Energy and how it is captured and consumed is barely viable in tar sands production. While the amount of oil in places such as the tar sands in Alberta or the Orinoco Belt in Venezuela may have deposits of similar size to the reserves of countries such as Saudi Arabia or Iraq, the return of new energy after expending energy in production is not even close. In Iraq, the process of using one barrel of oil generates 100 new barrels. In the tar sands, estimates of 3 to 1 and even as low as 1.5 to 1 have been made. Offsetting the net energy loss would require minimally 25-30 tar sands facilities for one Saudi plant operating at the same capacity.
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/2007/ing/f140507i.html
Fidel Castro
May 14, 2007
María Luisa Mendonça brought to the meeting in Havana, a powerful documentary film on the subject of manual sugarcane cutting in Brazil.
As I did in my previous reflection, I have written a summary using María Luisa’s own paragraphs and phrases. It goes as follows:
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:
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/
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 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
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.
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. 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.
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.
"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
