Canada Tar-Sands Image Set for Overhaul With New Premier – Bloomberg
Sept 30, 2014
Canada’s reputation as climate bad-boy was invented in Manhattan in 2008.
Months before TransCanada Corp. (TRP) applied for a permit for Keystone XL and the pipeline battles that followed, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund convened a gathering of environmental groups to discuss a strategy for taking down Canada’s tar-sands industry. The vast deposits of bitumen in northern Alberta were not necessarily seen in the league of Chinese coal as a carbon offender. But bad enough, and uniquely vulnerable to pressure because of Canada’s isolation and dependence on a single market, said two people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be identified because the meeting was private.
“They became the fossil-fuel equivalent of the Amazon and an icon for the climate fight,” said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an environmental group that seeks to reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.
