Tarsands are an addiction
By SILVER DONALD CAMERON
Sun. Mar 15 - 6:22 AM
THE ALBERTA tarsands, says Andrew Nikiforuk, represent "a nation-changing event" which has made the rest of Canada into "a suburb of Fort McMurray." A distinguished Calgary-based journalist, Nikiforuk was in Nova Scotia in early March to discuss his new book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Greystone, $20).
The tarsands, boasts Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have made Canada "an emerging energy superpower." Because of them, Canada now produces more oil than Kuwait, derives nine per cent of its GDP from oil exports, and has overtaken Mexico and Saudi Arabia to become the No. 1 foreign supplier of oil to the United States.
Out of sight in the northern wilderness, the tarsands projects are tearing up a chunk of Alberta’s boreal forest roughly the size of Florida — but, says Nikiforuk, the sands have their black, gooey handprints on every part of the country, whether we recognize it or not.
Our dollar, for instance, is now a petro-currency, driven by the fluctuating value of oil. When oil hit $147 a barrel, our dollar was worth more than the U.S. greenback. When oil fell to $40, our dollar sank in tandem. That volatility hammers all our other industries, from coast to coast.
How can you cultivate world markets for lumber, airplanes, software or newsprint when your dollar may, in a few weeks, gain or lose 40 per cent?
The expansion of the tarsands is also driving the "deep integration" between Canada and the U.S., envisaged by the iniquitous Security and Prosperity Partnership. International corporations own the tarsands projects, and their pipelines run south to Texas and Oklahoma, but not east to Quebec and the Maritimes.
Atlantic Canada remains dependent on European and Middle Eastern oil, and on jobs in Alberta. The oil and the profits get exported. The mess stays in Canada.
And it’s a colossal mess. The tarsands represent the world’s largest energy project, largest capital project and largest construction project. They also represent, says University of Alberta water ecologist David Schindler, "the Guinness World Record for environmental disaster."
Bitumen is gouged out of the earth in strip mines the size of cities, totally destroying forests and wetlands that once absorbed vast quantities of carbon. Then the tar is separated from the sand using immense amounts of steam and hot water. Extraction thus creates three barrels of liquid waste for every barrel of bitumen — 400 million gallons every day, enough to fill 720 Olympic swimming pools.
This gunk contains salt, phenols, benzene, cyanide, arsenic and the like. Because it can’t be dumped into the Athabasca River, it’s stored in "ponds" on the riverbanks behind earthen walls 80 metres high. Nikiforuk calls them "raised toxic lakes." They cover 60 square kilometres. Some are 20 kilometres in length. They’re so big they’re visible from space.
Do they leak? Sure. Are they growing? Yes. Can we be sure those walls won’t rupture? Absolutely not.
And if they did, says Schindler, "the world would forever forget about the Exxon Valdez." The ponds already contain pollutants equivalent to many thousands of such supertankers — a standing threat to the whole Mackenzie River basin, the world’s third-largest.
Extraction also burns enormous amounts of relatively clean natural gas in order to produce a low-grade hydrocarbon — like "using caviar as a fertilizer to grow turnips," as one observer remarks. Along with the trucks, drag-lines, upgraders and so forth, all that combustion means that the tarsands emit almost as much greenhouse gas as the entire nation of Denmark, and are projected to produce more greenhouse gases than all the world’s volcanoes by 2020.
But the sands produce tons of jobs and billions of dollars in corporate and personal taxes. And that’s addictive.
These are the reasons that the government of Stephen Harper — an oilman’s son, based in Canada’s oil capital — is so cavalier about environmental matters.
This is why Canada lacks an energy policy, a water policy, an environmental policy, or a national debate about these issues — even as the tarsands transform Canada’s environmental record into one of the worst in the industrial world.
Visit Silver Donald Cameron’s website at www.silverdonaldcameron.ca.
