Joining Up and Scaling Up: Analyzing Resistance to Canada’s “Dirty Oil”

Abstract

Canada's energy superpower ambitions depend on the continuation and expansion of Alberta's tar sands industry, but this industry comes at a cost of extensive environmental, political and economic impacts. While dissent is difficult in the new Canadian petrostate, a growing civil society movement is resisting tar sands production, its ecological and social implications, and the petro-capitalist political culture legitimating the industry. This chapter analyzes the discursive and action-oriented strategies of four kinds of social movement organizations leading the critique and opposition of the tar sands: Aboriginal, environmental, religious, and labour organizations. While these often local or provincially oriented organizations make valuable contributions to the tar sands debate, we argue the movement began to have political impact when broader cross-organizational coalitions were formed among unlikely allies and when the movement crossed local and provincial boundaries to the national and international level. One important success of this "joining up" and "scaling up" strategy was the creation of critical consensus around future oilsands developments and the seeds of a post-carbon development approach. Dominant political and industry actors were largely able to overlook the movement until a diverse and influential set of social movement actors began collaborating and shifting these local struggles transnationally. Yet while the anti-oilsands movement triggered a reaction by political elites, it was primarily rhetorical and reactionary - translating the movement into real social, environmental and political change remains a challenge.