How big oil, Canada thwarted US carbon standards

The Tyee:

Emails show how a Washington lobbyist enlisted Canadian officials to beat back climate regulation.

[Editor's note: This story is a joint investigation between The Tyee and Salon, and appears on both sites.]

When President Barack Obama decided in early November to delay a decision on TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline until after the next election, America's environmental movement celebrated one of its biggest victories in recent memory. And no doubt the news came as a blow to Alberta's tar sands industry, and to Canada's oft-stated dream of becoming the next global energy superpower.

But behind activists' jubilation lurked a somber reality, an untold story with much wider implications. The broader fight to reform Alberta's tar sands, the one which actually stood a chance of breaking America's addiction to the continent's most polluting road fuel, has been quietly abandoned over the past several years. For that we can thank the planet's richest oil companies and their Canadian government allies, who've together waged a stealthy war against President Obama's climate change ambitions.

Their battle-plan is revealed in more 300 pages of personal emails obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the Alberta government. The story in the emails, reported for the first time in Salon and The Tyee, traces a year in the relationship of Michael Whatley, a GOP-connected oil industry lobbyist and his friend, Gary Mar, a smooth-talking and ambitious diplomat at the Canadian embassy in the Washington, DC.

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