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“If [people] make
statements that are clearly exaggerated or untrue, we have to set the record
straight.”
-Canadian Natural Resources
Minister Joe Oliver
The above quotation seems
like good advice, especially when given to media, whose historic task has been
to un-spin political spin, and ferret out truth. Setting the record
straight used to be a noble pursuit. Unfortunately, when it comes to
energy politics in Canada in the second decade of the 21st Century,
exaggeration and “untruth” are reported uncritically as facts to be consumed by
Canadians. This uncritical reporting is detrimental to having the sort of
necessary adult conversations we need in order to start moving beyond the
rhetoric and towards real discussions on public policy. This lack of
critical analysis on the part of the media has been on display over the last
few days as a result of some remarks made to the media by former U.S. Vice
President and Nobel Prize winner, Al Gore.
Words as Pawns
Just what did Gore say about
Canada’s energy sector, which set off cabinet ministers, opposition MP’s and
media pundits? What Gore said was….well, what Gore said was a matter of
debate itself, depending on which mainstream media outlets you rely on for your
news. It seems that in today’s day and age, real words spoken or written
can be used with impunity out of context, in order to misrepresent the speaker
or author’s position in an attempt to discredit. While this has been a
tool used by politicians for some time (especially in party paid-for television
advertising), critical media have in the past taken issue with this approach
and called out the fabrications. In 2013, in Canada, this appears to be
happening less and less, especially when the story has to do with energy
politics.
There is no question about
what Al Gore really did say, as his words were reproduced in the Globe
& Mail’s story headlined “Al Gore isn’t overly pleased with Canada”
(the Globe & Mail, Saturday May 14, 2013). Responding to the
question, “Have the oil-sands boom and pipeline debates affected Canadian-U.S.
relations?”, Gore gave the following answer:
“Yes, and I think that
ultimately it hurts Canada. The so-called resource curse is most often
understood in the context of small nations whose revenue streams are dominated
by the exploitation of a single resource. It’s a bit more complex than that
with Canada, but the resource curse has multiple dimensions and [that includes]
damage to some extremely beautiful landscapes, not to mention the core issue of
adding to the reckless spewing of pollution into the Earth’s atmosphere as if
it’s an open sewer.”
There proved to be a couple
of points raised by Gore in these few sentences which aroused the concerns of
government officials and media pundits. Specifically, the reference to a
“resource curse” and the use of the term “open sewer” were seen by some as
being over the top. Let’s look at the “open sewer” comments first off.
Opinions as Lies
Federal Natural Resources
Minister Joe Oliver went off on the “open sewer” remarks, claiming that Gore
was lying about the tar sands. I’m not sure how an opinion can
become a lie (and an opinion is really what Gore was expressing), but that
seems to be what Oliver was saying, as reported in the Wall Street Journal (“Canada Strikes Back: Attacks Al Gore for
‘Open Sewer’ Oil Sands Comment”, Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, May 7 2013).
Here’s Oliver’s full quote:
“If [people] make
statements that are clearly exaggerated and untrue, we have to set the record
straight,” Mr. Oliver said. “If [Mr. Gore] goes beyond the facts, then I should
call him on that, or else those comments are out there, unopposed. That’s not
in the national interest to let inaccurate accusations stand there,
uncorrected.”
“Untrue” statements can only
be considered “lies”. “Lying” about something presumes that there are one
set of facts on which there is a universal agreement. Without a universal
set of facts, statements made which are not in keeping with one’s own
perceptions can be considered in contradiction to one’s opinion, but clearly
they aren’t lies.
Labelling Gore’s opinion as
“untrue” is very telling. To believe that an opinion is a lie, Oliver
must believe that when it comes to the tar sands and Canada’s energy policy
(which he calls “the national interest”), there is a universal agreement about
a set of facts, and that statements which contradict those facts must be false,
or in this case, lies.
Say what you want about the
tar sands, but suggesting that there is universal agreement on how they should
be developed is simply absurd. There isn’t. Sure, it may be your
opinion that there should be universal agreement on the “national interest”,
but the fact is, there isn’t. And that’s a fact. We need look no
further than to Al Gore when it comes to offering a dissenting opinion.
Yet Minister Oliver, in his
arrogance, wants Canadians to believe that there is only one “right” and
everything and everybody else is wrong. And the media pundits who report
this story seem to lap it up, and in some cases, go beyond the pale, by
completely misrepresenting opinion statements made, in an effort to make the
speaker look foolish.
Media Manipulation
On CTV’s “Power Play with Don
Martin”, host Martin repeated the assertion that Gore had called the “oil
sands” an “open sewer” (Monday, May 6th 2013). After NDP
Environment Critic Megan Leslie called Martin out on that assertion, CTV
continued to provide a banner headline running along the bottom of the screen
which seemed to suggest that Gore really had called the “oil sands” an “open
sewer”.
If it’s not what Gore said,
then why is it being reported in such a way? It’s probably because our
media is not unbiased, and tends to favour the views of some over others.
And when it comes to energy politics, most of the mainstream media wants to
marginalize anything having to do with climate change. And so
commentators, policy analysts and even elected officials who express concern
about a rapidly warming climate (and who therefore call on a reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions) end up misrepresented, misinterpreted and often made
to look foolish. CTV clearly employed this tactic with the Al Gore story.
Just Not True
It’s not just the media, of
course. With regards to the “resource curse” remark made by Gore, Federal
Natural Resources Parliamentary Secretary David Anderson decided to take a shot
at NDP Leader Tom Mulcair over remarks that Mulcair has never made.
Anderson said:
“(Mulcair) said yesterday that he agrees with the claim that our resources
are a curse," said Anderson. "First a disease, then a curse. This is
a real embarrassment to all of us, that the NDP never miss a chance to oppose
Canadian jobs."
(from “Environment Minister Kent wades into oil
sands feud”, Daniel Prousallidis, QMI Agency, published online in Sun News,
May 7 2013).
Mulcair has never claimed that Canada’s resource development is a disease, or a
curse, or that the NDP opposes Canadian jobs. But misrepresentation seems
to be the rule of the day. I guess that it’s just so much easier to put
words in your opponents mouth than to actually listen to what they’ve said and
respond intelligently back.
And it's not as if an intelligent response couldn't be formulated. It's
not even clear to me that many Conservative MP's even understand the economic
concepts of "Dutch Disease" and the "Resource Curse" which
Al Gore referred to. Economists have long discussed and debated the
validity of these concepts. They are not new ideas. But clearly,
those in the media seem to have trouble grasping that Dutch Disease and the
Resource Curse are economic concepts, and not the "over the top
rhetoric" that Conservative politicians like Joe Oliver (who probably
knows very well what they are) want Canadians to believe. By not
discussing these economic concepts as economic concepts, the media has been
doing an injustice to the economic debate around the issue of climate change,
and what's really in Canada's national interest.
From Media Bias to Propaganda
Sun Media, of course, is
probably the worst when it comes to reporting facts, even when it’s not being
snarky with those facts, such as claiming that Gore’s move “An Inconvenient
Truth” was “docu-fictional”. The Sun has moved beyond bias and into the
realm of propaganda, at least on issues related to energy politics and climate
change. The following are taken from an editorial appearing in the
Toronto Sun on May 6, 2013, “Cleaning up after the Al spill”.
“In an interview with the
Globe & Mail, however, America's answer to Canada's enviro-dollar
exploiter David Suzuki, was allowed to pump the garbage that the oilsands of
Alberta represents a "reckless spewing of pollution into the Earth's
atmosphere as if it's an open sewer."
Sun Media just can’t seem to
let any opportunity go to denigrate David Suzuki, even in an article which has
nothing to do with Suzuki.
And then there was this gem, about how emissions from the tar sands have been
reduced 26%. Sun media suggests that Oliver said this, but I don’t think
that’s the case. Whoever put it together though is absolutely incorrect.
Emissions from tar sands development have only gone up. While it may be
the case (or , while it used to be the case, but no longer is) that the
intensity of per barrel emissions has gone down, the fact is that overall
emissions have gone up. And that’s contradictory to what’s being
reported.
“As Oliver was forced to point out, for the umpteenth time, continuing
technological advances have already seen Canada reduce oilsands emissions by
26% and that developers are committed to returning the mined land to its
natural state and are already proving it was no ploy.”
And then there’s the “dirty” oil issue. The Sun maintains that the
world’s dirtiest oil comes from the Middle East, presumably by using a
definition of “dirty” which speaks more to the political regime in which the
oil is pumped than the amount of greenhouse gas emissions for which it is
responsible. Interestingly, by doing so, the Sun lumps some of Canada’s
historic allies onto the “dirty” side of the leger, including Saudi Arabia and
Kuwait, two nations which Canada defended during the 1990-91 Gulf War, while
ignoring countries like Nigeria, Venezuala and Russia.
"There is no such thing as "undirty" crude but, even if the
European Union presently buys very little oil from Canada, this directive
already dividing Europe must be challenged by Oliver as a little too precious
to peddle when the truly "dirtiest" oil comes from the Middle East,
home of some of the most horrendous human-rights abusers on the planet."
Time to Set the Record Straight
If our media is too biased or
too focused on creating propaganda to set the record straight on exaggerations
and untruths, and if indeed they are contributing to creating those untruths in
the first place, by misrepresenting statements made individuals, which are
later repeated by other pundits and politicians as if they were real, then
we’ve got a lot of trouble ahead in the future. I say this because I know
that discussions related to energy politics and climate change are going to
continue to dominate the Canadian political scene for decades to come.
These discussions will be difficult enough to have on their own, given the
ideological predisposition of the Conservative Party to refuse to acknowledge
the real and present impacts of a warming planet in any meaningful way.
Our media needs to get with
the program, as there is a clear lack of understanding of the economic case
being made by opponents of the status quo. The economics of resource
development are not new discussions in front of the media, yet the media can’t
seem to grapple with the notion that there exists another economic paradigm
when it comes to resource development. Indeed, in some respects, the
media seems to have bought into Joe Oliver’s notion that there is a universally
accepted truth about resource development, and other ideas and notions which
are incompatible with these facts are exaggerations and lies.
Energy politics is going to
remain at the forefront of political discussions. As a result, for the
benefit of media consumers (and ultimately for the benefit of all Canadians),
it makes sense that the media start to acknowledge that there is a different
approach to economic development being advanced. It’s not a question of
“economy” vs. “environment”. It’s “economy” vs. “economy”. The
whole idea that the “environment” can be discretely cordoned off and treated as
its own separate issue has for too long been accepted by those in the media
(and many in politics) as being one of those “universal truths”.
Accepting this paradigm without critical analysis really says a lot about those
who believe it be true, as clearly they just don’t get it. It’s time for the
media to begin to set the record straight, and to critically report the positions
of those who believe that the economic impacts of climate change outweight the
short term gains of runaway resource extraction.
(opinions expressed in
this blog are my own and should not be interpreted as being consistent with the
views and/or policies of the Green Party of Canada)