Year of Publication: 2008
Abstract:
Few Canadians know that Canada is home to one of the world’s largest dams and it is built to hold toxic waste from just one Tar Sands operation. Everything about the Tar Sands happens on a massive scale. The enormous toxics problems go hand-in-hand with massive global warming pollution and the impending destruction of a boreal forest the size of Florida.
Because of sheer scale, all Canadians are impacted by the Tar Sands, no matter where they live. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted and your fish and wildlife may be dangerous to eat. If you live in Saskatchewan you are a victim of acid rain. If you live in BC, “supertankers” may soon be plying your shoreline carrying Tar Sands oil to Asia. If you live in Ontario, you are exposed to harmful emissions from the refining of Tar Sands Oil. And the impacts do not stop at Canada’s border – US refineries are re-tooling to handle the dirty oil from Alberta.
Moreover, no matter where you live in Canada, your desire to tackle global warming is being held hostage to the Tar Sands. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada is quickly increasing them, and fully half of that emissions growth is projected to come from the Tar Sands.1 Because Canada’s elected officials refuse to clamp down on Tar Sands operators, they also refuse to clamp down on industry across Canada for fear of a double standard.
And it is just beginning. Approvals have already been given that will double the size of existing operations, and our leaders have been talking with the US government to grow the Tar Sands five-fold in a “short time span.”2 The Tar Sands are now the biggest capital project anywhere on Earth and the biggest energy undertaking anywhere. Already, Canada is the largest foreign supplier of US oil.
With the Tar Sands, Canada has become the world’s dirty energy superpower.
In the service of growing the Tar Sands, the Canadian government gives tax breaks to the worst polluters; it fails to enforce its own environmental laws; and it is even engaging in cover-up when people blow the whistle on how the Tar Sands have harmed our health and our environment.
It doesn’t need to be this way. Technologies are available to curb the damage, yet the Canadian government so far refuses to force industry to clean up.
As Parliament’s Natural Resources Committee recently stated:
A business as usual approach to the development of the oil sands is not sustainable. The time has come to begin the transition towards a clean energy future.3
All Canadians should join the chorus of leading figures such as Peter Lougheed, the former Premier of Alberta, in calling for a moratorium on new projects and a clean up of the Tar Sands. Premier Lougheed, originally instrumental in scaling up the Tar Sands, now says:
...it is just a moonscape. It is wrong in my judgment, a major wrong... So it is a major, major federal and provincial issue.”
