Syndicated political columnist Gwynne Dyer isn’t lining up to protest with U.S. celebrities, but is still doing his bit to denounce the Alberta oilsands.
When asked before his speech at Red Deer College on Tuesday what public relations exercise could help Alberta ease international outrage over the oilsands, Dyer responded with “I’m not going to help you with that! Why should I?”
The Newfoundland native said “it’s dangerous, saying this in Alberta, but tarsands oil — ah, I mean oilsands oil — (remains) a big issue in other parts of the world.”
Alberta has been doing its best to sell the process as more green than is widely believed. But getting oil from sand involves strip mining that is more water, energy and emissions intensive than conventional oil production. And Dyer doesn’t believe the international community is buying it.
He said he would personally favour building the nuclear power plant Peace River residents are rejecting rather than creating lakes of “dirty water” that are a byproduct of the oilsands process.
“A lot of the problems with oilsands oil will not be solved by public relations,” predicted Dyer.
He believes a good case is being made for the U.S. not needing this fuel source in future, since car consumption is steadily dropping, and President Barack Obama is further tightening gasoline standards by 2016.
“Gasoline use in the U.S. has peaked already and will be declining,” he added — although usage is still increasing in countries such as China and India. But whether an international market will open for Alberta’s oilsands product “depends on how desperate people are for oil at any price,” said Dyer.
During his speech as part of RDC’s Perspectives series on Tuesday evening, Dyer talked about the unprecedented “Arab Spring” in which a series of Middle Eastern countries have used non-violent demonstrations to topple despotic regimes and become fledgling democracies.
Dyer said this is the opposite of the Islamist revolution Osama bin Laden had hoped to start by attacking the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. He contended that the Americans “played into bin Laden’s hands” when they started wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But even though the West — which was already unpopular in the Middle East for supporting various dictatorships in the region — further enraged Arabs by killing thousands of Muslims and torturing naked prisoners in the Abu Graib prison, Middle Eastern countries still didn’t embrace bin Laden’s revolution, said Dyer.
The reason is the “simple-minded” Islamist doctrine of “we are not living as Muslims should” did not go over with rational-thinking people in the Arab world, said Dyer. “They thought, come on, you can’t be serious. You think by not trimming my beard, God will be on our side, and we will win?”
While Islamists “don’t give a fig about the economy,” most Middle Eastern people do, said Dyer. They are seeking democracy, a secular state, ruled by law, and they want freedom of speech, and improvements to the economy.
He predicted terrorism from this region will go into a gradual decline.
While he couldn’t predict how democratic the various countries will end up, non-violent protests have already overturned governments and prompted elections in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, among others, while “Syria still hangs in the balance.”
Dyer believes Israel should work on facilitating friendships with these new Muslim democracies. But to do this, Israel must first build bridges with Palestinians, who want the return of territories seized by Israel in 1948.
He doesn’t think this bridge-building will happen, mostly because of Israel’s multi-party coalition system of government. At least a few political parties will always threaten to pull out of the coalition if anyone suggests returning the Gaza Strip and West Bank to the Palestinians, said Dyer.
He believes this is why the peace process has effectively been dead for the past decade.
Dyer predicted that Israel will become more isolated in the midst of the new Arab democracies, “which are not as much under the American thumb.”
But he believes Palestinians have a hope of gaining more control as part of a “one-state Israel.” Because Palestinians have a higher birthrate than Jews, they can eventually ask, “can we have the vote now please?”
“They can turn this into a situation where they are non-violently demanding their civil rights.”
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com
— copyright Red Deer Advocate