Last night at the Rio Theatre in East Vancouver, I moderated a debate on the ethics of the oilsands developments.

It was a wildly entertaining and informative event pitting the Wilderness Committee's healthy communities campaigner, Ben West, against Calgary lawyer, author, and oilsands defender Ezra Levant.

It didn't appear as though anyone changed any minds last night. Levant, a fiery right-wing flamethrower, had a few supporters in the theatre.

He cleverly used arguments designed to appeal to a left-wing audience, insisting that it was more ethical to buy oil from the Canadian tar sands over oil purchased from tyrannical regimes in Saudi Arabia or Sudan.

Levant also emphasized that the oilsands offer well-paid jobs to aboriginal people.

West didn't give an inch, responding that no matter how much oil was produced in Alberta, the Saudis would have no trouble selling every drop of petroleum.

He also used his opening statement to reveal that Levant, an alumnus of the Fraser Institute, doesn't really believe that human activity contributes to global warming.

Some of West's most effective statements discredited Levant's blind faith in the free market to solve complex problems like climate change.

I've been following West's progress as a community organizer since I first saw him at an all-candidates meeting in West Vancouver during the 2005 provincial election campaign.

He was running for the Work Less Party, and was clearly the most impressive person on the stage. This is saying something when you consider that one of his opponents was Ralph Sultan, a former Harvard economics professor and possibly the most intelligent MLA in the B.C. Liberal caucus.

West later joined the Wilderness Committee, where he has helped boost the organization's credibility on urban environmental issues with his dogged opposition to the provincial Gateway Program.

This year, West and his allies put Metro Vancouver on the defensive with its plan to burn an additional 500,000 tonnes of garbage every year.

And last night, he organized an event that nearly filled the Rio Theatre on a miserable, rainy night, building momentum in the city for a growing campaign to stop oil tankers from travelling through Burrard Inlet.

In the process, he also made sure that Levant's new book, Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands, didn't go unchallenged in our community.

At times, West employed humour very effectively, likening Levant to a man who was in denial about a serious addiction—and suggesting that this addiction to the oilsands was creating problems for the broader community.

There will come a time when veteran NDP MP Libby Davies will retire as a parliamentarian. Last year, the party boosted its credibility with environmentalists by recruiting Finn Donnelly to run and get elected as the NDP MP in New Westminster-Coquitlam.

NDP Leader Jack Layton would be wise to start paying attention to West, who is now associated with the Green party. That's because West would be a very capable successor to Davies should she ever decide to call it quits.