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They have had 20 years to spread the message that the hundreds of thousands who toil in the oil sands are as the orcs of Mordor moving ever closer to returning the Earth to Darkness

No other state or province, and no other single project has borne the weight of calumny and accusation as have Alberta and the oil sands. No campaigns against projects in China, India, the Middle East, the U.S. or Latin America have been of even near duration or intensity as their relentless crusade against Fort McMurray. The oil sands are as a pinprick in the world’s energy production, yet as the eco-Furies paint them, they are Armageddon’s launch pad.

When, despite protest, propaganda, misrepresentation and chronic interference, the oil sands project did move ahead, when, despite the “infinite regress” (C. Cosh) of environmental assessment and reassessment, it lurched to production, clearly novel tactics had to be summoned, the campaign reframed.

Enter the pipeline frenzy. The innocent pipeline as Destroyer of Worlds. Once oil was there to be delivered, there arose the intractable opposition to every and any pipeline, turned to any point of the compass, within Canada or outside, coming out of Alberta. The professional petrophobes had failed to keep the oil in the ground; now they determined to landlock it in Alberta.

They couldn’t stop the oil from being harvested, so they would turn Alberta into an energy jail.

Stall, freeze, regulate, litigate, occupy and demonstrate — anything that slows progress or jams an operation — if it’s the oilsands, all’s on the table

Delay and obstruction are activists’ favoured munitions, as seen in so many other pipelines and projects. Petronas and its $36-billion project was procrastinated into oblivion. Energy East was cancelled over ever-extended regulations. Stall, freeze, regulate, litigate, occupy and demonstrate — anything that slows progress or jams an operation — if it’s the oil sands, all’s on the table. Obama speciously dawdled for his whole two terms on Keystone. Fortunately, on that one Mr. Trump was more prompt.