Animals

Liberal Opposition Criticize Alberta Inaction on Fort Chip Health
By LEA STORRY, SRJ Editor 17.DEC.07

Alberta Health and Wellness is not saying anything new in terms of a controversial report to come out of Fort Chipewyan. But the Alberta Liberal caucus thinks the Conservatives need to take a look at what they’re doing to the province.

“The government is not doing due diligence in Fort Chipewyan,” stated Laurie Blakeman, MLA Edmonton-Centre and Liberal shadow minister for health and wellness. “The government tests the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong people.”

A very significant statement, buried within the article below, produced for a North Dakota audience, in that is shows basically why EVERY SINGLE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ASSESSMENT is a crock of doo-doo. Cumulative Impacts are measured, or there is nothing to look at within a report. It's really quite simple-- if the report does not factor in all the ways in which the environment is impacted by development, then you don't have an impact of development to the environment report. Everything else then, is a smoke and mirrors game.

What the Tar Sands Need
Processing requires massive inputs of water, energy, land, labour
December 31, 2007
by Dru Oja Jay

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Water

For each barrel of oil produced from the tar sands, between two and 4.5 barrels of water is needed. The water is used in the process of extracting bitumen from the naturally occurring the tar sand. The bitumen is later "upgraded" into synthetic crude oil.

Aboriginal title at risk in British Columbia
Ann Rogers

Freedom Socialist Newspaper, Vol. 28, No. 6 December 2007 — January, 2008

Almost all of British Columbia in Canada is unceded indigenous territory. Its land and resources have not been given up by treaty, but occupied and stolen. In recent decades, a growing sovereignty movement, especially among young people, has offered fierce resistance to the continued theft and corporate development that threatens Native peoples’ means of survival and existence as nations.

[from: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388120.html]

It hasn’t been an easy week for the organisers of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award and the Bristol Museum, or their sponsor and proud wildlife destroyer— sugardaddy Shell Oil Company. All week, concerned individuals from around Bristol have been exposing the truth about Shell and the public institutions who are helping to greenwash them. $%@* SHELL!

This idea (and I use that term loosely) has been pushed for a long time, and is a disaster on so many levels. This was explicitly spelled out by Tom Berger himself 'back in the day' as a truly horrible idea. It is also illegal in Alaskan state law. The idea has not improved with age.

--M

'Over the top' pipeline could work for Alaska and Canada
COMPASS: Points of view from the community
By MICHAEL KENNY
Published: December 20th, 2007 06:44 AM

Samantha Power / samantha@vueweekly.com

http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=7708

Calculating the amount of sulfur dioxide in the air is not something
many Edmontonians think to do. But Maureen and Dennis Chichak make
sure they check it at their home on a daily basis.

The Chichak home is located just outside of Fort Saskatchewan, in the
330 square kilometres known as the Industrial Heartland, and with
their neighbours having grown over three decades to include Shell,
Agrium and Dow, they’re regularly exposed to sulfur dioxide, benzene

This region is one of the most spectacular, beautiful and nearly pristine regions I have ever seen in my life. Near the one gas pump and lodge on the 10 hour drive of the Dempster Highway called Eagle Plains, this place is one where the planet itself made me feel so tiny and insignificant, like an insect, a surreal experience that I have no parallel for. Now they want to plunder it for gas, gas they want to put into the Mackenzie Gas Project and send to Fort McMurray to make mock oil from tar and the devastation of more land than can be comprehended.

Shall we let them?

--M

Walruses Die; Global Warming Blamed

By DAN JOLING Associated Press Writer

Dec 14th, 2007 | ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- In what some scientists see as another
alarming consequence of global warming, thousands of Pacific walruses above
the Arctic Circle were killed in stampedes earlier this year after the
disappearance of sea ice caused them to crowd onto the shoreline in
extraordinary numbers.

The deaths took place during the late summer and fall on the Russian side of
the Bering Strait, which separates Alaska from Russia. "It was a pretty

December 7, 2007 BY ELECTRONIC AND U.S. MAIL
Ms. Elizabeth Orlando
OES/ENV Room 2657
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520
Re: Enbridge Pipeline Projects; Alberta Clipper
Comments of the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy

Dear Ms. Orlando:

These comments are submitted on behalf of the Minnesota Center for
Environmental Advocacy (“MCEA”). MCEA is a Minnesota-based non-profit
environmental organization whose mission is to use law, science, and research to
preserve and protect Minnesota’s natural resources, wildlife, and the health of its