The Big Stall: How big oil and think tanks are blocking action on climate change in Canada

by Donald Gutstein

In fall 2015, the newly elected Trudeau government endorsed the Paris Agreement and promised to tackle global warming. In 2016, it released a major report which set out a national energy strategy embracing clean growth, technological innovation and carbon pricing. Rather than putting in place tough measures to achieve the Paris targets, however, the government reframed global warming as a market opportunity for Canada's clean technology sector.

The Big Stall traces the origins of the government's climate change plan back to the energy sector itself — in particular Big Oil. It shows how, in the last fifteen years, Big Oil has infiltrated provincial and federal governments, academia, media and the non-profit sector to sway government and public opinion on the realities of climate change and what needs to be done about it.

Working both behind the scenes and in high-profile networks, Canada's energy companies moved the debate away from discussion of the measures required to create a zero-carbon world and towards market-based solutions that will cut carbon dioxide emissions — but not enough to prevent severe climate impacts. This is how Big Oil and think tanks unraveled the Kyoto Protocol, and how Rachel Notley came to deliver the Business Council of Canada's energy plan. Donald Gutstein explains how and why the door has been left wide open for oil companies to determine their own futures in Canada, and to go on drilling new wells, building new oil sands plants and constructing new pipelines.

This book offers the background information readers need to challenge politicians claiming they are taking meaningful action on global warming.

Genres: Nonfiction, Canada, Politics

307 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 2, 2018

Reviews

[rabble.ca]

Review by Yutaka Dirks:

The world's biggest oil companies knew for years that climate change was real, but they did all they could to derail government action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Donald Gutstein's latest book, The Big Stall: How Big Oil and Think Tanks are Blocking Action on Climate Change in Canada is a deep dive into the strategies that Canadian oil companies and their friends have implemented to prevent political action to slow and reverse catastrophic climate change.

The author, a former communications professor and co-director of the media-monitoring project NewsWatch Canada at Simon Fraser University, follows the individuals and organizations that have shaped Canada's energy and environmental policy over the last four decades.

Gutstein doesn't neglect the politicians (he devotes a chapter to Alberta NDP leader and just-defeated Premier Rachel Notley), but he spends more time on the players who fly slightly under the public radar or whose impact is felt long after they've fallen from view. People like Maurice Strong, appointed the first head of Petro-Canada by Pierre Trudeau and the secretary-general of the UN Conference on the Human Environment, who said in his opening speech that "There is no fundamental conflict between development and the environment."

Keep reading: http://rabble.ca/books/reviews/2019/0...

[Glenyss · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was an eye opener for me and helped me understand why so little real climate progress has been made in Canada in the past 30 years.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

If they were "Small Oil" Gutstein would not have bothered, but now that they are big we have a problem. And Gutstein has heard that "Big Oil" is avoiding the taxes that are paying his sinecure, now it's personal.

[Leif · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seek out your best critics. Gutstein is thorough but not eloquent, and despite my interest I found some of these chapters a chore. Nevertheless, a provocation grounded in analyses of more than just headline news, and that's something.

[Bart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fossil fuel interests and their allied governments attend international climate conferences singing of a glorious future of clean growth – but behind the scenes they work to ensure that no binding commitments are made to reduce carbon emissions. According to Donald Gutstein’s new book The Big Stall, the corporate takeover of international climate negotiations goes back nearly 30 years. Full review at:
https://anoutsidechance.com/2018/12/1...