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
MSNBC: Scientists Urge Protection of 50% of Canada's Boreal Forest
To achieve the goals being set out by these scientists-- who are perhaps still acting *conservatively* in what they collectively state needs to be done to achieve a healthy biosphere-- we need to speak as plain as day:
Rigged to Blow
clip:
"The Alberta tar sands are big, but even the Canadian government does not project them paying out much more than three million barrels a day when they reach maximum production in five or ten years, and the process will probably poison all the groundwater east of the Canadian Rockies."
Rigged to Blow
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
by James Kunstler
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1579/81/
EUB Exonerates Pipeline Spill near Lesser Slave Lake
A press release below from the EUB-- the same people telling us that Nuclear Powerplants that take years to construct, and then more years of operation to start being a reduction in Greenhouse gas emissions, are an "environmental benefit". Their track record is no longer credible. Here below, spilling oil is not dangerous to your health. So says the EUB.
--M
EUB Completes Investigation Into Rainbow Pipeline Failure Near Slave Lake
Calgary, Alberta (May 9, 2007) The Alberta Energy and Utilities Board
(EUB) has completed its investigation into a pipeline leak that
Tories Storm out of Hearing when Confronted on Tarsands Energy Policy
Tory MPs storm out of meeting on energy sharing; Canada left short to aid U.S., says professor
The Edmonton Journal (A6) The Ottawa Citizen (A3) The Montreal Gazette (A12)
Fri 11 May 2007
OTTAWA - Amid heated charges of a coverup, Tory MPs on Thursday abruptly shut down parliamentary hearings on a controversial plan to further integrate Canada and the U.S.
National Energy Board: Six fold increase in hearings related to energy sector
Signs of out-of-control growth...
May 1, 2007 6:37:00 PM MST
National Energy Board says hot energy climate means six fold increase in hearings (NEB-Hearings)
http://www.oilweek.com/news.asp?ID=8834
CALGARY (CP) _ The National Energy Board, Canada‘s federal energy regulator, says its hearings days increased six-fold last year thanks to a hot energy sector.
The NEB Annual reports says the regulator spent 141 days last year hearing applications for development to Canada‘s energy sector; nearly one-third devoted to the multi-billion dollar Mackenzie Gas Project.
The Unexplored Geothermal Silence: Neither Nukes nor Gas?
The point of this article is, unfortunately, to give advice to major corporations who are decimating nature at a nearly unparalleled rate a way to do so less horridly (like a smart bomb, the terminology is far more distracting than illuminating). Nonetheless, the developers who look at the single largest industrial project in history are salivating at ways to expand it into their own realm.
Whitecourt bids for nuclear plant
Whitecourt bids for nuclear plant
Upstart Calgary firm prepares to file applications for $6.2-billion Candu project
Jason Markusoff, The Edmonton Journal
http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=24103fc4-5cc5-4...
May 04, 2007
EDMONTON - An upstart Calgary energy firm is thrusting Alberta headlong into the nuclear debate, with plans to apply next month to build a $6.2-billion twin reactor in northern Alberta that would become the largest -- and most controversial -- power plant in the province.
Suzuki: Too few bright ideas
Too few bright ideas
David Suzuki
Editorial - Friday, May 04, 2007
http://www.thepeterboroughexaminer.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?cont...
When Environment Minister Baird announced his government's new climate change plan, I was in Toronto, getting ready to shoot some television commercials promoting energy conservation. I volunteered to do the commercials because I believe that everyone has to do his fair share in reducing the threat of global warming. Mr. Baird and Prime Minister Harper apparently disagree.
Colo. Grandmother tweaks energy giant
Colo. woman tweaks energy giant
Her website has prompted legal action from the Canadian company and increasing media attention.
By Andy Vuong
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5813210
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 05/03/2007 11:00:24 PM MDT
A Lakewood woman has drawn the ire of a Canadian energy giant after creating a website that sheds an unfavorable light on the environmental impacts of the company's oil-sands production.
'It doesn't feel the same'-- Oil Shale from the US Midwest
The oilshale investors should feel safe. The dwindling of energy reserves globally combined with the "instability" of the larger conventional oil fields left makes the price of petroleum safely unable to go down as it did in 1982 with the Saudis unleashing massive new volumes to undermine the USSR (it worked). That cannot happen today because the Saudis don't have such reserves.
So now, cutting the top off of Colorado, flipping it over and melting it down like lead is on the agenda. Good business sense is not necessarily good sense, and in this case it is suicide by petrol.
