Opposition To Canada’s Tar Sands Projects Is Heating Up

Oil companies, banks, and American retailers are all feeling the pressure to stop supporting the “environmental genocide” that is the Canada's tar sands projects. Even the Olympics — time-honored tradition that they are — have been affected by the brewing skepticism about Canada's environmental credibility.

Given the unseasonably high temperatures Vancouver experienced in the days before the 2010 Winter Olympic Games got underway — temperatures that forced organizers to have to import snow in dump trucks and helicopters — it makes good PR sense for the Vancouver Olympics organizing committee to bill theirs as “the greenest games ever.”

Except, it turns out they may really just be the the most greenwashed games ever.

Olympics organizers have announced their plan to offset all of the emissions from the games, for instance, but failed to take a really cold, hard look at the true environmental impact of the games. There’s the little fact, for instance, that the 2010 Winter Olympics’ chief energy supplier is Petro Canada/Suncor, a company that operates six tar sands projects.

Last weekend there was a wave of protest against the Olympics’ support for tar sands energy, led by a variety of indigenous and environmental groups. One of those groups, Rainforest Action Network, is also targeting the Royal Bank of Canada, which RAN calls “the ATM of the tar sands” because it’s the single largest investor in tar sands projects. (If you’re worried that your bank might be funding dirty energy, RAN has a nifty little carbon calculator that you can use to determine how much your bank account is contributing to your carbon footprint.)

The major oil companies have also got their feet to the fire for their tar sands projects. Shell, for instance, has announced that it will scale back its expansion there, as I reported here earlier this month. While the company didn’t say that opposition from environmentalists factored into its decision, you can bet the multiple shut-downs their tar sands projects experienced last year at the hands of environmental activists didn’t help the company's cost-benefit analysis.

Believe it or not, anger over complicity in the environmental and climate disaster at the tar sands extends beyond Big Oil, banks, and the Olympics: ForestEthics recently announced that both Whole Foods and Bed, Bath & Beyond had signed on to its campaign aimed at getting U.S. companies to stop using fuel from tar sands in order to avoid “higher-than-normal greenhouse gas footprints.” Now ForestEthics has its sights set on several other American retailers, including Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, and Safeway. You can help call on these companies to do the right thing for the planet by completing ForestEthics’ online action and telling those companies to reject Canada’s tar sands.

And the pressure is working: Canada is feeling so spurned by its former tar sands buyers (including the U.S. government) that it is now soliciting investment from Chinese oil firms.

Image credit: DianeWorth