James Cameron & the Oil Sands: Self-Serving Hollywood Style

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I won’t question Mister Cameron's environmental credentials (he has none, really), and I won’t argue his convictions about the environment (maybe he has some of those), but I will observe that the oil sands have been around for a good long time, and it seems mightily suspicious to me he leaps upon the bandwagon a few days before his Avatar is released on DVD/Blu-Ray. It strikes me as a self-serving move, to drop that disc on Earth Day, and to top it off by speaking negatively about something he has zero grasp about. Now, once he has all the information he needs from the green crowd, I’m sure that qualifies him to be speaking even louder – a completely one-sided view being so much easier to carry.

The oil sands are not pretty, and the environmental toll is real, but pardon me for observing that the demand for oil is what inspires the oil sands, not some bizarre self-abuse whereby companies do the projects to bankrupt themselves. Someone is willing to pay for that dirty oil, folks, and that is largely a group made from an urban population (only because urbanites outnumber the rural folks). If you want to criticise the oil sands, criticise the cause rather than the effects – if the world wasn’t buying that oil, it wouldn’t be processed.

So, maybe Mister Cameron should observe that his lifestyle may be part of the overall problem, and maybe before he uses this issue to push his movie even more than the hype allows presently, he should do something constructive. It is easy to criticise an effect, but give us some suggestions how to address the cause – there lies the key.

Lately, this issue bugs me as much as the kids who tell me I’m environmentally unsound, but have a new cell phone annually, ever gadget known to mankind, etc. I’m not a strong proponent of oil sands projects, as I think they can be done cleaner, but I have a serious problem with anyone casting stones when they are part of the cause of the problem.