Big Oil executives are not used to not getting their way. How else can we explain the recent bizarre, whining outburst from Enbridge’s CEO Patrick Daniel? Lamenting his company’s spate of disastrous press – the low point was getting compared to “Keystone Kops” by U.S. investigators reporting on Enbridge’s handling of their 2010 spill in Michigan – Daniel vented his spleen to an Alberta radio host earlier this month:

Joe Oliver, Minister of Natural Resources
Photo courtesy of Premier of Alberta, Flickr

Patrick Daniel,
CEO of Enbridge
Graham Davis, Flickr

“Everything that we say sounds defensive and self-interested, and on the other side, everything they say … is really taken as gospel – and it isn’t… I think we’re facing a very strong, almost revolutionary movement to try to get off oil worldwide, and it creates a lot of passion and drive in those revolutionaries that are trying to change the environment in which we work.”
In this inelegant complaint, Pat Daniel is, paradoxically, both wildly wrong and quite correct.

On the one hand, this is through the looking glass stuff, charging essentially that his embattled company can’t get a fair hearing in the press. To counter this structural injustice, Enbridge spent hundreds of thousands on full-page ads in a number of major Canadian newspapers, supplementing their usual fold-out, glossy paid spreads in magazines like The Walrus and Macleans, not to mention their wall-to-wall ads during the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, etc.

It’s also hilariously misplaced for Daniel to blame “revolutionaries” for his company’s predicament. Like the Harper government, which has variously labeled pipeline critics as “radicals,” “extremists” and “foreign-backed,” it’s an attempt to use an exotic word to frame all opponents of the pipeline project as extremists. This name-calling is supposed to make Big Oil critics look like a fringe bunch.

But of course you don’t need to be a “radical” or a “revolutionary” to oppose Enbridge and other similar bitumen-exporting mega-projects. You just need a modicum of common sense. People in B.C. understand very easily the danger posed by running twin pipelines across hundreds of fish-bearing waterways and sensitive ecosystems and then exporting toxic bitumen through one of the most dangerous water channels in North America. And of course that’s why opponents of Enbridge are not the fringe in this province, but the vast majority.

Patrick Daniel’s problem is not Bolsheviks, but British Columbians. Daniel’s real problem is that farmers, fishers, First Nations and most everyone else who lives along the pipeline route, as well as most people throughout B.C., can see that his proposed pipeline would be disastrous.

I think this odd outburst by Enbridge’s CEO is an encouraging measure of just how far the debate on the issue of this pipeline has shifted in little more than half a year. Remember, it was just last winter that saw the Conservatives’ Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver charging opponents of Enbridge’s project as being foreign-backed “radicals” and “extremists” – enemies of the state. That kind of over-heated rhetoric turned out to be over-reach by the Harper government, a lessen Pat Daniel seems to have failed to absorb.

Pat Daniel was not completely wrong, however. Although “revolutionaries” have very little to do with why he’s losing the debate over his pipeline, he is right to fear a revolution – an energy revolution.

Big Oil companies, year after year, continue to make the largest profits in human history at the expense of nature and climate stability. There are many signs – for instance, record melts for Greenland and the Arctic ice sheet this year – that point towards the ominous conclusion that climate change is not only already underway, but that it is exceeding the predictions of most scientific models.

The logical, prudent and revolutionary task of our generation is to transform the world’s energy infrastructure, to get off of fossil fuel energy – such as oil, gas and coal – as soon as possible. A first step in this direction would be to end all subsidies to oil, gas and coal, and to massively invest public money into research and development of alternative energy. Another important step would be to dramatically decrease the inequality of wealth, which results in so much wanton consumption and waste.

Of course, the Harper government is going in precisely the opposite direction from where we need to be headed. They are racing backwards to the days of corporate robber barons unchecked by government regulation and environmental protections. The fact that Enbridge’s boss is unhappy is a good sign, but none of us should be really happy until his friend in Ottawa is removed from power. Too much is at stake. We can’t afford to live in a world run by the likes of Patrick Daniel and Stephen Harper.

So, join the Revolution. Together we’ll end the Enbridge pipeline, transform our energy infrastructure and create a more egalitarian and just society.