The paradox of the Promised Land

Our political and cultural leaders believe that oil sands developments are transforming Alberta into the “Promised Land.”

The illusion of the oil sands milk and honey

Huge investments in the oil sands are converting Alberta into a land of milk and honey. Companies and investors are swimming in profits, workers enjoy record incomes, and sovereign consumers – at least those with the power to register demand in the market – are served with an over-abundance of consumer products.

A plague of paradoxes

All is not well in the Promised Land, however. Studies show it takes 25 calories of natural gas to produce 100 calories of synthetic crude oil. That does not count the energy needed to refine final products and ship them around the world. According to any sensible view of “economic,” extracting energy from the oil sands in this way is highly questionable. Wouldn’t it make better sense to use revenues gained from selling the original 25 calories of natural gas to subsidise energy conservation projects and reduce demand?

The irony deepens when we factor in the extraordinary environmental impacts of oil sands development. They cause high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, significant surface land disturbance, high levels of air contaminants (including acid rain), not to mention rapidly exhausting non-renewable resources (natural gas and eventually oil sands).

Adding enigma to paradox, Albertans allow billions of dollars to be wildly invested into oil sands projects, only to have these non-renewable resources shipped south of the border to power SUVs, heat oversized homes, and produce goods for highly wasteful consumer lifestyles.

Contradictions pile up even higher. A 2005 Pembina Institute study shows that the policies of both our national and provincial governments actually encourage the rapid development of the oil sands. They offer massive subsidies to the oil sands projects through low taxation, low royalty rates, and support for research and development.

Shockingly, “free-market” Albertans sit by while their government subsidizes industry. In 1996 the Alberta government set in place a generic royalty regime for projects developing the oil sands. Under this policy, an Edmonton Journal editorial reports, “companies pay only one per cent royalty on new projects until the capital costs are paid off. At that point, the royalty rate bounces up to the standard 25 percent of revenues.” Thus, the current provincial oil sands royalty scheme has the people of Alberta – the owners of this resource – paying off the initial oil sands capital investments of large corporations.

Deeper than oil sands

Have you ever seen such a bundle of puzzling contradictions? It’s like a cancerous growth that we feel obliged to keep feeding rather than fighting. Paradoxes of this nature and intensity should drive us to reflect on the deeper roots of oil sands development and our larger culture.

So, what does the “promise” in Promised Land mean?

Our political and cultural leaders keep telling us that faith in unbridled economic growth will produce material prosperity and happiness for all. Just stay the course, they promise, and serious paradoxes emerging from oil sands developments can be fixed along the way. All we need are technical adjustments to governmental fiscal policy, environmental regulations or economic practices.

The paradoxes of oil sand development, however, have become so great that they now resist all technical fixes and cry out for more basic solutions. Many Albertans miss these paradoxes because we are hypnotised by the myth of progress. We are so obsessed with economic growth and narrow-minded consumerism that we willingly overlook obvious “signs of the times.”

Begin with core values

Albertans need to be awakened from this self-imposed hypnosis. Not surprisingly, talk of faith, myth, and signs of the times urges us to consider faith-based approaches to awakening.

The seeds for a major cultural reversal can be found in Jesus’ message in Matthew 6:32-34. Instead of “worrying about what we will eat, drink and wear” so we can guarantee ourselves a Promised Land of happiness, Jesus reverses the order, suggesting we “seek first the Kingdom of God and all of these things will be added to you as well.” At heart, this reversal asks us to stop asking idols like mammon and technology to deliver to us prosperity and joy. It invites us to live in expectation and trust of God, the giver of all good things.

What this reversal means in the case of Alberta’s oil sands, I believe, is that we stop obsessing over securing ultimate happiness for ourselves. Practically, we need to move norms and values up from being mere afterthoughts in social and economic development to starting points. Only when we start by doing right, that is, by designing developments from the start to work for environmental stewardship, just wages, social solidarity, fair profits, necessary products, energy conservation, and so on, will the paradoxes plaguing our Promised Land begin to recede.

Dr. John Hiemstra is professor of political science at The King's University College in Edmonton and a national board member of Citizens for Public Justice. A fuller exploration of these themes can be found in the speech Popping the Progress Myth: Biblical hope for a hypnotized province.