Creating Doubt 101

I was wondering how long it would take the National Post to wade into the fray on the status and future of Alberta’s ailing grizzly population. On Sunday, the Post, Canada’s national (neo) conservative journal of record did not disappoint, dishing up a manly helping of misinformation and decontextualization that would make Nick Naylor proud. Because after all, “No one knows for certain.”

Not surprisingly, the Post’s lengthy opinion piece on the grizzly issue was brilliantly crafted by Kevin Libin, the founding editor-in-chief of the Calgary-based Western Standard, a neoconservative/libertarian e-rag that unfortunately has a strong following in Alberta. I say brilliantly because Libin’s column, already making the rounds on the Internet, is an excellent example of how neoconservatives (especially) try to create “artificial or manufactured controversy” in an effort to undermine the influence of science on politicized issues that challenge corporatist hegemony in favour of such mundane things as human and environmental health.

What is surprising is that the Post would print Libin’s column as a piece of journalism when such works of “truthiness” are usually reserved for dishonest presidents, public relations firms and other artisans of the politically fanciful. Holocaust deniers, for instance, have been using this same strategy almost since the end of the Second World War.

Perhaps the most egregious example, at least until the politicization of climate change, is the one portrayed in the movie Thank You for Smoking. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the tobacco lobby literally created controversy over the now well-accepted causal link between cigarette smoking and cancer. According to an internal document from Brown and Williamson, a now-defunct American tobacco company: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy. ... Spread doubt over strong scientific evidence and the public won’t know what to believe.”

More recently, the oil, gas and coal industries – with the help of the neoconservative think tanks they continue to fund – have helped to create uncertainty around the cause, even the existence of climate change. According to the now famous memo from influential political strategist Frank Luntz, consultant to the U.S. Republican Party, “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.... You need to be more active in recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view, and much more active in making them part of your message.... If you wish to challenge the prevailing wisdom about global warming, it is more effective to have professionals making the case than politicians.”

Let’s see how Libin does this in “Alberta’s Grizzly Debate.” Rather than interview and quote a reputable grizzly bear biologist or political ecologist who has been intimately involved in the Alberta recovery planning process – Gord Stenhouse, say, or Dr. Mark Boyce or Dr. Robert Barclay or Dr. Mike Gibeau or Dr. Michael Proctor – he relies on Barry Cooper, a fellow neoconservative and political scientist at the University of Calgary – and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute who has been involved in researching and writing contrarian studies on grizzly bears and climate change.

Cooper has written similar ideologically based op-eds of his own for the Calgary Herald and various other think tanks and conservative publications, all of which indicate he doesn’t have the faintest idea of what he’s talking about when it comes to grizzly bears, though he obviously knows a thing or two about how to manipulate public opinion.

Herein, Cooper suggests that there is “no such thing as an Alberta grizzly bear population,” which is correct as far as it goes. Bears, like butterflies and sparrows, don’t much care for our political divisions, and move across borders if they can. (More on that later.) What is absent from Cooper’s submission, however, is that wildlife in Canada are managed largely by the provinces, not the federal government.

While it is true there are some 50,000 grizzly bears in North America – and more than 100,000 in Europe and Asia – Mr. Cooper surely must know, as an esteemed expert in the “science” of all things political, that Section 3.1.1 of the Fish and Wildlife Policy for Alberta (1982) indicates that “…the primary consideration of the Government is to ensure that wildlife populations are protected from severe decline and that viable populations are maintained….” The government of Alberta, therefore, is obligated to ensure that a “viable” population of grizzly bears is maintained within the boundaries of the political jurisdiction of Alberta, whether or not there are a bazillion grizzly bears elsewhere.

For his token biologist, Libin chooses Dr. Charles Kay, a controversial figure whose contrarian views are often quoted by – you guessed it – the Fraser Institute and conservative newspapers in the North American West. Kay is to wildlife management, in other words, what Tim Ball is to climate change.

Again, Libin chooses to forego the expertise and excellent reputations of Dr. Stephen Herrero and the other biologists mentioned above. Why? Because Kay’s “opinion” adds another piece of “evidence” in Libin’s attempt to undermine the science and more commonly understood expert opinion on the history, status and future of Alberta’s grizzly bear population. And as you will see, it is purely for economic (i.e. ideological) reasons rather than ethical or ecological ones.

Then, astonishingly, he chooses Quentin Bochar to comment on whether Alberta’s grizzly bear population is “sustainable.” Bochar is not a biologist by any stretch of the imagination. He works in the oil and gas industry and is a quad-loving hunter and the president of the Alberta Fish and Game Association, who has publicly stated that he doesn’t want to give up his “right” to ride his motorized horse wherever he wants just for the chance to kill himself a grizzly bear. I’m not necessarily opposed to hunting, but that’s not the point here. The point is that of all the people Libin could have asked whether 300 (or even 500) grizzly bears, widely dispersed across the road-infested Eastern Slopes, constitutes a sustainable population, Quentin does not rank in the top 100. It’s rather like asking the Pope if Jesus was actually the Son of God. Or if a bear shits in the woods.

So, Libin picks and chooses his experts to support his implied hypothesis that grizzly bears in Alberta are either doing just fine or not worth recovering (it’s tough to tell which he would like us to believe). What about the “scientific information” he presents? Not surprisingly, there is a lot of picking and choosing in this department, too, which amounts to a whole lot of journalistic dishonesty.

Libin starts by characterizing pre-colonial Alberta as a veritable wasteland comprised of “bald prairie and swampland ... glaciers, muskeg and ... deserts” in an effort to convince his readers that “the province’s population of a few hundred ... may be natural.” How does he come to this conclusion? Because, he says, our estimates of historical populations are based on “anecdotal and theoretical evidence.” This isn’t to say he, or Kay, have better evidence, or that the “theoretical” evidence is wrong. It’s just that we can’t “prove” anything. Because “no one knows for certain.”

In actuality, grizzly bears evolved in the tundra plains south of the ice sheets in Eurasia, coming to North America in several waves between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago. The first grizzlies to make it south of the ice sheets arrived in Alberta some 26,000 years ago. Over time, the Great Plains evolved to teem with the wildlife we are familiar with: vast herds of bison and elk, packs of wolves, grizzlies. The parkland in central Alberta would have provided suitable habitat, too, the boreal less so. But be certain: there were grizzlies in the unmountainous parts of Alberta, probably thousands of them.

But Libin enlists Kay, the expert, to help him make his case otherwise. It is interesting how Kay/Libin phrase their “opinion” of the historical numbers of grizzly bears in Alberta: “there is no evidence that the Alberta bears ever lived in large numbers away from the Rockies.” Again, this is correct in so far as the oversimplification goes. There is, in fact, no direct evidence for any particular number. We simply don’t have enough data. Kay prefers low numbers because he believes (rather than knows) that Aboriginal people had laid waste to wildlife populations before Europeans arrived. But there is no evidence, either, that there weren’t 100,000 grizzlies in Alberta at one time, although that is highly unlikely.

(There is no evidence, either, that focusing government policy on maximizing economic output and monetary wealth is in the best interests of Canadians or the rest of humanity, and yet we do so, despite the obvious social and environmental problems such a strategy causes, with a zealousness usually reserved for fundamentalist Christians and Islamic terrorists – with the gleeful applause of people like Libins and Cooper.)

I have considered the question of how many bears might have roamed Alberta and the rest of the Great Plains as I research and write a book about the Great Plains grizzly bear. After consulting with numerous scientists and a significant body of scientific literature, the scientific consensus seems to be that there were probably somewhere between 17,500 and 30,000 grizzlies on the Great Plains, perhaps 5000 to 10000 of which made their homes in Alberta (which also includes a significant amount of parkland and boreal forest). The point is that had Libin asked Dr. Herrero or Dr. Chris Servheen or Dr. David Mattson, who has considered this matter perhaps more than anyone else, he would have got a different but likely more reputable answer.

But the reality is that it doesn’t really matter how many there were in 1690, when Kelsey first spotted one in what is now southern Saskatchewan. Given Alberta policy, it seems clear that we are obligated, at the very least, to make sure they remain a healthy part of Alberta no matter how many there were 220 years ago and how many there are in the world around us.

Which is really the point. Not only how many bears are left, but how many bears we need to ensure that the population in Alberta “remains viable.” Not surprisingly, Libins picks what he wants and then leaves out some of the most important details. He does mention some good science, quoting one study, the Eastern Slopes Grizzly Bear Project, which Cooper and Libin’s other Fraser Institute buddies roundly panned in a similar spate of misinformation a few years ago. It found, as Libins noted, that the population under study was growing at an annual rate of four per cent.

What Libin doesn’t mention is that the study area was comprised largely of protected areas in K-Country and Banff National Park, which one would expect to harbour a growing population, hopefully faster than four percent. What he also doesn’t include, interestingly enough, was that the results of that study indicated that because the population was so small, it was one dead female per year away from a declining population, and this in a largely protected landscape. He also forgets to mention that much of the rest of the Eastern Slopes outside of protected areas is so criss-crossed with roads, and the mortality risk is so high, that very sophisticated and reliable computer models indicate that grizzly bears will be all but eliminated from much of their current range outside of Alberta’s protected areas.

He also fails to mention that, at the larger scale, some of the most cutting-edge DNA work on any wildlife species anywhere indicates that Alberta’s diminutive grizzly bear population (in the strictly bio-political sense of the term, to keep Cooper and Kay happy) is being split into several isolated sub-populations. Darcy Whiteside, one of many Nick Naylors working for the Ministry of Sustainable Resource Development, contends that grizzlies move between Alberta and B.C. And they do. But I’ve heard from no reputable scientists (and Libin doesn’t provide a reference) that the number of bears immigrating into Alberta from elsewhere has been identified as “10 percent.”

We do know that grizzlies fairly regularly move back and forth across the continental divide south of Highway 1. But between Highway 1 and Highway 16, the continental divide is rugged enough to be an almost impermeable barrier to grizzly bear movement. And so are Highways 1, 11 and 16, which leaves two small populations of less than 100 animals each to fend for themselves in a heavily impacted landscape, which is about as far from sustainable as a grizzly bear population gets. (A recent study from Spain suggests that the minimum size of a viable population in the short term is 200 animals.)

I think that’s enough. You get the point. Even Libin and Cooper, if they dare read this, should be sufficiently cowed. Libin could have, if he’d chosen, to provide what journalist Carl Bernstein calls “the best obtainable version of the truth.” Instead, he crafted his ideologically derived pseudo-truth to serves the ideological purposes of his neoconservative clansmen (and, sadly, women).

The truthiest thing that Libin has to say is that recovering grizzlies will require not only slowing the rampant industrialization of Alberta’s forests and foothills, but the rehabilitation of the damage that has been wrought under this government’s 37-year reign. “This, most everyone agrees, is the real root of the province's wariness to rush to declare the grizzlies threatened.”

But it isn’t a lack of “firm evidence,” as Libin contends, that’s at the heart of the Alberta government’s foot-dragging. After all, we know from the Yellowstone experience how to recovery a grizzly bear population from the brink. No, it’s not an absence of facts, but an absence of integrity and a plethora of greed that prevents the ideologues in Edmonton from doing their job and protecting the grizzly bear from further decline. For to do so is to admit to the world that their Lorax-like industrialization of the Alberta landscape has left an almost incalculable environmental debt that we may never be able to repay.

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Post would publish such drivel. The worst part, perhaps, is that the Alberta government, from Darcy Whiteside on up, has been complicit in the foot-dragging and the lies. But perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise either, given that Ted Morton, Minister of Sustainable Resource Development and former fellow at the Fraser Institute, has been part of the same disinformation campaign for years.

In an effort to set the record straight, I suggest you read any of several articles I have written on the fate of Alberta's grizzly bear.

Does Canmore need a grizzly zoo?

As if the ever-expanding town of Canmore wasn't already a bad example of how to co-exist with the natural world. Now some enterprising locals want to turn Cross Zee Ranch, on the town's northeast boundary, into a wildlife "conservation" center featuring five "trained" and "performing" bears.

According to the Calgary Herald, the bears would be housed in a 1.7-hectare enclosure on the ranch, which would become a "world-renowned centre for teaching conservation." Ruth Labarge, a wildlife trainer involved in the project, said shows would allow people to see live bears and learn about bear safety. "These bears are spokespersons for their wild brothers. Their drives and focuses are not like a real bear.... Our bears are like small children that enjoy performing, and their health issues are non-existent."

Do we really need another "conservation" zoo to teach us about bears? I doubt it. The facade of "education = conservation" for too long has been used to justify projects whose primary aim it to provide decent returns for their "investors." How can displaying (albeit captive-bred) wild animals in a town that has destroyed more grizzly bear habitat than your average gas field teach anyone about conservation? Isn't this rather like bombing for peace?

Besides, it is not more knowledge of bears -- never mind the chance to watch them "perform" like enslaved whores -- that will encourage our conservation of them. No, it is not how much (more) we know of them but how we choose to think of them that will determine whether or not Alberta's threatend grizzly bear will survive in the Bow Valley and the rest of Alberta's dwindling wilderness.

And how we choose to think of them is nothing more than taking a quiet moment and "simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me." (David Foster Wallace)

Preventing captive bears from becoming a defining element of Canmore's evolving gestalt may be one of the last opportunities to save the town's wayward soul. Please, take a moment to think about it.

Give Albertans a real chance

I was sitting here minding my own business yesterday when the CKUA news subjected me to the Alberta government's latest attempt to embarrass the people it represents. As if spending $25 million on a branding campaign to convince the rest of the world we're not what we are wasn't enough. Now they're trying to convince the rest of the world to follow our lead and not reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

With the plaintive cry of a child who can't have any more candy, Alberta Energy Director of Communications Jason Chance complained that California's attempt to pass the U.S. 's first low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) "wasn't fair."

Alberta Energy's version of Nick Naylor (think: Thank You for Smoking), Chance was the mouthpiece for Alberta government officials in California this week wasting taxpayers' money (and political capital and international standing) trying to convince the state's air-quality regulator that banning carbon-heavy fuels singles out Canadian exports of oilsands-derived crude.

In a "historic vote," California's Air Resources Board passed the implementing regulations for the nation's first low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) by an overwhelming 9-1. This vote will put into action the LCFS first proposed by Governor Schwarzenegger as a key policy for meeting California's global warming goals. This precedent setting environmental policy will favor cleaner fuels over high carbon fuels such as Canadian tar sands, liquid coal and oil shale.

"Low carbon fuel standards are a critical complementary measure to a cap on global warming pollution," writes Liz Barrat-Brown, a senior attorney with NRDC. "The LCFS requires that the carbon content of fuels decline over the next decade, paving the way for lower carbon fuels, such as next generation biofuels, and other measures to reduce global warming pollution from our transportation sector.

"The approval of the California LCFS regulations gives a huge boost to efforts to pass a similar measure nationally. Today all eyes will turn to Washington D.C. where the House Energy and Commerce Committee will debate a national LCFS."

Despite Chance's ideologically motivated protests of "unfairness," the beauty of the LCFS is "it does not pick favorites," says Barrat-Brown. "Instead it provides a more level playing field for lower carbon fuels to compete against dirtier fuels. It does this by relying on a straight forward concept - determining how much carbon is embedded in the fuel through lifecycle assessment, an accounting measure that evaluates emissions from the production through to the combustion of a fuel."

How long is it going to take the dinosaurs in the Alberta legislature to realize that the world has changed? Despite the Alberta Tories' apparent apathy (if not outright disdain) for the environment around them, most of the rest of the world, including the U.S., our favourite trading partner and the world's most voracious consumer of oil, has decided that climate change is very real and very serious, and as such must be stopped with a vigour usually reserved for martial enemies.

“Let’s be clear,” Dr. David Keith prophesied last year. “A lot of Albertans, people who are members of APEGGA, for instance, the engineer and geophysicist group in Alberta, don’t believe that climate change is a problem, and quite a few members of our cabinet don’t believe it’s a problem. But what they believe doesn’t actually matter. We’re going to be regulated from the outside. The U.S. is moving [climate change] regulations through the House and the Senate that are very serious. Sometimes you may wish the world is one way. You may wish you don’t have a problem. But we do."

And as Keith points out, it's not just the environment Albertans should be concerned about. It's our entire economy: “I think people are frighteningly naive about what the impacts of this could be. Serious carbon regulation [in the U.S.] could have people walking away from their mortgages the way they did here in the early 1980s. Alberta needs to make some strategic investments to protect itself against carbon regulation, and ... right now, [the government is] just dropping the ball.”

Albertans could be global leaders in the fight against climate change, if only Premier Ed Stelmach would give us a different kind of chance -- one that involves honesty and integrity and transparency rather than shady PR campaigns and obstructionist government intervention.