Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.
It should come as no surprise that this move is "welcomed" in such reactionary fashion; radicals act, reactionary anti-movements react. Here is just such an ideological reaction below.
Orinoco Seizure by Hugo Chavez Threatens Global Oil Stability
Martin Hutchinson on May 18th, 2007
http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/orinoco/2007/05/18/
Whitecourt is a small town near massive (mock) oil development. It's also a town known for helping establish the "precedent" of industrial development. If the nuclear proponents get one reactor approved somewhere to feed their insatiable drive for (tar sands mock) oil, then it will grow politically available ten thousand times higher, and our job gets worse.
What shall we do?
--M
Energy Alberta talks nuclear power with Whitecourt residents
This article is quite notable in that it comes from Qatar, and it is basically a Middle Eastern tip of the hat to peak oil. As the world continues to search for new sources of bitumen to make [mock] oil from the tarsands, this description of the mini rush for nation-states and companies to diversify their portfolios to include tarsands oil is yet more indication less and less people in positions to know about it believe that oil prices will drop below "economical levels" for the tarsands. That is roughly $30 barrels.
--M
More firms moving into costly oil sands
PUC To Hear Oil Pipeline Proposal
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=0,56895
05/09/2007
The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission has scheduled four public hearings in June along the route of a proposed oil pipeline that would run through the eastern part of the state.
The TransCanada Keystone Pipeline would carry oil from a terminal at Hardisty, Alberta, to Illinois to supply US refineries. The 1,800-mile pipeline would enter the United States in North Dakota and also cross South Dakota, Nebraska, a corner of Kansas, and Missouri before reaching Illinois.
The SPP, let us not over-state things, is designed to allow the fastest use of tarsands oil while moving goods and other trasport items, including 'temporary workers' across borders that are no longer free for travel minus a passport. One giant set of rules built up to achieve the maximum flow of goods, in particular energy, while restricting the same among people.
The sovereignty of energy and capital.
--M
Wide-ranging accord with U.S., Mexico could dwarf NAFTA, MPs hear
http://www.jonesreport.com/articles/270407_dwarf_nafta.html
Don Butler / CanWest News | April 27, 2007
Choke point for oil sands may be water shortage
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
May 11, 2007
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070511.TARSANDS11/TPS...
The amount of water available in Northern Alberta isn't sufficient to accommodate both the needs of burgeoning oil sands development and preserve the Athabasca River, contends a study issued jointly yesterday by the University of Toronto and the University of Alberta.
OST statement on Rally for Housing at Edmonton Legislature
Today, May 17, 2007 there was an emergency rally held in Edmonton in support of those who are increasingly being blown away by Alberta’s “boom”. As housing prices continue to skyrocket while available housing plummets, workers can no longer even find places to live right at the “Ground Zero” of the operations of the Tar sands near Fort McMurray.
Edmontonians have seen unlimited rent increases every year, with no end in sight.
"Canada gets pollution, US gets oil and jobs":
Critical questions need to be answered on Keystone, energy union tells NEB
EDMONTON, AB, May 16 /CNW Telbec/ - The entire oil and gas industry is
being restructured with the construction of the Keystone pipeline, and neither
the National Energy Board, nor the provincial or federal governments
understand the implications for oil and gas supply, jobs, the environment and
more.
That statement from Canada's largest union of energy workers today as it
joins with the Alberta Federation of Labour, the Parkland Institute and Dr.
Gordon Laxer
Political Economy Professor, and The Director
Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta
May 10, 2007
Introduction
Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide research network at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. We are supported by over 600 individual members and dozens of progressive organizations. Parkland Institute conducts research and education for the public good.
My remarks are on the energy and climate change implications of the SPP.
Why No Energy Security for Canadians?
Teenagers should be working in the land of cocaine, fake pee, escorts for everyone, and live only for today in a small town with smog greater than a big city.
I'm sending my kids right now!
--M
Teens wooed by Fort McMurray employers
Last Updated: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 | 12:05 PM MT
CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/05/15/teens-fortmcmurray.html
Teenagers looking for summer work in Fort McMurray, Alta., are being wooed with fat wages, big bonuses and even housing allowances.
