For the longest time, I couldn't look at it. I was in denial about climate change for longer
than I care to admit. Told myself the science was too complex, that the environmentalists
were dealing with it, that it wasn't my issue.
The amount of fossil fuel that we're combusting year on year is growing. We're going in completely
the wrong direction.
If you're talking about climate change, you're talking about sharing a common atmospheric
space. That common atmospheric space has already been filled up with emissions by a piddly
little population of the rich of the world. That is inequality. If that is not fixed,
we don't fix the problem of climate change.
Once I began to look I was struck by how wealth and power have shaped every aspect of our
response to this crisis and not all of us are equally responsible.
In the shadow of the Arctic Circle lies Alberta Canada's massive forest, undisturbed for ten
thousand years, until now. It's oil. A sticky, tar-like oil call bitumen.
What they would do first is they would log off all the timber. They bring dozers in and
they strip the overburden, is what it's called.
So they will strip all the subsoil, the topsoil and the clay off of this. Then they get down
into the bitumen. Sometimes it can be thirty or forty feet down or even further.
We're now hitting really extreme and difficult resources and have much higher environmental
footprints and much higher carbon emissions.
I've lived my whole life in Canada. I think of the tar sands as the hole at the centre
of my country - an undertaking so vast and violent that we have trouble looking at it.
It has changed us, this great machine that pretends to turn nature to its will.
Canada's government recently threw out decades of environmental law to remove all remaining
brakes on tar sands expansion.
Oil companies developing the oil sands are paying billions of dollars, I mean, in fact,
22 billion dollars a year are going into the government coffers from resource development
overall. It's benefiting every part of the country.
We make about four grand a week and that's too much money, man. Too much.
I work half the year and make about 150.
That's why we're here on a - what's today? Tuesday, Wednesday?
Yeah, Tuesday Wednesday.
Tuesday, Wednesday drinking at a bar, man. We shouldn't be doing that. We should be learning
things, keeping it real, but you make mistakes, right? You're young, you learn, you step.
It's good stuff.
It's the money that brings everybody here in the long run. It's not because I think
everybody loves what they do.
They're losing a lot. You look at the rate of divorce or separations when people move
out here to work. it's huge! You see it in people's faces because they're leaving their
families behind.
We said you can use the land to the depth of a plough. Anything beyond that is our responsibility.
And we used those words because when these people came over they wanted to own the land.
We don't believe that. That's why in this treaty there's no... there's no talk about
ownership.
We will always have an inherent right to the land. We will always be able to hunt, fish
and forage. The same as we did yesterday, the day before that and the day before that
and we will be able to do that tomorrow, they day after that and the day after that.
Just in the past little while, like, a month, there's just been one spill after the other.
Hi! My name is Crystal Lameman and I'm a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation. I got a report
that there was a spill out on the Primrose site.
I can't give you access.
This is the Beaver Lake Cree Nation traditional hunting territory and it's my constitutional right.
I respect it. You need to get hold of Mr Dick Brakele. he's the range activities officer
and the first nation's liaison officer for Canadian Forces at 4 Wing Cold Lake.
Wing Ops, Dick Brakele.
Hi Dick, this is, er, Crystal Lameman calling and I'm a member of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation.
Uh-huh.
And, I'm also sitting here with one of the leaders of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation. We
would greatly appreciate the opportunity to just go out and just be able to put our minds
at ease over what is happening out there currently.
Well, er, you do not have an access agreement. So, in reality there's nothing I can do for
you from that point of view.
How do we go about getting an access agreement?
I would direct you to speak to Alberta Environment Reg. AER?
I know who AER is.
Right.
OK, very good.
OK?
Thank you.
What can one person do?
One person can do a lot.
The environmental impacts of the development in the oil sands is absolutely barbaric. Put
two and two together and you feel physically, directly responsible for effecting somebody
else's health downstream.
I do not support shutting down the tar sands tomorrow, by any means.
What I support is a transition over to a renewable energy source.
The renewable energy industry would employ exactly the same workers that the oil sands
does. Using some of the money that is made up there we can build 20% wind, we can have
20% solar. All these things are going to benefit oil sands workers and our society.
As fossil fuel companies drive into new territory, their pipelines and export routes are connecting
communities along the way.
The metal pathways of dirty energy mapping a new organic web of resistance.
This latest wave of direct action is, in a way, the birth of a new territory.
Some call it "blockadia"
So, it's the first night being here in this pipe.
When you see the incredible transformation that happens, they become stronger, they stand
up. Isn't this the society that we want?
Recent years have been filled with surprise rebellions. These moments are rare and that
means they must leave more behind.
New laws, new systems, new deals.
I think climate change can be the catalyst we need - our common lens.
We are all... We are all!
Part of this movement... Part of this movement!
What if we realised that real disaster response means fighting inequality and building a just
economy? That everyone working for a healthy food system is already a climate warrior.
So too are people fighting for public transit in Brazil, housing and immigrant rights in
the United States. When there are movements battling austerity in Europe, extraction in
Australia, pollution in China and India, environmental crimes in Africa and the bad trade deals that
lock in all of these ills everywhere.
I believe the movement we need is already in the streets. In the courts. In the classrooms.
Even in the halls of power.
We just need to find each other. One way or another, everything is going to change and
for a brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.