What follows are my comments to
the Joint
Review Panel (JRP) for the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, on Jan 18
2013.
Intro
Good morning, panel
members, and thank you very much for hearing me today. My name is Kai Chan.
I am an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in the Institute for Resources, Environment
and Sustainability at UBC.
I want to clearly distinguish my comments as those based on my values and those
based on my science. So, I first speak to you as an impassioned BC resident, a
father of two little girls, and a lover of this coast and province. I came to
BC for a year when I was 7 years old, and the place got under my skin then.
These spectacular coastal systems—human communities included—are a part of me.
Eight years ago, this deep connection to this place lured me back and has kept
me here since.
Citizen
 |
Figure 1. Kai Chan (the author) in
front of a ferry terminal on
the BC coast.
the BC coast.
I
am not a knee-jerk environmentalist. I believe in a sustainable future, in
which my children and my children’s children, and so on, can all live in a
world as beautiful and giving as ours, undiminished by our actions. But I know
that such a future includes resource extraction, so I accept—even welcome—such
extraction and transport under some conditions in some places. For me, the
Northern Gateway Pipeline is not one of those cases.
As a citizen, it seems that at its simplest, we are asked to
contemplate the economic benefits of the pipeline against the risks that it
poses to forests, watersheds, the coasts, and the myriad human activities and
benefits that depend upon those.
Of course I care about the economic well-being of the province, and of
the country. Of course, I’m affected by the economic signals that politicians
pay so much attention to. We’re deeply attuned to such information, which is so
measurable, so constant, so here & now. But I know that in the long-term,
even the most optimistic promises of economic benefits can yield only tiny
boosts to my well-being, or that of BC residents in general. I will return to
this point.
On the other hand, I’m deeply afraid of the very realistic scenario of
a large oil spill on this coast. Following Enbridge’s own numbers, I accept as
a reasonable start Gerald Graham’s estimates
of 8.7 – 14.1% risk of the one or more tanker spills of 31,500 barrels over a
50-year period (a spill in the range of the Exxon Valdez).
This is a very sizable risk of a tremendous harm to birds, at-risk
(federally listed) sea otters, other marine mammals, fish, and shellfish—and to
the thousands of British Columbians who depend on these animals and ecosystems
for their livelihoods. Not to mention the millions of us who have this wild
living coast as a part of us, whose identities are intricately intertwined with
this coast. At the larger pipeline size, with a risk of 14%, that’s effectively
the same risk as in Russian Roulette. That’s loading a six-shooter with a
bullet, spinning the chamber, and holding it to your head. I don’t play those
games, and I’m here to ask you not to let others play them with our coast, and
with our children’s and grand children’s coast.
Scientist
As a scientist, I’m trained in the natural sciences, policy sciences,
and also in ethics. I did my PhD at Princeton
University in ecology
and evolutionary biology,
and also received a certificate in public
policy. I also have training
in conservation biology
and ecological economics, as a postdoctoral fellow from Stanford
University. My research and
training directly pertains to the environmental impacts of human activities,
and the corresponding consequences for people and the things that people want,
need, and cherish.
In this capacity, I wish to make three specific comments, and one multi-faceted
one.
First, I already referred to the Exxon Valdez
spill, which caused billions of dollars of damages to the Alaskan coast in
1989. It’s crucial to note that marine spills associated with this pipeline
project could be far more damaging yet. This is a result of what is being
shipped. In the case of the Valdez, it was crude oil. In the case of the
current pipeline, it is diluted bitumen—with a much higher tar content (hence
the term ‘tar sands’), and including a solvent (most commonly naptha—which must
also be shipped back from Asia into Kitimat, so that it can serve as a solvent
for the next shipment of bitumen). These differences of diluted bitumen make it
likely to be both more toxic, and much more difficult to contain, than crude
oil (click here
to read about the first major spill of diluted bitumen, in the Kalamazoo River).
 |
| Figure 2. Sea otter with pup. |
Second, I mentioned sea otters. For the past four years, I have been
leading a major multi-collaborator NSERC grant investigating
sea otters and their interactions with other marine organisms. The story of the
return of sea otters to the west coast of Vancouver Island is an inspiring one
(e.g., see here). These charismatic animals captivate tourists, and now that sea otter
populations have expanded into Clayoquot Sound, there’s a real possibility of
otters becoming a true BC icon and a driver of eco-tourism and economic
development on the BC coast, just as they are in California.
It’s critical to note that sea otters—just like the marbled murrelet
and the short-tailed albatross—are seriously threatened by oil spills. These
(listed) threatened species have globally significant populations in BC, and
the single greatest listed threat is oil spills (e.g., for otters).
The federal sea otter recovery team has noted that a single large oil spill
could kill so many sea otters as to tip the balance for this species, and
potentially lead to its extinction. A spill would likely not kill all otters,
but it could make them rare enough, and so negatively impact their condition
(by killing their prey and forcing them to eat highly contaminated shellfish)
that it pushes them over the brink of no return.
Such a loss would likely reverberate around the world. More than 18
million people watched the YouTube video of sea otters holding hands at the
Vancouver Aquarium. Millions would likely see pictures of oil-drenched and oil-drowned
otters, potentially damaging BC’s brand as a ‘super natural’ vacation
destination.
 |
| Figure 3. An image courtesy of
Tourism British Columbia, reflecting our Super, Natural province. If tankers and associated spills undermine this $13.4 billion industry, it could wash out the benefits of the pipeline. |
Third, I study the cumulative impacts and risks of various human
activities on marine ecosystems and the benefits they provide people, so I know
that the cumulative risks associated with this project alone are considerable.
Not only are there the large spills I’ve focused on thus far, there are the
smaller leaks, the tanker traffic and its associated noise pollution and ship
strikes. With such drastically expanded vessel traffic on the coast, there is a
real possibility that whale populations could avoid whole stretches of the
coast. Whales are currently one of the biggest drivers of wildlife viewing in
BC, an important contributor to the tourism sector.
-->
And
tourism is a $13.4 billion industry (by
2010 numbers), generating an estimated 127,400 jobs—so even a modest dint in
tourism associated with the pipeline could undo any gains from the pipeline.
As members of this Joint Review Panel, you three are effectively asked
to weigh whether the economic gains outweigh the social and environmental risks
and impacts. On this issue of benefits and costs, I have three further
comments. (I leave it to others, such as Robyn
Allan and Rashid
Sumaila to question the merits of the economic-benefit calculations.)
 |
Figure 1. A friend from the Kyuquot
First Nation,
holding kelp--a traditional resource and foundation
for marine ecosystems. © Kai Chan
holding kelp--a traditional resource and foundation
for marine ecosystems. © Kai Chan
(A) Key purported benefits of the pipeline
are to ensure that Canadian oilsand producers get a fair price for their oil,
citing a large price discount of some $30/barrel that has been the norm in
recent years, a putative cumulative loss of billions of dollars (recently, from the Financial Post). Such a forced price discount due to
oversupply would generally be considered a glut and would generally be blamed
on resource mismanagement on the part of the relevant industry and their
overseeing regulators. (Thanks to Hadi Dowlatabadi for this
point.) One might conclude therefore that the federal government and oilsand
industry have effectively fettered this current decision through this
mismanagement.
In ethics, any benefits that stem from such wrongdoing must be heavily
discounted when considering the comparison of benefits and costs of a given
decision. I am not a legal scholar, so I leave to you the question of how much
‘discounting’ should occur in the context of your own deliberations for the
JRP.
(B) A key consideration in the consideration of benefits and costs is
the different nature of each. In a benefit-cost analysis, both economic
benefits and costs are routinely aggregated each into a single number. This
cannot be done here for three reasons.
i.
As a
researcher of environmental values in BC, I know that many
of the pertinent costs are non-material, in the sense that they cannot be
appropriately expressed in dollar terms (like species extinction and losses of
cultural identity associated with losses of traditional resources). Although
they are intangible, such risks and impacts can be crippling to human
well-being.
ii.
Because
many of the benefits accrue to wealthy shareholders and oil executives, whereas
the costs accrue to land-based, resource-dependent, cash-poor people, this
becomes a social justice issue. This inequitable distribution is intrinsically
problematic in any consideration of whether the benefits exceed the costs.
 |
| Figure 5. An example of the
levelling-off of well-being metrics with per-capita income. From GapMinder (click here). |
iii.
Furthermore,
economic gains to already wealthy people appear to yield minimal or
undetectable gains to their well-being—based on a litany of well-designed
scientific studies, measured by a broad suite of subjective and objective
metrics. On the other hand, sizeable, even non-material losses to poor people
can be devastating. Accordingly, understanding this issue of costs and benefits
in terms of well-being (which I presume to be appropriate given the wording of
“benefits to Canadians”), the benefits should be greatly discounted in relation
to the costs.
(C) Whenever considering the appropriateness
of a project that entails net costs to some parties and net benefits to others,
the issue of compensation is central. If we can’t justify imposing large
livelihood impacts on the poor to achieve (apparently) large economic gains to
the wealthy, there must be fair compensation. One of the first rules of fair
compensation is that the compensation given must have been negotiated with the
affected parties, and deemed acceptable. And yet, you have heard from several
speakers that no money could
compensate for the kinds of risks to First Nation and coastal community
identities and ways of life that are being imposed (e.g., from Kyle Clifton of
the Gitga’at, whose perspective is explained here).
Economics is sometimes understood as teaching us that such a hardline position
is irrational. Of course that claim is debunked by the literatures I alluded to
earlier, which effectively show that—beyond the poverty line—money can’t buy
lasting happiness.
This isn’t to say that appropriate
compensation could not be found. But for now, it is nowhere in sight.
Close
To close, as a citizen I ask you
to deeply ponder the heart-felt comments of myself and thousands of fellow
citizens who have spoken of their love for this coast and their horror at the
risks at hand.
As a scientist, I ask you to
remember the countervailing factors that would suggest a need to heavily
discount the benefits of the proposed pipeline and to take extremely seriously
the risks and costs. It’s hard for me to imagine, from where I sit, how it
could be reasonably argued that the benefits to Canadians outweigh these costs,
but I leave that momentous decision to you.
Thank you.
