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Greenpeace bloggers Mike Hudema and Sheila Muxlow posted “It’s official: Syncrude is a tar sands criminal”. They were prompted to write it by the conclusion of the trial regarding the deaths of thousands of ducks in a tailing pond. The purpose is to determine who is responsible. The post ends up being a rant about why Syncrude/government is evil. I agree with most of what was said, but the article wasn’t persuasive. I wasn’t any more certain in my stance after reading it. One reason for this was the strength and clarity of the evidence backing their arguments. Another was the relevance of the argument itself. You can probably guess who the first party to be blamed is.
The first argument they make is that Syncrude is directly responsible for the disaster.
“Trial testimony would reveal that on the day in question Syncrude did not have the necessary bird deterrent system in place, that they were deficient on the required staff, equipment, and vehicles, and the people employed to deploy the bird deterrent systems were not even accurately trained to do so.” (Hudema, and Muxlow)
The basis for this statement is trial testimony. That is a good place to get information, but there is no quotes or references. That one sentence is the entire argument. The reader has to trust that this is what was revealed as the truth. Many people will simply brush this off as an exaggeration especially when Greenpeace is a relatively extreme organization. A direct quote from the hearing would have prevented this. If what they published is really true, then their conclusion lost a lot of potential strength. Fortunately they maintained some of that potential by structuring the sentence in a matter of fact manner. In this case validity was the issue, but even with valid data issues can arise.
Next they propose that the provincial government is also indirectly responsible for the incident. They back up their proposition with funding statistics.
“Alberta's spending on environmental compliance, enforcement, and monitoring has decreased by $7 million -- 25 per cent -- since 2003, despite rapid tar sands expansion. Alberta now spends a combined total of just above $20 million on environmental compliance, enforcement, and monitoring, $5 million less than what they spent on a singlePR and branding campaign for the province and $14 million less than the subsidy they gave to the horse racing industry in 2009. The government instead leaves industry to police and patrol itself with only five enforcement officers to monitor the entire massive tar sands region.” (Hudema, and Muxlow)
There’s a lot of information here, but it isn’t relevant information. The authors deduce that the environmental aspects of the tar sands are underfunded, because the environment got funding cuts and now gets less of the provincial budget than public relations and horse racing. This logic isn’t sound. Just because a budget gets cut doesn’t mean all, if any, of the parts of that budget are underfunded. The sector could have been overfunded to begin with. It makes no difference how big that budget is relative to other sectors. What matters is how much the environmental aspect of the tar sands needs and what it’s getting. Neither of these facts are present. At least they attempted to provide evidence though.
The third party they consider at fault is the federal government for failing to enforce its laws.
“The federal government is also at fault. In the federal prosecutor's own arguments duringthe Syncrude trial, the existence of toxic tailings lakes should be seen as illegal under Canada's Migratory Birds Convention Act and yet the federal government sits by as Alberta approves more projects, and as tailing lakes expand -- last year alone expanding from 130 sq. kms. to 170 sq. kms.” (Hudema, and Muxlow)
If tailing lakes are technically illegal, then this is very good evidence that the federal government is guilty of not enforcing its laws. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure that they are illegal because no specific law is mentioned. Many people don’t know what the Migratory Birds Convention Act states is law, and they’re unlikely to find out on their own so the argument is again dependent on the reader trusting the authors. This could be avoided by elaborating on how the tailing ponds violate the act.
They also consider the fine to be an error by the federal government. This is informative, but not relevant to who the initial criminals were. It seems this post is missing a clear sense of purpose.
“Given the provincial and federal complacency in enabling tar sands operations, the reprimand from this guilty verdict stands to be little more than a judicial slap on the wrist. If Syncrude was to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law, its executives would do six months jail time and pay the maximum fine of $300,000 per duck killed for a total of over $480 million dollars.” (Hudema, and Muxlow)
I guess in terms of justice this is important, but in terms of who is at fault, it really has no implications. They have a few paragraphs about the fine. That’s probably enough material to warrant its own post. It would be simpler to ask who is the criminal and then determine whether there was justice than to do both at the same time.
Overall the post lacked the ability necessary to persuasively convey their opinion to the reader. The arguments lacked solid, relevant evidence and some of the arguments didn’t even further the purpose. We shouldn’t be too harsh though. Blog posts and news articles aren’t supposed to be essays.
"ducks2.jpg." http://switchboard.nrdc.org/. Web. 10 Nov 2010.
Hudema, Mike, and Sheila Muxlow. "It's official: Syncrude is a tar sands criminal. Greenpeace blogs. Greenpeace, 25 10 2010. Web. 10 Nov 2010.
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