The Tar Sands Diplomat
The Tar Sands Diplomat

Author: Keith Halliday

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2016-04-05

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1491792655

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The Russians have a plan to kill Canadian oil exports. And Canada has a diplomat clueless enough to stop them. Macgregor is on a dream posting to Brussels, until a red-haired Russian prostitute dramatically murders the Canadian Missions star diplomat and plunges Macgregor into a world of spooks, Russian oligarchs and eco-hacktivists. After Ottawa sends the G-7s least competent security team to Brussels to investigate, Macgregor realizes thatfor the first time in his careerhe actually has to do something. Fortunately he has something no one else does: Ottawas biggest collection of spy novels. Unable to penetrate the digital defenses of the opposition, or even operate his own Blackberry, Macgregor falls back on spy-novel classics: disguises, midnight burglaries and hidden microphones. To his surprise, they lead him towards the truth. Unfortunately for Macgregor, they also lead him towards a well-connected Canadian oil company and the Prime Ministers Office back in Ottawa.

Line in the Tar Sands
Line in the Tar Sands

Author: Joshua Kahn

Publisher: PM Press

Published: 2014-10-15

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1629630454

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Tar sands “development” comes with an enormous environmental and human cost. In the tar sands of Alberta, the oil industry is using vast quantities of water and natural gas to produce synthetic crude oil, creating drastically high levels of greenhouse gas emissions and air and water pollution. But tar sands opponents—fighting a powerful international industry—are likened to terrorists, government environmental scientists are muzzled, and public hearings are concealed and rushed. Yet, despite the formidable political and economic power behind the tar sands, many opponents are actively building international networks of resistance, challenging pipeline plans while resisting threats to Indigenous sovereignty and democratic participation. Including leading voices involved in the struggle against the tar sands, A Line in the Tar Sands offers a critical analysis of the impact of the tar sands and the challenges opponents face in their efforts to organize effective resistance. Contributors include: Greg Albo, Sâkihitowin Awâsis, Toban Black, Rae Breaux, Jeremy Brecher, Linda Capato, Jesse Cardinal, Angela V. Carter, Emily Coats, Stephen D’Arcy, Yves Engler, Cherri Foytlin, Sonia Grant, Harjap Grewal, Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Naomi Klein, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Winona LaDuke, Crystal Lameman, Christine Leclerc, Kerry Lemon, Matt Leonard, Martin Lukacs, Tyler McCreary, Bill McKibben, Yudith Nieto, Joshua Kahn Russell, Macdonald Stainsby, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Brian Tokar, Dave Vasey, Harsha Walia, Tony Weis, Rex Weyler, Will Wooten, Jess Worth, and Lilian Yap. The editors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to frontline grassroots environmental justice groups and campaigns.

Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats
Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats

Author: Patrice Dutil

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2023-06-15

Total Pages: 409

ISBN-13: 0774868589

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Foreign policy is a tricky business. Typically, its challenges and proposed solutions are perceived as mismatched unless a leader can amass enough support for an idea to create a consensus. Because the prime ministers are typically the ones supporting a compromise, Canadian foreign policy can be analyzed through the actions of these leaders. Statesmen, Strategists, and Diplomats explores how prime ministers – from Sir John A. MacDonald to Justin Trudeau – have shaped foreign policy. This innovative focus is destined to trigger a new appreciation for the formidable personal attention and acuity involved in a successful approach to external affairs.

When Green Growth Is Not Enough
When Green Growth Is Not Enough

Author: Anders Hayden

Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published: 2014-11-01

Total Pages: 627

ISBN-13: 0773596348

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Is the pursuit of endless economic growth compatible with the deep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions required to avoid the worst extremes of climate change? In When Green Growth Is Not Enough, Anders Hayden analyzes the political battle between three competing approaches to this question and how it has played out in Canada and Britain. Defenders of the "business-as-usual" approach reject climate action as too costly and in conflict with economic growth, while downplaying the severity of climate change. Supporters of ecological modernization, or "green growth," on the other hand, aim to use technology and efficiency to delink economic expansion from emissions and find business opportunities through environmental action. While mainstream debate has focused on these two pro-growth models, Hayden pays particular attention to the struggles and limited inroads of a third, more radical perspective: the idea of sufficiency, which challenges the continued growth of production and consumption in the already-affluent global North and asks, how much is enough? Drawing on interviews, participation in climate-related events, and analysis of key documents, Hayden shows the role these paradigms have played in Britain, one of the world’s leaders in climate reform, and in Canada, a nation at the bottom of international climate change rankings. Rich in detail, When Green Growth Is Not Enough is a lively account of the theory and real-world politics of climate action.

The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements
The Routledge Handbook of Environmental Movements

Author: Maria Grasso

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-01-31

Total Pages: 788

ISBN-13: 1000517942

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This handbook provides readers with up-to-date knowledge on environmental movements and activism and is a reference point for international work in the field. It offers an assessment of environmental movements in different regions of the world, macrostructural conditions and processes underlying their mobilization, the microstructural and social-psychological dimensions of environmental movements and activism, and current trends, as well as prospects for environmental movements and social change. The handbook provides critical reviews and appraisals of the current state of the art and future development of conceptual and theoretical approaches as well as empirical knowledge and understanding of environmental movements and activism. It encourages dialogue across the disciplinary barriers between social movement studies and other perspectives and reflects upon the causes and consequences of citizens’ participation in environmental movements and activities. The volume brings historical studies of environmentalism, sociological analyses of the social composition of participants in and sympathizers of environmental movements, investigations by political scientists on the conditions and processes underlying environmental movements and activism, and other disciplinary inquiries together, while keeping a clear focus within social movement theory and research as the main lines of inquiry. The handbook is an essential guide and reference point not only for researchers but also for undergraduate and graduate teaching and for policymakers and activists.

Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada
Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada

Author: Meenal Shrivastava

Publisher: Athabasca University Press

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 1771990295

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In Democracy in Alberta: The Theory and Practice of a Quasi-Party System, published in 1953, C. B. Macpherson explored the nature of democracy in a province that was dominated by a single class of producers. At the time, Macpherson was talking about Alberta farmers, but today the province can still be seen as a one-industry economy—the 1947 discovery of oil in Leduc having inaugurated a new era. For all practical purposes, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta also remains a one-party state. Not only has there been little opposition to a government that has been in power for over forty years, but Alberta ranks behind other provinces in terms of voter turnout, while also boasting some of the lowest scores on a variety of social welfare indicators. The contributors to Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy critically assess the political peculiarities of Alberta and the impact of the government’s relationship to the oil industry on the lives of the province’s most vulnerable citizens. They also examine the public policy environment and the entrenchment of neoliberal political ideology in the province. In probing the relationship between oil dependency and democracy in the context of an industrialized nation, Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy offers a crucial test of the “oil inhibits democracy” thesis that has hitherto been advanced in relation to oil-producing countries in the Global South. If reliance on oil production appears to undermine democratic participation and governance in Alberta, then what does the Alberta case suggest for the future of democracy in industrialized nations such as the United States and Australia, which are now in the process of exploiting their own substantial shale oil reserves? The environmental consequences of oil production have, for example, been the subject of much attention. Little is likely to change, however, if citizens of oil-rich countries cannot effectively intervene to influence government policy.

Tar Wars
Tar Wars

Author: Geo Takach

Publisher: University of Alberta

Published: 2017-01-31

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1772121401

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Tar Wars offers a critical, inside look at how leading image-makers negotiate the escalating tensions between the need for continuous economic growth mandated by a globalized economic system and its unsustainable environmental costs. As representations of a place and its identity assume paramount importance in a globalized, visual, and increasingly ecologically conscious society, a rising, international battle unfolds over Alberta's bituminous sands, pitting independent documentary filmmakers against professional communicators employed by the oil industry and government. Tar Wars will engage scholars and students in communications, film, environmental studies, social psychology, and petrocultures. It also reaches out to decision-makers, activists, and those who wish to explore the intersections of energy, environment, culture, politics, economy, media, and power in the world today.