Eco-protesters seem oblivious to coal exports

Trains full of the dirtiest fuel regularly head to port in B.C.

The next time someone calls our oil dirty, offer him (or her) a single four-letter word.

No, it isn’t followed by “off.”

It’s coal. That’s the truly dirty fuel and we transport it by the open-boxcar trainload to the West Coast. From there, it’s shipped to China by cargo ship through B.C. ports. The irony is obvious, even if the coal isn’t.

We remain oblivious to its presence because as the loaded trains pass through our province, we don’t see the cargo, just the conveyance. Oil is obvious, being transported in tanker cars with their distinctive circular shape.

It took a trip to the coast of B.C. and back to make me aware of how much coal we ship to China. (I note they refuse our canola and only recently lifted their ban on Canadian pork. To make matters worse, China is holding two Canadians hostage in prison, mainly because we have a federal government that respects and honours the rule of law.)

I digress. Yet all of this is intertwined, whether it is obvious on the surface. Let me put it this way: a bully is a threat whether it’s a country or a schoolboy.

Dirty fuel and dirty politics, a perfect fit for emotional sabotage.

We really don’t think about coal these days. We have no coal-fired furnaces and one has to be of an age to remember the distinct, acrid smell of a coal fire.

It remains a sight every environmental activist should see — maybe every Canadian should contemplate — a line of open rail cars as far as the eye could focus, all filled with thermal coal headed to make electricity for an expanding, fuel-hungry China.

There’s a temptation to compare coal and oil on a “which is dirtier?” basis. That’s a false equivalency, an apple versus orange comparison. But, on a “per energy produced basis,” as chemical engineering PHD candidate Steven Metz points out, “oil is cleaner.”

If protesters want to march against “dirty” fuel, let them attack the source of almost 40 per cent of the pollution affecting the world’s climate — coal.

This doesn’t let us oil-rich Albertans off the hook of addressing the need to transition away from fossil fuels, but anything cleaner than oil will take time to develop and produce. If there is one rule that drives change, it’s the need to appreciate the time-lapse.

Solar or wind power appear to be the leaders in the race to produce “cleaner” fuels, but the sad fact is that the “cleanest” source of fuel is nuclear.

Drop that into a conversation and watch the heated rhetoric drown out any serious consideration.

What we are shipping to China is instant pollution. Canada exports more than two million tonnes of coal to China each year. In the first half of this year, those exports were up by 53.7 per cent from the same period in 2018. Even those staggering numbers aren’t extraordinary. We’re seventh on the list of 15 countries that exported the highest dollar value. No. 1 was Australia with almost 38 per cent of total coal exports; No. 15, the Czech Republic with 0.2 per cent. Canada’s contribution is less than five per cent of the world’s total.

And from where does the coal get shipped? Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, the largest single exporter of coal in North America.

So much for the “pristine” nature of British Columbia.

Had I not witnessed for myself the trainload of coal passing by as we waited on a siding, I might not have noticed when the former environment minister said, “We’re phasing out coal.” Without that sight, I would not have heard Prime Minister Justin Trudeau say during the French-language debate (in the English translation) Canada was “ending coal energy production.”

Nice words. Now what? Alberta’s oilsands present an easy target. We’re big, we’re bold and you can march and wave your signs in comfort in Calgary or Edmonton without mussing your hair. You can get here a lot easier than hauling your protest signs to China; safer than in Saudi Arabi; more pleasant than Venezuela. We get this. We also get the need to transition from fossil fuels.

But first, we need the safest way to transport our oil to market. That would be a pipeline. Catherine Ford is a regular columnist for the Calgary Herald.