Nova Scotia Scott

One of America’s oldest and most esteemed civil rights organizations, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), is standing with the Alberta oil industry to keep energy affordable. As far as CORE is concerned, anti-oil activists and politicians promote policies that help keep poor people poor.

CORE’s national spokesman Niger Innis visited Calgary yesterday.

Alberta’s energy industry has lately been made into an ecological bogeyman by environmentalist groups, portraying the oil sands as a “dirty,” undesirable source because of its carbon footprint. They have persuaded the governor of California, the U. S. federal government and an organization of American mayors to boycott Alberta’s non-conventional fuel. Fourteen other U. S. states are pursuing their own embargoes on carbon-heavy oil. That trend distresses Mr. Innis, who believes that the campaign against environmentally suspect energy sources victimizes the poor above all. And that, in a disproportionate number of cases, means black Americans.

“We say the economic frontier is the last frontier for achieving racial equality in society,” Mr. Innis says. “And access to affordable energy … is what we consider to be the master resource for the economic survival for our community. Rising energy prices represent an immoral war on the poor, because it keeps people poor.”

This summer, Mr. Innis’ group launched the Alliance to Stop the War on the Poor, aimed at what he calls “extreme environmentalists” and policies he says threaten to put gas-pump prices, home-heating fuel and electricity out of reach of millions of America’s most vulnerable. As environmental groups declare an increasing number of power sources verboten — the oil sands, off-shore drilling, Alaska’s National Wildlife Refuge, coal and nuclear power — supplies inevitably shrink in the face of rising global demand, driving up prices.

Mr Innis points out that environmentalists tend to be wealthy and privileged, while the poor pay the price of their “intellectual exercise”.

Tags: Alberta, Energy, Environment