Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Forests

Forests lose more trees and habitat to pipeline “right of way” cuts and tar pit building than to clearcuts. With minor variation, pipelines go the direct route. Through the strip mining of the land that contains tarsand petroleum and through pipeline construction to accomodate, only the Amazon Basin in Brazil would see larger rates of deforestation than the Boreal forest cover surrendered to the tarsands. Roads often accompany pipelines, as do various other developments. Hundreds of thousands of miles of forests, all combined, have been lost to infrastructure built to accommodate tarsands operations. Now the industry wants to build two approximately 1200 km long Mackenzie and Gateway pipelines as well as 2700 km's from Alaska's North Slope to accomodate tarsand oil production.

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Ontario, Quebec say they won’t shoulder tar sands burden

Ontario, Quebec say they won’t shoulder oilsands burden
By Kelly Cryderman, Calgary Herald
December 13, 2009

COPENHAGEN — Delegations from Ontario and Quebec wasted no time before differentiating their position from the federal government’s after arriving Sunday at the climate change conference in Copenhagen — declaring they weren’t going to carry higher emission-reduction burdens for the sake of oilsands expansion in the Western provinces.

The Silence of the North: when the tailings ponds let go....

Ingmar Lee writes:

In the context of all the hot-air being emitted at Copenhagen, I offer this
piece:

I've just read a fantastic piece of historic Canadian literature, (The
Silence of the North) -a memoir by pioneer trappers-wife, Olive A.
Fredrickson, as told to author Ben East. She reminisces from her experiences
in the north of Alberta and BC in the 1920's when all was wild up there. Her
travels in the then wilderness took her all through the area around Fort
McMurray, now the epicentre of the Alberta Tar Sands planetary blight.

Burn a Tree to Save the Planet? The Crazy Logic Behind Biomass

By Joshua Frank, AlterNet. Posted December 8, 2009.

It might seem crazy that anyone would think the incineration of wood and its byproducts are a green substitute for toxic fuels such as coal. Think again.

Fire up your chainsaw and cut down a tree. Not so you can decorate it for the Christmas holiday; so you can set it on fire to help combat global warming. That's right, burn a tree to save the planet. That's the notion behind biomass, the new (yet ancient) technology of burning wood to produce energy.

Enbridge Gateway Pipeline review draws criticism

Pipeline review draws criticism
Environmentalists say scope of hearings is too narrow
By Judith Lavoie, Times Colonist
December 5, 2009

Federal terms of reference for assessing the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline brought instant condemnation from environmental groups yesterday.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and the National Energy Board announced they will hold open forums on the pipeline, which would run from the Alberta oilsands to a port at Kitimat.

Wet’suwet’en layout opposition of Enbridge gateway

Wet’suwet’en layout opposition of Enbridge gateway
By Rikki Schierer - Houston Today

Published: November 25, 2009
Updated: November 27, 2009

The Wet’suwet’en are outright opposed for the proposed development of Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines.

That was the message from Dave deWit, the Wet’suwet’en’s Natural Resources Manager, who was on the panel of speakers at last Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole meeting where representatives from Northern Gateway, Pembina Institute and the National Energy Board were on hand to discuss the proposed pipeline project.

Enbridge Holding Private Meetings along BC "Corridor".

Enbridge advisory meeting to be held
December 01, 2009
Terrace Standard

Enbridge Northern Gateway will be holding meetings in Kitimat and Smithers next week, some that will be open to the general public and some that won’t.

Enbridge’s multi-billion dollar proposed pipeline project would transport oil and condensate through twin pipelines between Alberta and Kitimat, with the oil being shipped overseas.

Peak Everything

By Gunther Ostermann

28 November, 2009
http://www.countercurrents.org/ostermann281109.htm
Countercurrents.org

The former media mogul Ted Turner challenged us in 1992 with this statement:' If we don't make the right choices after we have all the information, then we don't deserve to live."

Well, we have more than enough information. Oil and gas, the stored sun's energy, which took hundreds of millions of years to incubate, gone forever within this century. We are, in fact, approaching PEAK EVERYTHING.