Time has come to defend environment
Posted 1 day ago
Sir: Are Canadians going to stand idly by while the American czars of the Alberta Oil Sands and our politicians play Russian Roulette with their health and their future? Will Vice-President Dick Cheney and the Americans continue to buy Canada's super dirty oil in desperation? Will the horrendous environmental destruction wreaked by the Alberta Tar Sands Projects and their colossal impact on climate change qualify as Canada's "Crime Against Humanity?"
Syncrude, Suncor, Shell Canada, Exxon, Total and other companies are recovering oil from the Alberta Tar Sands on an unimaginable scale. Huge amounts of natural gas and huge amounts of water are used in the process. Huge amounts of greenhouse gases are emitted into the atmosphere.
Oil recovery rates are relatively low with the current state-of-the-art technology and costs are high. At $96 per barrel, however, it is well worthwhile and provides the U.S. with a secure oil supply to squander unencumbered under our NAFTA agreement.
These companies are collectively the single largest wasters of Canada's natural gas and water resources. As an industry sector, they are the single largest energy consumer, air and water polluter and greenhouse gas emitter, and inflict the greatest environmental destruction on this country.
Toxic wastewaters collected in ever-larger holding ponds are killing waterfowl and other wildlife. A plan to dispose of these toxic waters does not exist. Infrastructure shortfalls and social disruptions are mushrooming.
On the plus side, these corporate oil giants collectively are the single largest contributor to Canada's current economic growth.
Prime Minister Harper and Environment Minister Baird, after a cozy lunch with the Alberta oil patch czars, hammered out an environmental gem of an agreement no absolute greenhouse gas emission cap while a Conservative government is in power in Ottawa. Since then, Canada's provincial premiers conferred at an Eastern Canada retreat and meekly agreed to follow suit.
The premiers, Harper and Baird will be long gone from the political scene when the permafrost in our far-north melts at an accelerated clip and releases methane, a gas 20 times more potent in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, and in volumes that will make those experienced in the Alberta Tar Sands today seem puny; when more and more frequent boreal forest fires will burn and turn "wet carbon" into massive volumes of carbon dioxide; when huge stretches of North America's grasslands will dry up and will no longer sequester carbon; when the global warming freight train will be increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to stop.
But, who am I to paint such a negative scenario when an astute Harper, an optimistic Baird and our progressive provincial premiers lay the foundation for yet another boom in economic growth, prosperity and human progress for Canadians? The forces of blind greed and consumption insanity prevail again. We are truly pathetic stewards of our natural environment and Planet Earth.
It is time for the young of this country to reflect on this and to take bold and decisive action to save their future.
Klaus Keunecke
http://www.theobserver.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=874477
