With the polar ice caps melting, sea levels rising and oceans acidifying, selling more dirty oil seems a peculiar way to save the planet.

Paris was Justin Trudeau’s bow on the international stage; Trans Mountain is turning into his exit stage right as a champion of the environment.

That is, unless you are one of those who thinks that the answer to waging war on carbon emissions is putting more junk oil into the system — and from there into the atmosphere.

Whatever side you take on Kinder Morgan’s plan to triple its pipeline capacity from Alberta through B.C. to tidewater, a bomb is about to go off in Canadian politics.

There will be plenty of shrapnel to go around: Trudeau, Rachel Notley, Jagmeet Singh, John Horgan and a slew of other federal and provincial candidates are all in the blast zone. But the question is who, if anyone, will be fatally wounded?

For Trudeau, the stakes are highest. He has followed broken promises on the environment with words so hollow on the justification for Trans Mountain that he looks worse than former prime minister Stephen Harper to the anti-pipeline faction, including First Nations.

A senior former member of the Harper team told iPolitics that when Harper was approached to push through a pipeline across B.C. carrying bitumen to tidewater, he demurred. Instead, Harper advised western MPs to first sell the project to British Columbians, rather than, as a first resort, using federal power to impose it on them.

Shrewd advice that shows Trudeau’s ineptitude on this file. The prime minister has utterly failed to sell Trans Mountain to the government of B.C., to environmentalists, to First Nations, or to the one-third of the population of Western Canada that lives around the Salish Sea — a telling statistic reported by the incomparable Andrew Nikiforuk.

That leaves only one option if Premier Horgan stands firm in his opposition to the pipeline: federal force imposed on a province over the objections of its governments, both provincial and municipal. And there are lots of torture devices in Ottawa’s toolbox to deal with B.C., from financial penalties, to declarative legislative powers.

British Columbia is not the only province where that option is offensive. It has also left at least one other powerful player in the country worried enough to enter the fray over Kinder Morgan.

The province of Quebec has come out bluntly against Ottawa overriding B.C.’s objections to Trans Mountain. Premier Philippe Couillard declared it was “not a good sign for federalism.” Even the Globe & Mail’s editorial board ought to be able to hear the distant thunder in those words.

Already on shaky ground with B.C. environmentalists over green-lighting the contentious Site C hydroelectric dam on the Peace River, Trudeau has also lost serious political credibility with the province’s First Nations. One leader who no longer trusts the prime minister is Grand Chief Stewart Phillip of the Okanagan Nation. He is also president of the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs.

Chief Stewart, who supported Trudeau in 2015, has warned that if Ottawa rams this project through, it could lead to a “catastrophic crisis” comparable to the Oka standoff in 1990. Though there is support for Trans Mountain in the Indigenous community, a sizeable number of First Nations who live along the pipeline route either oppose it, or have not formally given their consent, as is required. They point to the constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to make their case.

But should Kinder Morgan trigger a Canadian version of Standing Rock, it won’t just be First Nations protesters on Burnaby Mountain. More than 20,000 people have pledged to act as “coast protectors” willing to do “whatever it takes” to stop the pipeline. If Trudeau forces the issue, it will bring a very quick end to any rhetorical hot air about “reconciliation.” It will also usher in Trump-like wedge politics to a country that, outside of the Harper era, has traditionally set a more civil course.

Despite the brave face in Ottawa Sunday, the drowning politician of the group is Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Facing an election against a united right under Jason Kenney, she is desperately clutching at anything to show that she is the greatest petro-politician Albertans could ever hope to find. In the process, she is making Ralph Klein look like a tree-hugger.

From threatening to cut off British Columbia’s supply of oil, to musing about buying the entire Kinder Morgan project with taxpayer’s money, Notley has jettisoned crucial parts of the NDP’s policy mantra in the name of surviving Kenney’s political resurrection.

There is a reason for Notley’s mania to get Trans Mountain in place now. Simply, there may not be a tomorrow. If, as expected, demand for oil peaks in the next decade because of rapidly falling prices for clean energy options, Alberta could be saddled with vast reserves of unsellable oil. There is a shrinking window of opportunity and Notley is trying to get through it before it closes. In a nutshell, there is more bitumen than there is time to sell it.

Notley’s approach may be pragmatic in a man-the-lifeboats sort of way. But it is not a good long game. The more shrill Notley becomes as a cheerleader for tar sands oil, the more punitive threats she makes against B.C., the more she orders the federal government to support her, the less attractive her argument will be nationally — particularly with young voters. Most millennials know there are no jobs on a dead planet.

Notley’s war on British Columbia, with she and the federal Liberal cavalry riding to the financial rescue of the Texas company, should have put federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in an enviable position. The party has always prided itself on being on the cutting edge of the best ideas for the future. The Green wave and alternative energy are central to that vision. Notley’s pipeline is the opposite of that ideal. And Trudeau swears he will make it happen. Good for Singh, right?

No.

Instead of picking up the progressive torch that Trudeau has dropped yet again, Singh has merely stumbled around as an observer. He has inspired no one with his solution to the battle: a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That is not political leadership, that is artless dodging. It is what mere politicians do when they don’t want to declare what they really think because they aren’t sure how it will play with the great unwashed. What comes across in Singh’s plan is an ambitious new leader who cares less about the environment than he does about not offending the NDP premiers of either Alberta or B.C.

The federal NDP is hemorrhaging on this one, without joining the battle. Someone should tell them that there are no medals for those wounded on the sidelines.

For now, Horgan is the man on the spot. If he holds to his anti-pipeline position, which he did in Ottawa, he could see the premier of another province drive up gasoline costs in B.C. He could also see the federal government punish his province financially while imposing the pipeline anyway.

But if Horgan compromises his position, if he agrees to remove his objections to the Trans Mountain project, his tenuous hold on power, courtesy of B.C.’s fledgling Green Party, could easily be broken.

Horgan has already drawn the ire of First Nations and environmentalists by reluctantly completing the highly controversial Site C dam — a project the premier himself said should never have been built in the first place. He can ill afford to agree to yet another dubious energy project without coming across as a spineless wretch. That may be why he said Sunday he was not swayed by the “softer” rhetoric from Trudeau and Notley, and that he plans to pursue a court-ruling about which level of government has jurisdiction in the Kinder Morgan matter.

And then there is Kinder Morgan itself. Up until very recently, the company’s Trans Mountain project has been subject to the normal ebb and flow of any project that is highly controversial.

A lot of people are on the fence in B.C. There are significant factions both for and against the pipeline expansion holding big megaphones. It has been a wreck’em race of court cases, public relations, “illegal” protests, and competing rights — most especially those of the First Nations, who have seven court cases currently underway to stop the pipeline.

But this complex tactical minuet changed completely when Kinder Morgan moved from the energy to the ultimatum business. First, the company that rose out of the poisoned ashes of Enron, got tough on protesters. Hundreds were arrested and charged with civil contempt of a court order obtained by Kinder Morgan to protect its work places. Federal Green Party leader Elizabeth May and NDP MP Kennedy Stewart were among those charged.

Then the company returned to court last week to have those civil contempt charges elevated to criminal contempt, a process that is ongoing. As May quipped, “It looks like they want to send me to jail.”

Kinder Morgan also announced a stoppage of all “non-essential” work on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion until May 31st. The company says that unless a path is cleared to complete its work unencumbered by protesters or provincial politicians, it might just walk away from the multi-billion project.

From the company’s perspective, it isn’t about protests or prickly provincial governments, it is about money. Kinder Morgan has negotiated more than $5 billion in loans to expand Trans Mountain, but the bank conditions stipulate the loans depend on the company coming up with $2 billion in equity for its project. Once again, thank you Mr. Nikiforuk.

If the company had been able to do that, why has Kinder Morgan Canada’s CEO Steven Kean been talking to Premier Notley for financial support? If, as some economists have argued, the company had solid contracts for its bitumen, why would it need financial help from governments to build Trans Mountain?

As of Sunday, Canadians know the Trudeau government will enter into secret talks with Kinder Morgan aimed at making its Trans Mountain problems disappear. If one of those problems is financing for a project that may not be viable, Trudeau should drop the pretences and just tell us the size of the bill. It will not do to share how much he loves whales or old growth forests or flash his tattoo. As John Lennon asked of politicians in 1971, “Just give me the truth.”

If the prime minister really gets in the mood to raise his game above a pep talk to eighth graders, he might explain why he is backing the wishes of a Texas oil company over the government of a Canadian province and most of its leaders.

He might explain why he thinks the price for bitumen will go up, when all dirty oil is discounted on world markets, as exporters in places like Venezuela well know.

He might point out why the National Energy Board never bothered to examine the downstream consequences on climate change of letting Trans Mountain proceed.

And if he feels up to it, perhaps he could tell everyone who that guy was in Paris saying that Canada was back?

With the polar ice caps melting, sea levels rising and oceans acidifying, selling more dirty oil seems a peculiar way to save the planet.

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