Permission to Pollute: Regulating Environmental Corporate Crime in the Alberta Tar Sands

Abstract

This study explores how the Canadian and Alberta governments downplay environmental harm in the Alberta Tar Sands, therein justifying its ongoing expansion and defining it as unnecessary to intervene through the law. In particular, this study draws on the concepts of hegemony, social harm and deep ecology to problematize how climate change has become the governments’ main environmental concern in the tar sands, despite the existence of other, equally troubling issues, and how carbon capture and storage (CCS) has become the states’ main climate change strategy, despite the largely untested nature of this technique. A critical discourse analysis of two government taskforce documents concerning CCS technology revealed that neoliberal and globalization discourses were used to narrowly conceptualize environmental harm, thereby privileging Canada’s trade relations and economic strength over the environment’s health. Relatedly, discourses of scientism were used to conceptualize climate change as a technical problem and CCS as the “preferred” solution.