» Scandinavian audiences: Concerned about tar sands destruction

May 15th, 2009

Scandinavian audiences: Concerned about tar sands destruction

Jessica Wilson

From May 11th to May 20th, Greenpeace Canada and Greenpeace Nordic are bringing the reality of tar sands expansion and destruction to new audiences across Scandinavia. A target of the tour is StatoilHydro, Scandinavia’s biggest company and a major investor in the tar sands. A delegation of four from Canada is speaking to media, Statoil investors, and key politicians.

Andrew Nikiforuk giving his book Tar Sands to officials from Norway’s ministry of petroleum and energy after a meeting to discuss the risks of tar sands development.

It’s both inspiring and mildly depressing that the horror story of the tar sands is better received here in Scandinavia than it is back home.

There is a stark contrast between our reception here and in Canada. In Alberta, we’re met with closed doors and outright denial by government and industry. Here in Norway and Sweden, we have been welcomed into Statoil headquarters and treated with respect, offered meetings with deputy energy ministers and granted face time with investors who are troubled by the ramifications of their investments. They sit down with us, listen to our stories, take notes, accept books, and promise real consideration.

What is at best back-page news in right-leaning Canadian papers like the National Post is front and centre here. Each time a new pension fund or investor announces their support of our motion that StatoilHydro withdraw its investments from the tar sands, the media pounces on it, devoting multiple pages in national dailies and lengthy, hard hitting features on primetime TV networks. Our message is being heard, loud and clear.

Just today, the Christian Democrats (KrF), the Norwegian opposition party, proposed that on Monday, the day before Statoil’s AGM, the parliament hold an emergency vote: “That the State shall not block the tar sands resolution.” This could mean that the Norwegian government, 67 per cent owner of Statoil, would be unable to quash our motion on Tuesday, as they said they would.

Governments here are genuinely concerned about their country’s footprint. But then, the government leaders in these countries aren’t climate change deniers or sons of oil executives like ours.

We’ve been learning that most Swedes and Norwegians assume, wrongly, that the lay of the land in Canada is similar. Of course, it is not. We are the second largest oil producing nation in the world and yet we have no climate change policy. We have no plan to get off fossil fuels. And in fact, if any of the five proposals for nuclear power plants in northern Alberta and northern Saskatchewan go through, we will become the first nation in the world to use nuclear power not to get off fossil fuels, but to accelerate their use.

Insanity? We think so. And judging by the collective murmurs that ripple through the rooms we say that in, they think so, too.

Knowledge is power and in countries that value truth and environmental policy, we are powerful people. This is the well-oiled Greenpeace machine at its finest. The pressure is on, Statoil is feeling it, and it will continue as we press on towards Tuesday’s AGM.