Oil Sands
There's a very ugly-but-true article in today's WaPo about the Alberta oil sands and what the extraction of the oil is doing to the environment. It's disturbing for what it says about the degradation of the environment, and for what it says about Canadians.
For years I've chided my Canadian friends for their willingness to pack up for Cuba any chance they got. Cuba? Sure. It's a top vacation destination - cheap and close and sunny. And the service is great - why wouldn't it be? The serving staff are captives of Castro's delusional communist sweat shop.
Sure, the US has always had some nasty 'friends' in the world - even before Georgie made America the nasty friend that others shied away from. And Canada was the good guy country that invented UN peacekeeping, and could always look down from a perch way up in the moral high ground.
Except when there was a buck to be made in Cuba - with no American competition. Canadians are only too happy to make that economic connection - with tourism and every other possible means of trade.
So it's not that some people are bad, it's that you beat us to them and compete with us for their business. Except in Cuba. Where we rock.
Which brings us to the oil sands. I'm a huge Al Gore fan - always have been, even when he was bashed for being made of wood (which I think he still is) and falsely accused of self-aggrandizement. And he should have fought harder in 2000.
Anyway, Gore's line is 'environmentalism with growth.' You don't have to pollute the world in order to make a buck - quite the contrary. You can make your bucks by creating clean technologies which replace dirty ones.
Back to the oil sands. They're filthy. They're years ahead of the pollution that was expected. They've created toxic ponds that - and this is true - they have to guard with flame throwers to keep migratory birds away. The second largest dam in the world is keeping this sludge in place.
Ugh.
But since it was determined in 2003 that the oil could be extracted at a profit, the production has grown exponentially. Canada is the single largest oil exporter to the US. Canadian oil sands are the second largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.
So, like vacationers pulling on their flip-flops to charge the Cuban beach, Canadian polluters are fouling the atmosphere to turn sand into cash. Kyoto who?
Which is all quite human. When you are not a polluter it's natural to tisk-tisk all those bad rainforest-killers out there. But put that massive prosperity out there, and here comes the sludge.
The saving grace is that since this is Canada, there is a reasonable chance that cleaner technologies and methodologies will be sought and actually put into practice. There is a chance that the current damage will be addressed and fixed (or mitigated).
But at the end of the day, when the choice is pollution or cash - cash always wins.
For years I've chided my Canadian friends for their willingness to pack up for Cuba any chance they got. Cuba? Sure. It's a top vacation destination - cheap and close and sunny. And the service is great - why wouldn't it be? The serving staff are captives of Castro's delusional communist sweat shop.
Sure, the US has always had some nasty 'friends' in the world - even before Georgie made America the nasty friend that others shied away from. And Canada was the good guy country that invented UN peacekeeping, and could always look down from a perch way up in the moral high ground.
Except when there was a buck to be made in Cuba - with no American competition. Canadians are only too happy to make that economic connection - with tourism and every other possible means of trade.
So it's not that some people are bad, it's that you beat us to them and compete with us for their business. Except in Cuba. Where we rock.
Which brings us to the oil sands. I'm a huge Al Gore fan - always have been, even when he was bashed for being made of wood (which I think he still is) and falsely accused of self-aggrandizement. And he should have fought harder in 2000.
Anyway, Gore's line is 'environmentalism with growth.' You don't have to pollute the world in order to make a buck - quite the contrary. You can make your bucks by creating clean technologies which replace dirty ones.
Back to the oil sands. They're filthy. They're years ahead of the pollution that was expected. They've created toxic ponds that - and this is true - they have to guard with flame throwers to keep migratory birds away. The second largest dam in the world is keeping this sludge in place.
Ugh.
But since it was determined in 2003 that the oil could be extracted at a profit, the production has grown exponentially. Canada is the single largest oil exporter to the US. Canadian oil sands are the second largest reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia.
So, like vacationers pulling on their flip-flops to charge the Cuban beach, Canadian polluters are fouling the atmosphere to turn sand into cash. Kyoto who?
Which is all quite human. When you are not a polluter it's natural to tisk-tisk all those bad rainforest-killers out there. But put that massive prosperity out there, and here comes the sludge.
The saving grace is that since this is Canada, there is a reasonable chance that cleaner technologies and methodologies will be sought and actually put into practice. There is a chance that the current damage will be addressed and fixed (or mitigated).
But at the end of the day, when the choice is pollution or cash - cash always wins.
posted by fiduciary at 8:51 AM
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