Instead, it seems pipelines - really people, pipelines? - are set to join the do-not-discuss list, next to religion and politics as divisive topics best avoided in mixed company.
If recent developments are any indication, some steel pipe buried underground and molasses-like crude trapped in sand have become a dividing line for many.
With the firestorm surrounding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to the United States and the Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast, the debate has grown louder, the rhetoric more shrill, the positions more intractable.
Compromise, a quintessential Canadian attribute that's been the foundation of "peace, order and good government," seems lost in our irreconcilable differences over energy.
"We're classically conflicted," says Michael Adams, a veteran surveyor of Canadian public opinion and president of the Environics group of research and communications companies.
"It's very polarizing . . . people are concerned about the consequences of fossil fuels and what it does to the environment, but there's also a concern about economic development."
The reaction last week to the U.S. administration rejecting a permit for the proposed $7-billion Keystone XL line - designed to move crude from the oilsands to Gulf Coast refineries - illustrates the gap between the solitudes.
"The key message that (governments) should take is the writing is on the wall," says Mike Hudema of Greenpeace Canada. "There is no way in my mind that tarsands can be developed sustainably."
For Hudema, the only room for compromise is just how quickly we cease oilsands production, not in trying to minimize its footprint.
On the other side, it's Build, Baby, Build.
"Our countries need Keystone to compete on the world stage. It is extremely disappointing that political posturing has gotten in the way of sound industrial strategy," Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters president Jayson Myers said in a statement.
Adams says the debate's ferocity isn't surprising, as he compares the emotional intensity to "religious fervour" for the estimated 10 to 15 per cent of Canadians who are staunch environmentalists.
Late last year, Environics Research surveyed public attitudes toward these energy issues as part of its environmental barometer. While support for oilsands development and export pipelines has edged up in the past year, there's also no clear consensus.
More than half of the 2,000 Canadians questioned about building oil pipelines for export to Asia and the United States oppose the idea, some 55 per cent.
Of that, almost a third strongly reject it, firm in their viewpoint.
On the other side, four in 10 Canadians support export pipelines, with a smaller core of 15 per cent strongly in favour.
While overall support in November rose about seven percentage points across Canada from a similar survey in September, opposition still swamps proponents in every province but the two with oilsands: Alberta and Saskatchewan.
If Albertans are dismayed by the notion most Canadians don't want to see new pipelines built that can actually move bitumen out of the Athabasca oilsands to end users, they can take heart in a different measuring stick: more people in our country believe oilsands developments are a "good thing for Canada."
Some 57 per cent of Canadians are in favour (up seven points from June) because the oilsands creates jobs and boosts the economy - the highest level of support for the resource's development since Environics began asking about it in 2008.
Quebecers remain the most negative (only a third think the oilsands are good for the country), while Albertans are most supportive, with fully eight in 10 in favour.
So to recap, a slight majority of Canadians support taking tar-like crude out of the ground, but they don't support building new ways to get that product to customers.
Clearly, we're a conflicted lot. Dig a little deeper and it gets murkier.
Some 30 per cent of Canadians advocate full-scale oilsands development, based on market demand. Another 17 per cent want to stop development altogether, with not one more giant oilsands truck rolling across the mines north of Fort McMurray.
The best news for Albertans backing oilsands development is that a slim majority, 52 per cent, support a middle option of slowing down production "over the next few years until the environmental and other impacts can be addressed."
"This is not a consensus, it's kind of the default position that we are in Canada, we've been blessed with this (resource) and we have to make the best of it," says Adams. "But the blessing is both the curse."
The stakes in the Great Energy Debate are enormous, with more than $100 billion of oilsands projects already announced for northern Alberta. Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of taxes for governments are riding on the outcome. So are the environmental consequences associated with it.
If there is common ground to share, Adams says it may be found in the deep-seated belief people hold that society will do better in the future.
"It's like sin, we do it, we confess, we try to do better, but we know we're probably going to sin again because that's human nature, and humans exploiting the natural environment for their own advantage goes back to either the cave or Adam or Eve," he concludes. "We're feeling a bit guilty but feel it will work out."
Original Article
Source: calgary herald
Author: Chris Varcoe
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