispatched to the public relations sandbags and barbed wire, in order to repel this unsubstantiated and careless musing from academia. In so many words, Renner reiterated the conventional government wisdom that because the Athabasca flows through an area laden with natural contaminants, well of course there’d be some modest toxic intrusion. And that wasn’t just his own view: any number of competent and worthy environmental scientists in government employ said so, and ergo that must be the truth of the matter, and so there.
Two days later, it became abruptly and abundantly clear that federal environment minister Jim Prentice was having none of “so there.” He conceded there is now evidence, plain and simple, of scientific “controversy” about industrial pollution leaking into the Athabasca – even though his own federal experts have argued for years, in lockstep with the Alberta environment department, that contaminants such as lead and mercury are naturally occuring.
Prentice is clearly worried that such soothing balm isn’t good enough. Not any more. And so he said, pointedly, that any federal conclusions about the oilsands from now on have to be backed up by better science.
If that isn’t condemnation of his own department, I don’t know what is. Prentice didn’t name names but he did point a very large finger – and one of the first people to see it was Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach. Within hours, Fast Eddie strode to the nearest thicket of microphones and allowed as how of course the provincial government values the conclusions reached by Dr. Schindler, takes them seriously, will evaulate them with the utmost diligence against those of his own environment department and should there be any cause for concern, will act with vigor and determination to correct matters. You can be sure of that.
Here’s the thing. Simply by organizing his impromptu news conference, Stelmach was admitting there is in fact “cause for concern,” and that he also understands – even if well after the horse has galloped out of the environmental barn – that the serene reassurances about natural toxic invasion of the Athabasca no longer, in a manner of speaking, hold water.
One university scientist: one research paper: one federal environment minister. Between them, they’ve forced the Alberta government into concessions it would not have dreamed were necessary, even last week. The Stelmachians are now truly caught between oil and a hard place – and the latter is inflicting a great deal of public relations pain.
Whether there’s an antidote which would permit the oilsands industry to continue basically as is, or even with minor adjustments, remains to be seen because scientific controversy by definition means - to pursue the analogy – there are no immediately available prescriptions.
But the illness has been diagnosed, and I suspect Ed Stelmach is feeling decidedly unwell.