Worst-Case Scenario for Oil Sands Industry Has Come to Life, Leaked Document Shows

[Judi Lynn]

Published on Friday, December 6, 2013 by Inside Climate News

Worst-Case Scenario for Oil Sands Industry Has Come to Life, Leaked Document Shows

Industry consultants said anti-tar sands push could become 'the most significant environmental campaign of the decade' if activists were left unopposed.

by Katherine Bagley

As environmentalists began ratcheting up pressure against Canada's tar sands three years ago, one of the world's biggest strategic consulting firms was tapped to help the North American oil industry figure out how to handle the mounting activism. The resulting document, published online by WikiLeaks, offers another window into how oil and gas companies have been scrambling to deal with unrelenting opposition to their growth plans.

The document identifies nearly two-dozen environmental organizations leading the anti-oil sands movement and puts them into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists—with how-to's for managing each. It also reveals that the worst-case scenario presented to industry about the movement's growing influence seems to have come to life.

The December 2010 presentation by Strategic Forecasting, or Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Texas, mostly advised oil sands companies to ignore or limit reaction to the then-burgeoning tar sands opposition movement because "activists lack influence in politics." But there was a buried warning for industry under one scenario: Letting the movement grow unopposed may bring about "the most significant environmental campaign of the decade."

"This worst-case scenario is exactly what has happened," partly because opposition to tar sands development has expanded beyond nonprofit groups to include individual activists concerned about climate change, said Mark Floegel, a senior investigator for Greenpeace. "The more people in America see Superstorm Sandys or tornadoes in Chicago, the more they are waking up and joining the fight."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/12/06-3

[kristopher]

1. Thank you and Common Dreams for this.

It's great reference material that gives key insight into how the manipulation of public opinion is managed. The strategy and tactics are not limited to the fossil fuel industry.

[cantbeserious]

2. Kick And Recommend

eom

[AverageJoe90]

3. I'm a realist.....and TBH, *we* present the biggest threat of all to Big Fossil & their agenda.

While everyone else has their place, we realists....we back up our assertions with real hard science & other forms of evidence more than any of the four other groups. And guess what? We don't blame every single, individual, storm on climate change nor do we screech about fantastical doomsday scenarios involving total human extinction or "runaway" warming, etc. No, ma'am, we do not(or at least, we try not to!).

What we *do* do is, we inform. We point to what we *can* see; long-term trends that do suggest more hurricanes, more blizzards, heat waves(though more 1980 & 2011 in Texas than 2012, though, the latter of which was largely a statistical aberration), and continually decreasing ice on the Poles.....as well as the documented effects of oil spills in Alberta, the Plains states, and even in Mayflower, Ark.....and furthermore, what should & can be done about it; amongst many other things. And this is what is waking the common American up more than anything.

They don't like any of the four groups they put us in, but they are *dead* scared of us realists, as well as the idealists, particularly those who align with us. And they should be, because we're all turning the tide slowly but surely.

And with the realists & idealists leading the pack, we WILL succeed.

[idwiyo]

4. k&r

[Bill USA]

5. GREAT POST. This needs to be mentioned all across the web - places where the apathetic and

intellectually torpid can be reached and might be awakened to some of what's going on.


recommended.

[marmar]

6. k/r