I recently had a tour of the operations at the base plant of Suncor in Fort McMurray.  Suncor is an energy company whose main product is is synthetic crude extracted from oil sands in Northern Alberta.

Environmental Controversy

Destroying your home is probably not smart and although it is probably a questionable statement to some extent I will say;  “the human race has demonstrated an overall high level of intelligence”.

Overtime, an expression of this collective intelligence is the way people worldwide have come to recognize the negative impacts some of our actions are having on the environment.  This has led to increased communications, new laws and changes in the things we do.

All good!

Scapegoats

Sometimes passion for a cause is stirred up in the general populous by over aggressive leaders through the use of scapegoats.  In these cases right or wrong is not really the point, rather the ability to leverage perception for political gain or to initiate action.

Sadly, this appears to be the case when you examine the environmentalists versus Suncor.

Entertainment, religious and political leaders regularly tour the Suncore Fort McMurray mining operations, often ending with some statement about the horrific damage being done to our environment.

Certainly, on a relative basis, that is compared with environmentally damaging activities globally, this is just a load of crap.  Hence my categorization of these attacks as scapegoating.

Why a load of crap?

It cannot be argued that digging up the landscape, upgrading the bitumen and transporting it affect the earth (just the massive size of the operation speaks to this).

What struck me though,  is the commitment and effort to be responsive to the need to protect the environment and to both minimize and recover and restore any damage.   Why is that so rarely highlighted?

I find it disturbing this is so rarely even commented on by the attackers.  It can be noted, globally Suncor’s Fort McMurray operation is a mere speck of dust in the eye of the damage being done to Tera-firma,  when coupled with the tremendous amount of work being undertaken to mitigate such damage it is really inaccurate to label this commercial enterprise as the environmentalists enemy.

Easy Target

The Fort McMurray mine is not readily accessible for the majority of the earth’s population so they cannot verify these claims but mostly rely on the media to create their perceptions.  This makes them an easy target for the detractors who in fact are largely just leveraging the circumstances for their own personal gain anyway.