Enbridge Ad Campaign Versus Stubborn Facts
Monday, June 11, 2012 @ 3:45 AM
By Peter Ewart
Enbridge Inc. recently announced that it is launching a new $5 million ad campaign in the media to promote its Northern Gateway pipeline, which will extend from Alberta and across northern British Columbia to the Pacific coast.
The main slogan is: “It’s more than a pipeline. It’s a path to our future.” In that regard, the ads claim that Enbridge’s pipeline will create thousands of jobs across the country, provide billions of dollars to help Canadian communities, and be built to “world-class safety standards” that will “respect the terrain and wildlife.”
This current ad campaign is in addition to the millions of dollars that the company has already spent on ads promoting the pipeline. Just one example: glossy, expensive, multi-page ads in the Canadian magazine “The Walrus.” In one of these ads, a group of aboriginal children in sports clothing are depicted jumping for joy in a grassy field bordered by a grove of trees. “Enbridge: Where energy meets potential” is the big-lettered slogan of the ad, and in the information box the ad talks of how Enbridge is providing funding for extracurricular programming at First Nations schools.
But there is a major disconnect here. Contrary to the image of jumping, joyful children in the ad, the fact is that opposition to the pipeline is very strong in First Nations communities. With its recent unproven claim that the majority of First Nations groups are in support of the pipeline, it is as if Enbridge wants to create another alternative reality.
Further to that end, on its website and in television ads, Enbridge is pushing an animated video illustrated in a soft watercolour style. This video is soothing in its atmosphere, oozing tranquility like some kind of imaginary world out of Disneyland. When the ad starts, viewers hear gentle, relaxing new age music, along with a disembodied woman’s voice. As images of beautiful trees, distant mountain ranges, and wildlife float across the screen, the soothing, hypnotic voice talks of Enbridge’s path to the future, “a path of thousands of jobs … thriving communities … world-class safety standards and low environmental impact.” At one point, a tanker is depicted on a placid ocean sailing towards a golden setting sun. What could possibly be more perfect?
Of course, Enbridge is not alone in attempting to create an alternative, imaginary world. Not a few politicians, spin doctors, and even some in the academic community deny that an objective world exists independent of our consciousness, that reality is, like Alice in Wonderland, anything we might choose it to be.
A famous example of this kind of thinking was revealed in an interview conducted by the American author Ron Suskind with an unnamed aide to George W. Bush, who many believe was actually Karl Rove. Criticizing what he termed people in the “reality-based community” who “believe that solutions emerge from [the] judicious study of discernible reality,” this aide boasted that he and his cohorts in the Bush Whitehouse created their own reality. Part of that “created reality” was the false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, thus providing the justification for a U.S. invasion. Of course, ten years later, we all know how that “created reality” turned out.
But facts are stubborn things. And so is the objective world. Try as we may, we cannot transform smelly, toxic bitumen into sweet gobs of chocolate by merely wishing it so.
Enbridge claims that its proposed pipeline will deliver “world-class safety standards and low environmental impact.” However, the reality is that it has oil spills every year. Its most recent really big spill was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which dumped an estimated 1 million gallons of bitumen into the river there. Two years later, this massive spill, like the Exxon Valdez tanker catastrophe in Alaska or the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is still not completely cleaned up, and most likely never will be for many decades and even centuries to come.
Most recently in the news, the Plains Midstream pipeline company spilled up to 3,000 barrels of crude oil into a tributary of the Red Deer River in Alberta. This was preceded by another spill by the same company in May, in which thousands of barrels of oil were spilled into the muskeg near Rainbow Lake in northern Alberta. These, too, are facts.
The terrain of northern British Columbia and the treacherous waters off its coast are another hard fact. As many people have said already, it is a matter of when, not if, a spill will take place. What would a spill look like here that was of the magnitude of the 3,000 barrel one in the Red River? Or the 1 million gallon Kalamazoo river spill? The terrain of these two spills is relatively flat and like a walk in the park compared to what could happen in British Columbia. Mountains that jut up, narrow gorges, waterfalls, floods, treacherous currents, high water, eroded river banks, log jams, debris flows, deep snow, impassable roads … the list of potential obstacles and danger goes on and on. Bitumen has different qualities than ordinary natural gas or even crude oil, including the fact that it has a more pronounced tendency to sink in water, making cleanup particularly difficult.
Northern British Columbia is not the fairyland presented in Enbridge’s video. Yes, it is spectacularly beautiful and rich in resources, but it is also a hazardous, difficult, dangerous, challenging and very real part of the country. A pipeline that transports raw bitumen across this rugged land and swirling waters is just not a good idea.
That being said, in the modern world, industrial development is critically important, including development of the rich oil and gas reserves of British Columbia and Alberta, as well as renewable energy. Instead of creating fairylands, we need to study and discuss the reality of our land and geography, and figure out how best to utilize these resources in ways that preserve the environment, create jobs, capture added value through manufacturing and processing, and strengthen our communities.
Peter Ewart is a columnist and writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter.ewart@shaw.ca
Comments
Very well written Peter and very true. Sorry but from their record of not cleaning up spills, their legal wriggling out of their stated responsibilities, their almost desperate ad campaign and their misinformation, I cannot believe a word they say.
They are just like politicians, say whatever the public wants to hear and then go and do whatever they want to.
They have the money to get their message out but people have to start asking the hard questions,
1. are the spill plans real given the number of rivers and streams on the path of this pipeline?
2. What is the companys real responsibility when the this oil leaves port? dont forget this is a pipeline company.
3. Both Harper and Alberta say we need oil, yes however this black goo is being sent off shore for refining?
Like all our resources send them out of country and buy them back…yes there is a demand but whats the real cost? Oil companys have the power and the money they can start a war and stop one,but if the people wake up and push back the picture will change.Some things are just not worth the risk,
IF the product is so good why would anyone need to spend that kind of money?
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