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Diane Demorney
Bazinga!
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 4746
Location: Calgary
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 Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 2:31 am Post subject: Canada Pays Environmentally for US Oil Thirst |
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From the Washington Post
| Quote: | Canada Pays Environmentally for US Oil Thirst
By Doug Struck
The Washington Post
Wednesday 31 May 2006
Huge mines rapidly draining rivers, cutting into forests, boosting emissions.
Fort McMurray, Alberta - Huge mines here turning tarry sand into cash for Canada and oil for the United States are taking an unexpectedly high environmental toll, sucking water from rivers and natural gas from wells and producing large amounts of gases linked to global warming.
The digging - into an area the size of Maryland and Virginia combined - has proliferated at gold-rush speed, spurred by high oil prices, new technology and an unquenched U.S. thirst for the fuel. The expansion has presented ecological problems that experts thought they would have decades to resolve.
"The river used to be blue. Now it's brown. Nobody can fish or drink from it. The air is bad. This has all happened so fast," said Elsie Fabian, 63, an elder in a native Indian community along the Athabasca River, a wide, meandering waterway once plied by fur traders. "It's terrible. We're surrounded by the mines."
From her home on the bluff of the river, she can see billowing steam rising from a vast strip mine 10 miles away. There, almost 200 feet below what was once a forest, giant machines cleave the earth into a cratered moonscape. Immense shovels plunge into the ground, wresting out massive chunks. Trucks the size of houses prowl the pit. They deliver the black soil to clanking conveyers and vats that steam the tar from the sand.
The miners have created a marvel of human industry that takes a spongy muck once considered worthless and converts it into oil for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. But the price of that alchemy is high: Each barrel of oil requires two to five barrels of water, carves up four tons of earth, uses enough natural gas to heat a home for one to five days, and adds to the greenhouse gases slowly cooking the planet, according to the industry's own calculations.
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Why do we have to hear the truth from an American news source? We hear nothing from Canadian ones. Especially here in Alberta. (rhetorical questions, all... btw)
_________________
Scissors cuts paper. Paper covers rock. Rock crushes lizard. Lizard poisons Spock. Spock smashes scissors. Scissors decapitates lizard. Lizard eats paper. Paper disproves Spock. Spock vaporizes rock. And as it always has, rock crushes scissors. |
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TS.
Delicious schadenfreude
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 14585
Location: Toronto, ON
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| Posted: Thu Jun 01, 2006 4:44 am Post subject: |
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And now EnCana has applied for permission to drill under the Suffield National Wildlife Area, the last major unploughed prairie grasslands in Canada, which is home to 14 "at-risk" species of animals, including burrowing owls. And the government had to be forced by a letter writing campaign to have an environmental assessment. For more on this story in particular, see this website.
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"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson |
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DTA
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 694
Location: ////
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| Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 9:56 pm Post subject: |
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Feds use false 'sound science' to regulate carcinogens: industry critics
| Quote: | The Canadian Environmental Protection Act calls on the government to use 'precaution' in its risk management of toxins, but the principle has not been used.
As the federal government comes under criticism for failing to properly regulate toxins and carcinogens in consumer products and the environment, the Standing Committee on Environment heard last week that government departments have relied on a faulty approach of using "sound science" to determine the risks associated with toxins.
In recent weeks, pressure has mounted on the government to ban a number of harmful and toxins that do not break down in the environment and that are sold in consumer products, such as flame retardants, found in furniture and carpets, or perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which is used to make non-stick pans and other non-stick materials.
The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or CEPA, gives regulatory powers to Cabinet to define chemicals as toxic if they are considered to pose significant health risks.
But last week, environmental advocates told the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development that government departments have been influenced by industry groups that have successfully argued that the government needs to use a "false principle" of "sound science" in its decisions to ban substances.
A brief submitted last week to the committee by Bruce Lourie, president of the Ivey Foundation, an environmental charitable foundation in Toronto, says that there is no such thing as "sound science" because it implies absolute evidence or consensus when all science contains uncertainty. The brief calls the phrase an invention of industrial stakeholders to slow down and delay the regulatory process toward banning chemicals.
In his appearance before the Environment Committee last week, Mr. Lourie said he conducted an informal survey of about 30 sources in the government, manufacturing industry, advocacy groups, and academics, and only government officials viewed "sound science" as a valid phrase. Even the industry officials surveyed acknowledged the term as a strategy for undermining or delaying government action, he said.
"We see sound science referenced in federal documents. Sound science, if you read any of the literature on it, was a term created by industry, deliberately, to interject uncertainty, to interject doubt into decision-making. So the fact that we have sound science in our federal documentation suggests that we're really lining ourselves up with the kind of language the industry uses, deliberately, to undermine action. That's problematic," Mr. Lourie said.
The Canadian Cancer Society says that 50 per cent of cancers are preventable, and although most preventable cancers can be attributed to smoking, people can unknowingly accumulate carcinogens and other toxins in their bodies through inhalation, ingestion or skin contact. |
Yup they use "false science" to twist things for their own good. It is a shame and I do not think Rona "I hate Kyoto" Ambrose or Stephen "I hate the environment" Harper will pay any attention to this.
Read the rest here |
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Steppenwolf Flunks Rabble
Member
Joined: 12 Jun 2006
Posts: 54
Location: goes far, flies near, two stars away from here
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| Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 7:03 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Why do we have to hear the truth from an American news source? We hear nothing from Canadian ones. Especially here in Alberta. (rhetorical questions, all... btw) |
Yep, that's about it. As someone who works in the media/communications sector, I can say that when it comes to covering these types of issues, the US corporate media is actually no longer worse than the Canadian corporate media, and even better in many instances.
You actually get more accurate coverage of western Canada business, labour, economy and ecology in the New York Times than any of the Global CanWest media dictatorship.
I have written a couple articles on this problem, based on interviews with union members working in the oil patch. While everyone is glad to be working, many working folks are worried about what's going to happen in the future, both economically and environmentally--especially for those who live in the region.
There have been some efforts, thanks to some good public pressure, to enforce some clean-up measures. But the folks I spoke with say they are half hearted and grossly inadequate at best.
One would think that the government of Alberta might at least use some of the huge revenues from the tar sands to invest in new clean energy and propulsion sources and technology for the future, and push the oil firms to do the same. That's what the former BC NDP government was proposing But that ain't happening now in BC either. It's the usual rape and run corporate capitalist economics in action, and to hell with the future.
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The free development of each must be the free development of all |
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DTA
Fulltime enMasse Member
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 694
Location: ////
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| Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject: |
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It is a real shame the Conservatives in both Ottawa and Edmonton allow this blatent destruction of the environment to happen.
I know some will say it started on the federal Liberal watch and it did but that does not make it right to allow this to continue and if Harper and Rona were serious about the environment as they are about ditching the gun registry they could of put some legislation forward in the House to fix and control this mess.
But they have not and show no signs of doing anything about it. |
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