Monthly Archives: April 2014

Tar Sands for the week (April 22, 2014)

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One of the major ways in which social control is manifested most often in today’s decaying North American society is through marketing of supposed activist campaigns. Taking on the appearance of grassroots organizing, the centralized, top down nature of the “campaign” will seek to do two main functions: Usurp the role of the grassroots organizing that had previously taken place, and create and act out a narrative.

Much has been said of the first previously, but the second is perhaps more insidious. The recent example of– I’ve written this often enough I’m thinking it’s time to cut and paste– the Keystone XL being punted down the field by the Obama administration is a case in point. Capital has done what capital is wont to do; Centralized campaigning under a public relations exercise led by middle class climate scientist Bill McKibben publicly has declared that Keystone XL is a make or break point for the climate in the US.

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Tar Sands for the week (April 15, 2014).

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It seems everyone has their own way of interpreting the latest projections from the IPCC on climate change. The main points are repeated, restated, and as climate campaigners like to note– unambiguous rejection of fossil fuels. Indeed, as projected in many quarters before the fact, the emissions we are dealing with have been speeding up. These are all new, damning facts.

There are other projections as well. The level of energy-change required to deal with the climate crisis is spelled out, painstakingly, in both terms of reductions in emissions but not without replacing the level of fossil fuel energy with wind, solar and other renewables.

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Tar Sands for the week (April 8, 2014).

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Tar Sands. They may be the most destructive project in the history of humanity. Yes, all these megprojects combined together also create the largest project in the history of industrial developments– the Gigaproject. By linking projected developments associated with tar sands in northern Alberta all the way through to the North Slope in Alaska, possible connections to all three major oceans, the Gulf of Mexico and possibly even including Mexico itself via pipelines– oddly enough– that dip into and then back out of Mexico, taking bitumen on a little tour through territory captured through a different spate of violence during prior centuries.

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Tar Sands for the week (April 1, 2014).

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The funny thing about the construction of “debates” where none ought to exist is how “normal” they can seem. The tar sands are far from an exception to this often rule that emerges from manufactured consent. Take just the basic tone of a few articles that have come out in the press recently, nothing at all new, as it regards the supposed “results” of another report turned into greenwash by industry. The story is basically the same as before: Doctors and people recount the obvious, the Alberta medical examiner reports attempt to exonerate the province and by extension, the tar sands.

There is nothing new here– but the underlying story, of course, is that this may make the tar sands a “good idea,” if only economically. Really?

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