Last night I went to a special screening of the documentary H2Oil, a film about water contamination and the Alberta Tar Sands. I haven’t written much on the topic of oil developments in the Athabasca, partly because (I’m embarrassed to admit) I’m decidedly uneducated when it comes to the subject matter, and partly because so much critique already exists. I’m not sure what I have to add.
The film itself was a series of sound bites about the oil and gas industry in Alberta (the tar sands are the largest oil deposit in the world, it takes four barrels of water to make one barrel of oil, etc) set against a backdrop of stark images. Alberta is depicted as a barred moonscape, the tailings ponds like giant craters. The story hobbles between Fort Chipewyan, an aboriginal community 250 km downstream from the development where cancer rates have skyrocketed, and a Hinton Alberta, where a young couple that operates a spring water company is trying to protect their clean source of drinking water. If you’re new to the topic, it’s a great crash course in the travesty occurring in the Canadian Midwest, and the systematic genocide of the traditional way of life of the first nations in the Athabasca.
Following the screening there was a brief panel discussion, which was really a soapbox for Olivia Chow to recruit more NDP votes (this bugs me – documentary screenings should be non-partisan events). There was a lot of talk about the importance of retrofitting your home in Toronto to prevent the tar sands development from growing (while I’m all for energy conservation, the suggestion is ridiculous really). Finally a representative from the indigenous environmental network pipped up.
“It’s all well and good to retrofit your home, but if you want to take on the mammoth of the oil and gas companies, ladies and gentlemen, you have to get politicized.”
I couldn’t agree more.
