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Canada’s Tar Sands – 'Dirty, Toxic and Huge'
COPENHAGEN - (IPS/TerraViva) - A small band of protesters stood in the
cold outside the Canadian Embassy in Copenhagen Saturday night to shine
a small spotlight of attention on the fact that Canada is home to the
Alberta tar sands, the world’s largest and possibly most polluting
industrial project on the planet.
“It’s not just the huge CO2 emissions, it’s the water pollution, destruction of the forests, impacts on the food supply and all of the cancers the native people are getting,” said Janet Payne, an activist from Britain. “It’s dirty, toxic and huge.”
Thousands of square kilometers of tar-laden soil and sands underlying Canada’s boreal forests are being mined, and then boiled with millions of liters of steaming water to extract the tar to produce 2.7 million barrels of oil a day, mostly to feed the insatiable appetite of the United States.
“I feel strongly Canada is getting away with this environmental catastrophe. It’s time to put a spotlight on this,” Payne said.
She had participated in the day’s big march, saying it was like a music festival but with a strong message to the world.
“Everyone should be here,” she said. “Climate change is affecting everything in the world – we all should be standing up.”
At the end of the interview, three vans of Danish police pulled up and surrounded the group of eight protesters, who were simply shivering on the sidewalk holding two small banners. The police, in full riot gear, demanded to know what was going on.
Assuming this reporter was the leader, they asked what the protest was about and were told about the tar sands project. After the mandatory identification checks, permission was given to continue the protest – and two officers said they’d join in once their shift was finished.
Maybe there is hope in Copenhagen.
14 Comments so far
Show AllNothing will come out of Copenhagen other than lip service and business as usual.
Read "The Monkey Wrench Gang" for ideas on what to do to stop the tar sand scandal. We need more people out getting their hands dirty and less people holding up signs of protest and staying neat.
The importation of Tars Sands Oil was not approved of until after Obama took power.
I think that's not true. What you may be referring to are restrictions for purchase of this oil for use by the US military.
From http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=44354
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...section 526 of the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which bars U.S. federal agencies such as the military and the postal service from buying synthetic or unconventional fuels if they create more greenhouse gases emissions than conventional fuels.
"It was just one of those funny stories in Washington where this section [526] was overlooked," Greg Stringham from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers told IPS. "I don't think Canadians or oil companies knew about this section."
Between January and September of this year, Canadian oil lobbyists pushed hard to have section 526 amended or repealed, Barratt-Brown told IPS. Unlike other provinces, Alberta maintains its own special interests office in Canada's embassy in Washington.
In February 2008, Canada's ambassador to the United States, Michael Wilson, wrote to the U.S. defence secretary arguing that Canadian tar sands oil should not be included in the interpretation of this section.
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I don't know the latest status on this, though. From what I understand, oil export to the USA from Alberta tar sands has been going on for a while - certainly at a large scale after NAFTA was signed.
Wasn't Tar Sands Oil the primary reason NAFTA was devised (behind closed doors)?
While I am fundamentally opposed to the scope and scale of Tar sands development some perspective is in order.
If the enite industry shut down tomorrow, the impact on the worlds total greenhouse gas emissions would be .01 percent LESS.
Thats 1/10th of one percent.
GwNorth, that may be true (though I'm not sure). But what's happening now is that the problem is also political. There's simply no way to bring countries like China and India (and also Brazil, South Africa) on board without the developed countries taking the first step.
You say you are opposed to "the scope and scale of Tar sands development", but you seem to be repeating a Tory talking point (I'm not saying you are a Tory - it's not important anyway). On a per capita basis, Canada's emissions are way too high. Canada is part of the G8 - supposedly the 8 richest, most developed countries. So if anyone could afford to cut down emissions, it's these G8 countries. Emissions of China, India and other countries WILL go up in the short run before they start to cut down - simply out of necessity, as they still have so many people living in poverty in many countries. Starting with the developed and rich countries is NOT a new concept - that's exactly what was agreed upon in Kyoto in 1997.
While EU as a whole had a target of about 6%, Germany made the bulk of its reduction - over 20% below 1990 levels, so that helped some of the other countries to actually increase their emissions while still meeting EU targets. (Some would say that German reunification allowed Germany to reduce emissions because East German industry was inefficient. But hey, they could have argued in the reverse - saying that East Germany needed development, so their emissions would go up - but they didn't do that.) If anything, making bigger commitments to reduce emissions should be EASIER for the G8 countries - because per capita emissions are way too high and there's ample scope for reducing emissions. Sure, some industries and some companies may be affected - and it's these entities that are holding up the entire country from moving forward towards a more efficient, sustainable model. Whatever technological and manufacturing expertise that already exists for renewable energy systems is being kept suppressed by these polluting industries - due to market and regulatory distortions. Meanwhile other countries are moving ahead with developing, testing and improving these technologies. So, countries like Canada and the US will be forced to import these advanced renewable energy systems in the future (maybe even from China) if they don't get their act together today. Because technological development elsewhere is not going to stand still while all this haggling and dodging is going on.
Even during the last week, Canadian representative at Copenhagen talks about Canada's emissions being 2% of the global levels, not mentioning that Canada has only 0.05% (or less?) of the global population. The time for haggling is way past, and it's time for countries to show some leadership.
If all the rich countries had followed through with their promise to cut down by a modest 5-6% below 1990 levels, by now EVERY country would be under pressure to commit to either reductions or a highly efficient path to development. The capitalist CEOs and corporate boards have acted extremely irresponsibly during this period of post-Kyoto. While screwing their own citizens by shipping manufacturing jobs overseas, they also caused increased emissions during the same period at home. And now they say jobs are at stake. It's time to expose their criminal game.
The purpose is to demonstrate just how large the problem is.
The number IS accurate. Canada contributes 2 percent of total greenhouse gases thus about 1/50th of the worlds total.
Thus if you shutdown the entire tar sands industry the total drop in emissions in Canada would be 50 times that 1/10th of 1 percent which is .50 percent of Canadas total emissions.
The Kyoto target was to cut emissions by 5 percent by 2012. There no way they will meet this target BUT a total shutdown of the tarsands would still be a shortfall of 10x.
Now you have to factor in adding of greenhouse gases that would result from having to ship that production from overseas via tanker to both Canada and the USA in lieu of tarsands production. I read somewhere that world shipping traffic adds more in greenhouse gases then the sum total of all automobiles. (My memory may be faulty here and I can not find that article)
This shows that the scope of this problem is tremendous. A Fundamental rethink of how economies operate is needed and NOT just a cut in emissions. There is no way the required numbers can be achieved without that transformation.
"The number IS accurate. Canada contributes 2 percent of total greenhouse gases thus about 1/50th of the worlds total."
Yes, but Canada represents just 1/1000 of the world's population. That means that the average Canadian creates 20 times his share of global greenhouse gases.
You think small countries should be able to produce as much greenhouse gasses as China? Is that the benchmark? Because if it was, all China would have to do is to break up into several smaller nations and they could fry the atmosphere with hundreds of their own tar-sands projects. As it is now, the Chinese people (who are vastly more important than the state) create less than 10% of the GHG per capita as those fresh-air Canadians.
To try to bury this national disgrace by burying it in statistics is both criminal and intentionally dyslexic.
Obviously you can not read or have not bothered to. I have stated clearly that the problem is much bigger then just shutting down the tar sands. Indeed I overstated the impact of the tarsands by a factor of about 4 since the kyoto numbers were based on 1991 emissions. (Meaning shutting down all tar sands operations will leave us short of the kytoto protocols by a factor of 40)
Go back and read what I said and stop trying to put words in my mouth.
Did you BOTHER to read what I said or were you more interested in inventing an arguement and claiming I said something else?
What hope for change exists when both Harper and Ignatieff support the tar sands disaster?
The title of this article was missing two words after "dirty, toxic and huge" - absolutely necessary.
Yes, it sucks that oil sands production is a filthy business but the process will go on. Technology will get better and, hopefully, reduction in pollution can occur.
Simple fact of the matter is we need the oil.
Alberta just announced that they would not oppose the building of nuclear power plants.
So now not only will Alberta be renowned for being the home of the Tarsands, but now to potential Three Mile Islands and Chernobyls. Because the Alberta Government has said if anyone wants to build a nuke plant, they can. No matter what design.
Idiots.
I think this has been proposed for a while now. They probably need the nuclear power plants as an alternative to burning natural gas (a "clean", high-grade fuel) for producing steam used to make crude oil from tar sand. The river water will continue to be used, though.
This has gone from proposal to green light.