Tar Sands 101
The Tar Sands "Gigaproject" is the largest industrial project in human history and likely also the most destructive. The tar sands mining procedure releases at least three times the CO2 emissions as regular oil production and is slated to become the single largest industrial contributor in North America to Climate Change.
The tar sands are already slated to be the cause of up to the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet behind the Amazon Rainforest Basin. Currently approved projects will see 3 million barrels of tar sands mock crude produced daily by 2018; for each barrel of oil up to as high as five barrels of water are used.
Human health in many communities has seriously taken a turn for the worse with many causes alleged to be from tar sands production. Tar sands production has led to many serious social issues throughout Alberta, from housing crises to the vast expansion of temporary foreign worker programs that racialize and exploit so-called non-citizens. Infrastructure from pipelines to refineries to super tanker oil traffic on the seas crosses the continent in all directions to allthree major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico.
The mock oil produced primarily is consumed in the United States and helps to subsidize continued wars of aggression against other oil producing nations such as Iraq, Venezuela and Iran.
To understand the tar sands in more depth, continue to our Tar Sands 101 reading list
Harper embraces the nuclear future
CANOE -- CNEWS: Macleans - Harper embraces the nuclear future Page 1
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Rogers/Macleans/2007/05/03/pf-4150972.html
May 3, 2007
Harper embraces the nuclear future
Climate-change anxiety breathes new life into nuclear power,
and shifts Ottawa's plans
By JOHN GEDDES -- Maclean's
Stephen Harper would seem an unlikely pitchman for nuclear
power. When the Prime Minister launches into his familiar spiel
about Canada as an emerging "energy superpower," we all think
we know what he's talking about - he's an Alberta MP, after all, and
Secret South Dakota Project Makes National Headlines
Secret South Dakota Project Makes National Headlines
May 25, 2007
http://www.ktiv.com/News/index.php?ID=13386
It's been the talk of South Dakota. What's the big... "super secret" project in the works for Union County? That question is now in the national spotlight... after making the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Check out this headline in Friday's Wall Street Journal. It reads... "In South Dakota, Farming Community Tracks a Gorilla."
Enbridge pipeline project facing complaints (Wisconsin)
Enbridge pipeline project facing complaints (Wisconsin)
http://www.wiscnews.com/pdr/news/133887
The Associated Press
WAUSAU — The pay for trees being cut is unfair. Some trees shouldn't be chopped down — like 100-year-old oaks. There are threats. Even human waste was left behind from earlier work.
Too Good to Be True
Too Good to Be True
Certain organizations--Pew is one--are routinely treated as benign and neutral, beyond partisan politics. They're not.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110006499
BY MARTIN MORSE WOOSTER
Friday, April 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
The Ecology of Work
Environmentalism can't succeed until it confronts the destructive nature of
modern work - and supplants it. (Last of a two-part series)
by Curtis White
Orion magazine (May / June 2007)
Environmentalists see the asphalting of the country as a sin against the world
of nature, but we should also see in it a kind of damage that has been done to
humans, for what precedes environmental degradation is the debasement of the
human world. I would go so far as to say that there is no solution for
environmental destruction that isn't first a healing of the damage that has been
Press Release: Oil Prices Rise, Tar Sands Making Massive Growth
Oil Sands Gaining Ground With Rising Costs Of Crude Oil
5/21/2007
http://www.oilandgasonline.com/content/news/article.asp?DocID=%7B3902492...
Palo Alto, CA - As prices and global demand for crude oil continue to increase, the North American oil sands market is poised for remarkable growth. Recent technological developments have considerably reduced the extraction and upgrading costs of bitumen. This, along with high crude oil prices, has made oil sands an attractive proposition for oil companies.
Canadians need to "reel in" Big Oil: The Need for Law Reform
Canadians need to "reel in" Big Oil: The Need for Law Reform
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070526122247132
by PatriotPete/bcpolitics.ca Peter Dimitrov, May 26, 2007
American Immigration Reform: Born in Canada
Sun, May 27, 2007
U.S. scores points with new immigration bill
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2007/05/27/4211962-sun.html
By DONNA MARIE ARTUSO
WASHINGTON -- A colossal immigration bill, backed by a bipartisan coalition, is lurching its way through the U.S. Senate -- amendment by cumbersome amendment -- in an attempt to comprehensively reform a system that has been in place for more than 40 years.
Move over Fort Mac, a new boomtown is born
Move over Fort Mac, a new boomtown is born
On the surface Grande Prairie looks unremarkable, but its riches of oil and gas have brought roaring growth
DAVID EBNER
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070521.RGRANDEPRAIRIE...
May 21, 2007
GRANDE PRAIRIE, ALTA. -- On the surface, Grande Prairie, with a population nearing 50,000, looks unremarkable. Most buildings are a couple of storeys high, and the only striking feature of the richest neighbourhood in town - called Wedgewood - is the number of three-vehicle garages.
Why Whitecourt or Peace River for Nukes? It's the In Situ, stupid!
Shell eyes nuclear power in oil sands
New technology that extracts bitumen from limestone demands huge quantities of electricity
DAVID EBNER
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070521.wxrnuclear22...
Globe and Mail
May 21, 2007
Calgary — — Royal Dutch Shell PLC [RDS.B-N]is looking at nuclear power to support its experimental oil sands ambitions, on which it has already placed a bet of more than half a billion dollars.
