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Desmond Tutu, the 82-year-old millionaire celebrity, jetted from South Africa to Fort McMurray, Alta., to call the oilsands industry “filth.”
“Do you want to live in a barren, treeless, flowerless desert? You have a choice,” he said. He said this while sitting in the middle of Canada’s boreal forest, one of the largest forests in the world.
The oilsands are filth, he said. We are destroying the world, he said. “Climate change is the moral struggle that will define this century,” he said, blaming the oilsands for that. Saying that puts us on par with what Tutu would likely say was the moral crime he knew best — apartheid itself. That is an extremist comparison, and one that profanes the victims of apartheid as much as it smears Canadians.
It’s sad, really. In another time, Tutu won a Nobel Peace Prize for his moral leadership, helping to end apartheid. But for a presumed six-figure speaking fee, paid for in part by a law firm specializing in suing resource companies, Tutu was willing to rent out his reputation, to demonize Canada on demand.
What did Canadians do to deserve this? We were amongst the world’s leaders in the battle against apartheid. Is this how Tutu repays us – by comparing us to racists, calling us filth, and telling lies about our environmental record?
The oilsands are not filthy. Unlike Tutu’s native South Africa, Canada’s oilsands invest billions in ecological reclamation and emissions reductions. South Africa, by contrast, has amongst the world’s worst pollution, especially smog and particulate pollution. Seventy-two percent of South African energy comes from coal – a much more carbon intensive source of energy, if you’re worried about that sort of thing, which Tutu claims to be.
Canada is a world leader in the environment – our national greenhouse gas emissions have fallen in the past five years, unlike South Africa’s, which have skyrocketed. And that’s just harmless CO2. South Africa is one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to actual pollution – air and water quality. Let’s not call it “filth” – we’ll leave that sort of language to the bishop.
For the rest of this column, click here: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/06/02/tutus-oilsands-visit-raises-questions