POLITICS: Rhetoric and Reality Clash on Obama's First Foreign Visit
By Chris Arsenault
VANCOUVER, Feb 20 (IPS) - On his first foreign visit as U.S.
president, Barack Obama's rhetoric of "hope" and "change" came face to
face with the hard, divisive policy realities of climate change from
Canada's tar sands, a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and the
sputtering world economy.
Some 2,500 spectators lined the streets of Ottawa to watch the
president's motorcade make its way to Parliament Hill, a marked
contrast to the thousands of protestors who greeted former President
George W. Bush during his last Canadian visit. While the Canadian
public catches Obama fever, environmentalists and some aboriginal
groups say they've been left in the cold by his energy policies.
"Obama must ask Canada to clean up its tar sands and to respect the
rights of our aboriginal First Nations," said Chief Allan Adam of the
Athabasca Chipweyan First Nation, a community near the Alberta tar
sands, the world's largest energy project.
While promising to press ahead with "carbon reduction technologies,"
Obama did not mention the tar sands directly during his visit.
Extracting oil from the tar sands creates three times more greenhouse
gas emissions than conventional crude.
At the press conference following closed door meetings between
President Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and their
aides, the two leaders promised a "clean energy dialogue" focusing on
plans to trap carbon dioxide underground and improvements to North
America's electricity grid.
Standing in front of Canadian and U.S. flags, as the pomp and
circumstance of international diplomacy dictates, Obama called climate
change and the need to develop clean energy sources "the most pressing
challenges of our time."
The Natural Resources Defence Council dubs tar sands crude, "the
world's dirtiest oil." Canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil
to the U.S., sending more than 1.2 million barrels per day to its
southern neighbour.
Trade between the two countries is worth more than 1.6 billion dollars
per day, making it the world's largest trading relationship. In
addition to energy and the environment, the two leaders discussed
bailsouts for North America's auto industry and the general economic
downturn.
"How we produce and use energy is fundamental for our economic
recovery and also for our security and our planet," said Obama at the
press conference.
Prior to Obama's Canadian visit, aboriginal and environmental groups
placed a full-page add in the newspaper USA Today, stating that the
tar sands "stands in the way of a new energy economy." The day before
the presidential visit, activists from Greenpeace scaled a bridge in
Ottawa to hang a banner reading: "Climate Leaders Don't Buy Tar Sands."
During his election campaign, Obama vowed to end the U.S.'s addiction
to "dirty, dwindling, and dangerously expensive" oil. His campaign's
energy guru, Jason Grumet, said greenhouse gas emissions from Canada's
tar sands were "unacceptably high."
In an apparent about-face from his campaign promises, Obama refused to
characterise tar sands crude as "dirty oil" in a pre-summit interview
with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. While acknowledging that
the sands creates "a big carbon footprint," Obama argued that
technologies, including a plan from Alberta's provincial government to
store carbon dioxide underground, could solve the problem.
The idea of sequestering and storing greenhouse gases underground,
known as carbon capture, has yet to be implemented at any tar sands
operations and critics are sceptical that it can work. The tar sands
are Canada's fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
Presently, tar sands oil extraction pumps 29.5 million tons of
greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every year, equivalent to the
exhaust from more than 5 million cars.
Even if carbon capture technology does prove to be effective, the
sands create a host of other environmental challenges, water depletion
being the most significant. Producing one barrel of tar sands oil
requires at least three barrels of water; there is enough toxic water
in tar sands tailings ponds to fill 2.2 million Olympic sized swimming
pools.
"The devastation of our homelands in this short period of time is
perplexing to my people since it is only a fraction of the time that
these impacts have occurred compared to the thousands of years we have
inhabited these lands," said George Poitras, former chief of the
Mikisew Cree, another aboriginal community close to the tar sands.
In addition to energy and the economy, Obama and Harper also discussed
the increasing violence in Afghanistan, where Obama has pledged to
send 17,000 more U.S. troops as part of a "surge." Canada currently
has 2,500 combat troops stationed around Kandahar who are set to leave
in 2011.
Obama stated explicitly that he was not requesting more troops or
money from Canada for the Afghan occupation.
A chorus of military leaders, including a top German general and
Britain's ambassador in Kabul, have stated that the war cannot be won.
