Health

Grandma vs. the Oil-Sands Mine
By Kevin Graham
E/The Environmental Magazine
September/October, 2007

Eighty-five-year-old grandmothers aren’t typically subject to
censorship, but Liz Moore is no ordinary grandma. After touring an
oil-sands operation in Canada, Moore returned to her home in Colorado
and began researching the mining process. Eventually, she spent
$3,600 on a website that chronicles the destructive environmental
impacts of oil-sands mining.
“I was appalled at what I saw—the devastation of the land,” she says

Canada: Losing Water Through NAFTA
by Stephen Leahy
Global Research, September 23, 2007

Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada lost control over its energy resources. Now, with “NAFTA-plus”, it could also lose control over its freshwater resources, say experts.

Canada’s water is on the trade negotiating table despite widespread public opposition and assurances by Canadian political leaders, said Adèle Hurley, director of the University of Toronto’s Programme on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Studies.

Closing Edmonton's Tent City

EDMONTON — It’s a difficult feat to be homeless but still have a space that feels like a home, but that’s exactly what life in Edmonton’s tent city has felt like for Claude Parisee over the past month.

Surrounded by the books he reads to pass the time, and secure in the knowledge that guards watched his belongings and kept unwanted troublemakers from causing a stir, the former resident of Hull, Que., said life has largely been good in the makeshift community, which was set up in May and at times swelled to 80 tents and up to 200 people.

Booming Alberta crippled by wildcat strikes by frustrated tradesmen
September 16, 2007

EDMONTON (CP) — Alberta's booming construction landscape is being disrupted with pickets and protests as a complicated labour law that hobbles building trade unions from striking is being attacked by hundreds of workers.

The giant Petro-Canada upgrader project in Edmonton was crippled for several days last week after unionized workers refused to cross picket lines set up by carpenters and other tradesman seeking higher wages but unable to stage a legal strike.

Peak Oil and Gender

Jon Lebkowsky
September 17, 2007 8:27 AM

Kurt Cobb at Energy Bulletin wonders whether peak oil is a gender issue or, as he says, a "guy thing." (Thanks to Paul Robbins for the pointer.)

Pickets vow they will ignore order to stop
Jamie Hall, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Friday, September 14

EDMONTON - Undaunted by the prospect of arrest and fines, scores of protesters vowed Thursday to continue a crusade that has disrupted work at more than a dozen construction sites and cost oilsands contractors millions of dollars.

Union members who again formed "information lines" early Thursday were served with copies of a cease-and-desist order issued on Wednesday night, which bars picketing at any construction or maintenance site.

Newfoundlanders claim company has left them stranded in Alberta
JAMIE BAKER
The Telegram

What was supposed to be a tasty piece of the Alberta employment pie quickly turned into a sour serving of severance for a small group of Newfoundland workers who found themselves on their own in the oil-rich western province with no job and no way home.

The group had been working on a 20 days on, eight days off schedule for one of the many contractors at the huge Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (CNRL) Horizon oil sands project near Fort McMurray.

Shifting oil sands
Telegraph UK Magazine
15/09/2007

In the hunt for new fuel sources, a vast swath of western Canada is being mined for its precious 'oil sands'. Jack Fairweather visits the centre of the new gold rush. Photographs by Jonas Bendiksen

Donnie Leblanc is surprisingly nonchalant for a man who has just blown $20,000 on a two-day trip to Las Vegas. But then, since he came to northern Canada, he hasn't had to worry too much about money - and there is plenty more where that came from. In a few months' time he will have saved enough to hit the casinos again.

Oil industry 'sleepwalking into crisis'
Former Shell chairman says that diminishing resources could push price of crude to $150 a barrel
By David Strahan and Andrew Murray-Watson
Published: 16 September 2007 // Independent UK

Lord Oxburgh, the former chairman of Shell, has issued a stark warning that the price of oil could hit $150 per barrel, with oil production peaking within the next 20 years.

It is important that the industry PR men & women are able to believe their own press-- but it is equally important that they are not believed by those of us who wish to counter their stories.