Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Economics

Economics drive tar sands operations. Record highs in oil prices, though still fluctuating, will make tar sand oil ‘economical’ (read: profitable) well into the future. Government subsidies to this environmentally disastrous process remain in place from a time when the federal government was sponsoring research into the possibility of recovering this oil. Stock prices of tar sands developers grow the more conventional oil is scarce.

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.

National Climate Change Plans Come Nowhere Near What We Need to Do

"Meanwhile, Canada falls farther behind in its rail infrastructure, continues to build sprawling, car-dependent, single-family houses on local farmland, and continues to invest in the appallingly destructive Alberta Tar Sands, Harper's home turf and financial base.

Canada cannot do its part to save the lives of those millions of people who will be victims of climate change until it decarbonizes its economy. That means no more Tar Sands and no more automobile suburbs."

National Climate Change Plans Come Nowhere Near What We Need to Do
Posted 2007/05/01 | By: Ryan McGreal

Coast Tsimshian to take 'Direct Action' against Port Construction in Prince Rupert

This new port development, lauded as a part of a Canadian strategy to open up a Gateway to the Asia Pacific, is all a part of the new plans to make northern BC-- in Prince Rupert and further into the shoreline at what is commonly called Kitimat-- a major hub for bringing in diluent fuels from Russia while shipping Tarsand mock oil to China and California.

TransCanada prefers Coal Power to Nuclear; Ruling nothing out for Tar Sands Power

TransCanada considers Alberta nuclear source
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/208153
Apr 27, 2007 07:02 PM
Dina O'Meara
Canadian press

CALGARY–Pipeline and power giant TransCanada Corp. (TSX: TRP) said today coal is still king in Alberta, but that building a nuclear power plant in Western Canada could be an option in the future.

"The way we look at it, nuclear is primarily an option for supplying electricity demand in Alberta, long-term" Hal Kvisle, president and chief executive said, following the company's annual meeting.

TransCanada to extend reach of Keystone right to the East Coast

Yet another great example of how impossible it is for a democratic discussion for the people of all of North America to be commenced without a realistic environmental impacts assessment from the tarsands-- an assessment that must take place for the entire continent, necessary components therein, and all of the "natural extensions" that will "guarantee the lifetime" of this or that pipeline (For example in the Mackenzie Valley-- stage one of the pipeline would ultimately lead to a decimation of the Colville Lake/Sahtu region through a gazillion and one gas pads).

[Tarsand Mock] Oiling up the Coast: Proposed tanker route into Kitimat.

[Tarsand Mock] Oiling up the Coast
Proposed tanker route into Kitimat.
Harper shrugs off 35-year ban on risky tanker traffic.
By David Beers April 30, 2007
TheTyee.ca

People on British Columbia's north coast have come to rely on a couple of assumptions.

One, oil tankers are forbidden to sail close to their jagged shore. Too risky.

Two, Albertans and their oil schemes are a safe, comfortable distance away.