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This is a guest post by Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of World on the Edge.
As the debate unfolds about whether to build a 1,711-mile pipeline to carry crude oil from the tar sands in Canada to refineries in Texas, the focus is on the oil spills and carbon emissions that inevitably come with it. But we need to ask a more fundamental question.
Do we really need that oil? Continue reading
Blogpost by Phil Radford, Daryl Hannah
Greenpeace protesters make their voices heard with regard to the XL Pipeline.
President Obama stood up to Big Oil and its puppets in Congress and denied a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline yesterday. This is encouraging news for the communities whose air and water would have been directly threatened by this pipeline, from Canada to Nebraska to the Gulf Coast. And it’s an important piece of the struggle to avert a runaway climate catastrophe. But since the Keystone XL has become a pitched political battle, this announcement is also an encouraging affirmation of the power of people, creative protest, and grassroots organizing in the face of the entrenched power and big bucks of the oil industry.
by Rex Weyler
At dawn on the opening day of the UN climate summit in Durban, South Africa, Greenpeace take to Parliament Hill to brand the Harper government 'CLIMATE FAIL' of epic proportions. Credit: Eye in the sky/Greenpeace
At the dawn of the 21st century a new political regime has transformed Canada from global hero – once standing up for peace, people, and nature – to global criminal, plunging into war, eroding civil rights, and destroying environments.
Our Greenpeace Organizing Term students have just returned from their expedition north of the border to a place named Fort McMurray in Alberta, Canada. One of their reasons for traveling was to ‘bear witness’ to the environmental destruction of this region.
Connor, who has been working with the students this semester, sent me his account. He writes:
The US gets more oil from Canada than any other country, if you haven’t heard, and more and more of it is coming from the largest industrial project in the world, probably the world’s largest environmental disaster site.
Now that it is obvious that peak oil is upon us, meaning that we have reached the peak of easy oil extraction, alternative forms of obtaining oil are becoming economically viable. One such form is the mining, filtering, upgrading and refining of Alberta’s tar sands into synthetic oil.
Getting oil from tar sands is environmental genocide. These deposits are located in three main chunks of Alberta, and are altogether the size of Florida. To get at the tar sands, the ancient boreal forest that naturally covers the landscape is completely leveled, and all of the land is dug up.
Let me emphasize that- a 10,000 year old forest ecosystem is rapidly being transformed into a desert. As the trees are cut and the soil dries, stored CO2 is released into the atmosphere, habitat for both animals and people is wiped away, and global climate change gets that much closer to the tipping point we’re desperately trying to avoid. The tar sands compounds the problem through an overwhelmingly intensive mining process that poisons everything for miles and miles around.
Recently, I went to the main site of tar sands mining operations, which as stated above takes place in the Fort McMurray area in the Athabasca river region. Along the way, I finally was able to see and appreciate the beauty of the boreal forest, a vast expanse of distinct, deep green conifers. From the road, I knew that there was no way for me to fully appreciate the seemingly endless miles of this gorgeous forest that spans the entire continent, but I got a taste, and it was delicious.
The flavor turned more than sour pretty suddenly. Eventually, the boreal disappears and the landscape turns gray and dead. Tailing ‘ponds’ (the size of lakes), full of the industry’s toxic chemicals, replace the trees. Scarecrows are placed along the edges, and propane cannons are constantly blasting in order to keep wildlife from venturing into these deadly lakes. The smell of pollution is overwhelming- I could feel an unsafe burn from the acrid air with every breath. A dirty haze covers the sky, billowing from smokestacks all along the landscape and invading the territory of clouds. Piles of black sulfur, discarded sand, and other desolate material is scattered as far as the eye can see. No more green boreal. This place has been completely transformed into something more barren than the moon. The tar sands have brought new meaning to the word ‘rape’.
Seeing this was more than I could stand, and I wish I could fully describe what it is like to stand there, in a place that is devoid of any feeling. It looks, smells and sounds like a war zone, with the constant blasting of propane, thick smog in the air, and dead landscape. All I could think was, “I can’t believe this used to be the boreal forest,” and “I can’t believe that people could do this.” It was a truly horrifying place to be; it made the bottom of my stomach drop out, and I don’t know if I could have kept from crying even if I tried.
It is important for me to try to get this reality out there to people- I knew about the tar sands long before visiting it, saw the awful pictures, read the awful facts and got angry, but none of that could get the desperation of the situation across to me. My account won’t have any sizeable fraction of the impact of actually seeing that deathly landscape, but I can at least try to add a more personal touch to the situation. Please check out a couple of the links and videos here and familiarize yourself with the problem. With a climate that is already spiraling out of control, the tar sands is the most disheartening thing to see for anyone trying to protect what is left of the planet as we know it.
You can go here to find out more and take action: Greenpeace Canada Tar Sands campaign
While Shell is portraying a green image in its ads, the company is investing heavily in increasingly destructive practices. Shell is a lead company in the business of dirty and unconventional fuels, and is heavily invested in the tar sands located in Alberta, Canada [1]. The tar sands holds the second largest deposit of oil reserves in the world, and Shell is spending billions of dollars every year to make sure they remain a leader in both developing and processing the tar sands. They are also quickly increasing investments in the tar sands and upgrading capacity.
Extracting oil from the tar sands has a huge impact on the environment and climate change. The production of oil from the tar sands is responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions (3 to 5 times the amount of GHG emissions as conventional oil), water depletion and pollution, toxic contamination of the surrounding ecosystem and local communities, as well as the destruction of the Boreal Forest. The tar sands are buried under thousands of square miles of the Boreal Forest and this critical forest ecosystem, often referred to as the “lungs of the our planet” is being clearcut so that Shell and other oil companies can access the tar. The Boreal Forest is a storehouse of carbon, holding more than 47 billion tonnes in its trees and soil. Shell Canada’s President and CEO, Clive Mather, didn’t seemed phased about the destruction his operations are having on the environment when he talked about Shell’s expansion projects; he put it like this, “Shell has some of the best land and minable ore quality in the Athabasca area. With billions of barrels of bitumen in place, we see clear potential for sustained profitable growth .” Profitable growth indeed . . . but at what expense?
Tar sands development is the single largest contributor to the increase in climate change in Canada, accounting for 40 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year [2]. By 2011 the tar sands are estimated to emit twice that amount, and more than triple that by 2020. Tar sands is one of the most environmentally destructive and greenhouse gas intensive ways to extract oil. By continuing to develop and expand production of the tar sands Shell is not only diverting us off the path to clean energy but also directly contributing to climate change.
In August 2008, Shell was found guilty of misleading the public over its tar sands operations. The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the company should not have used the word “sustainable” when describing its Canadian tar sands operations. The ASA ruled that the Shell ad had breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims.
[1] Shell website
While Shell is portraying a green image in its ads, the company is investing heavily in increasingly destructive practices. Shell is a lead company in the business of dirty and unconventional fuels, and is heavily invested in the tar sands located in Alberta, Canada [1]. The tar sands holds the second largest deposit of oil reserves in the world, and Shell is spending billions of dollars every year to make sure they remain a leader in both developing and processing the tar sands. They are also quickly increasing investments in the tar sands and upgrading capacity.
Extracting oil from the tar sands has a huge impact on the environment and climate change. The production of oil from the tar sands is responsible for major greenhouse gas emissions (3 to 5 times the amount of GHG emissions as conventional oil), water depletion and pollution, toxic contamination of the surrounding ecosystem and local communities, as well as the destruction of the Boreal Forest. The tar sands are buried under thousands of square miles of the Boreal Forest and this critical forest ecosystem, often referred to as the “lungs of the our planet” is being clearcut so that Shell and other oil companies can access the tar. The Boreal Forest is a storehouse of carbon, holding more than 47 billion tonnes in its trees and soil. Shell Canada’s President and CEO, Clive Mather, didn’t seemed phased about the destruction his operations are having on the environment when he talked about Shell’s expansion projects; he put it like this, “Shell has some of the best land and minable ore quality in the Athabasca area. With billions of barrels of bitumen in place, we see clear potential for sustained profitable growth .” Profitable growth indeed . . . but at what expense?
Tar sands development is the single largest contributor to the increase in climate change in Canada, accounting for 40 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year [2]. By 2011 the tar sands are estimated to emit twice that amount, and more than triple that by 2020. Tar sands is one of the most environmentally destructive and greenhouse gas intensive ways to extract oil. By continuing to develop and expand production of the tar sands Shell is not only diverting us off the path to clean energy but also directly contributing to climate change.
In August 2008, Shell was found guilty of misleading the public over its tar sands operations. The British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the company should not have used the word “sustainable” when describing its Canadian tar sands operations. The ASA ruled that the Shell ad had breached rules on substantiation, truthfulness and environmental claims.
[1] Shell website