Another Tar Sands "Black eye"!

I agree that it is a tangled mess!!! I feel so bad for those birds. They are conscious entities as much as we.

You should watch, if you already have not: The Corporation

It is a documentary that everyone on earth should watch. Once you see it, you can never go back. It sheds light.

 

I keep going back to that poster Greenpeace put out after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It showed the captain of the ship, looking like a VERY unsavory character, and a caption which read:

THIS MAN'S DRIVING DID NOT CAUSE THE OIL SPILL. YOURS DID.

The Prius burns 1/2 to 3/4 as much gasoline as most other cars on the road, but it is still powered 100% by gasoline. And as long as you and I buy gasoline, or fuel oil to heat our houses, or products shipped in from elsewhere, etc., etc., etc., oil companies will continue to drill, pump, refine, ship, and sell it. And when the price reaches a certain point, they'll dig up tar and make that into gasoline. And I gather there's a LOT of tar in Alberta, so the more we deplete the "easier" petroleum, the more factories they're going to build to convert tar into fuel.

The problem is not THEM. The problem (to paraphrase Pogo Possum) is US!

 

I remember going on a field day trip when I was in grade school back in the sixties. We went to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Brea is the Spanish word for tar, so to someone who speaks Spanish they are the Tar Tar pits. Anyway, I remember seeing the bones from all kinds of animals, ancient elephants and even the Saber tooth tigers. I asked the teacher how they all got trapped and she said they mistakenly thought the oil was water and once they wandered into it, they became trapped and died. Since I was in Catholic school, the teacher reminded everyone that God made the animals, the tar and everything else we see around us. I then realized that God was to blame for making the tar and trapping the animals. It was his or her fault and no one else. It seems that God also made the tar in Alberta Canada. But it is us who are being lured to the tar pits, after all, we are all just animals. So maybe there is a corollary in that just because the tar is there, we should not go there to quench our thirst for what appears to be water. An oasis of energy that allows us to drive our cars to the corner store and buy water in plastic bottles that are also made from petroleum products. Maybe I am confused on this, but who cares. In the next county over from here, there is a town called Brea. It's in Orange County. There are lots of nice cars there and big homes built around the oil fields. Once when I was a kid there was a huge oil fire in Brea, we could see the orange sky at night for days while the wildcat wells were being snuffed out in the canyons and valleys that are still producing oil today.

Blame God, it's his or her fault, not Canada or people who drive SUV's. Since we get more of our oil from Canada than Saudi Arabia, then maybe we ought to increase our consumption of imported oil instead of North American oil. That way at least the little birdies of North America will be around just a little longer while the world goes to hell in a hand basket.....? Just thinking out loud, forgive me if I sound silly. Flame suit on.

 

You do know our politicians always count Alberta's tar sands as part of the US's infinite supply of oil? Right along with our oil shale (that after nearly a hundred years of trying hasn't been economically viable) that will take more water than we have for a thousand miles.

 

sorry but God did it right. we screwed her plans up by discovering things we should not have. this allowed us to flourish and we have just about exhausted what this Earth has to offer. lets face it. we were not designed to be 6 billion strong and we will not survive until we figure out a way to off about 2 billion of us.

this would not have happened if we had never started using oil. the history of the US ( a great documentary "America; A Story of US") chronicles the trials and tribulations of our country, but one underlying theme came out with each episode;

what was here and what we destroyed;

150 Billion trees
the topsoil of the great plains (at one time was over 6 feet thick)
60 million Buffalo
a thousand species of fish, animals, insects and humans extinct because of our wanton lust for land and resources.

the creation of 2 million acres of desert due to our manipulation of the landscape.

and for what?? so Las Vegas can power the strongest flashlight in the world? bright enough to read a newspaper 10 miles into space?? oh ya!!! cant live without that can we now?

 

I agree that developing the tar sands is stupid and irresponsible. But they're doing it only because you and I buy gasoline, along with so many other people that it is economical to do it. Until WE stop buying gasoline, they will keep boiling tar sand.

Oil is a fungible commodity. Basically (as near as makes no difference) all the oil produced, whether natural or synthetic, goes into a bucket from which all consumers of oil buy what they want or can afford. It does not matter which oil goes where. When we burn it we create a market, which affects the world price, which determines whether companies in Alberta can make a profit by boiling oil sand or not.

 

According to the Bible, God said to Adam and Eve "Be fruitful and multiply." He didn't say "Stop when you get to four billion." So if there is a god, you can't let him off the hook that easily. (Probably a him. A woman would not have screwed it up this badly.)

So, are you suggesting we nuke a continent or two?

 

umm, probably easier than suggesting we Americans cut back on our consumption

 

I agree 100%. Unfortunately, big business runs the country, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it because both political parties are committed to capitalism and are owned by the big corporations.

I think we need to do both. I can choose what kind of car I drive. I cannot change public policy.

 

leading by example is an excellent way to create change. i have by my actions caused others to buy a Prius, take another look at EV's and just how they live their lives in general.

i am not a role model in any way. i only have the basic belief that we are killing the place we call home. its a slow death and the Earth will outlive me by a long shot, but i dont want to be known as the generation that could have done something and didnt and yes there are times i see people and want to run up to them and scream "what gives you the right to waste so much?!!"

i see so many apathetic people who are completely clueless as to what they are doing. last summer, i had someone who lived about a block from me who was washing her car. she had the hose running the entire time. had to have run for at least an hour. i was on my bike and rode by her about a half dozen times glaring at her. it still pisses me off that i did not say something to her. but she was probably born and raised in WA and thinks we will never run out of water. (not true, there is already predictions of severe shortages and irreparable damage to our underground aquifer. here the aquifer recharges at the rate of about a ½ inch a year but we have lost over 30 feet in the depth of the underground flow in just the past 15 years)

we have so much and much of the rest of the world has so little.

 

I agree with both of you. I'm just saying that it is our lifestyle, which is a choice we make, which has created the problem.

Of course, one could argue that it's antibiotics and public sanitation that have created the problem by cutting the mortality rate so far below the birth rate. At least I have not added to the population explosion.

 

The oil sands are being produced in an economically efficient way without regard to environmental cost. There is nothing wrong with producing oil from oil sands. The problem is the way that these resources are being produced. The Canadian government wants these resources developed, and thus have subsidized production and have low environmental regulations. These are the Canadian policies that are causing the problems, so your blame of Americans or god are completely off base and ignorant. At $80/bbl of oil the oil sands are profitable even without the subsidies and with environmental regulation. They just would be less profitable than they are now.

If the sustained price of oil gets above $120/bbl it is likely the utah oil sands will be exploited. From a public policy point of view Americans need to get environmental protection for these mining operations. The record is pretty bad when it comes to the American government applying good environmental regulations to mining operations, although there are some responsible mining companies.

Oil is fungible, which means that when processed there is no tag associated with it saying this was produced in a way that wrecked the environment or funded terrorism. If America did not buy the Canadian oil, the multinationals would sell it to Japan, the profit is much higher than other sources of oil that these companies can exploit. If global demand is reduced, then oil prices may drop to make exploiting the oil sands less profitable, and production will be reduced, but at current production costs I would not expect this to happen. Driving a prius does nothing to reduce the amount of these oil sands being produced. Only political pressure on the Canadian government would reduce the environmental costs.

And as a side note, dave, just talk to the woman, she might reduce her water use. Your story just made you sound creepy.

 

Don't call me friend buddy Or what ever the canadians say. My grandparents first landed in toronto before moving to america, and some of my cousins are just as pissed off by the candadian policies as I am about the US, and rest of the world policies. If you reread what I wrote I was not excusing the way the canadian government is encouraging the rape of their land, I was condemning it. But just like their other mining operations like nickle there are ways to bring it environmentally in line. The point is it is not america or gods fault it is all canada. And they can fix it, and still get energy from the oil sands. The only way to really be pure is not buy any food, as this fungible oil is entwined in all of American agriculture. Your prius is not even a drop in the bucket to prevent these actions.

Well most of this is what I expected the thread to be about, but then it went ape s... in a bizzare direction. The oil sand polution is small compared to the other canadian raping of the earth. I live in the United States and MMS although not as bad really is screwing it to the environment big time. The environmental problems in canada with oil sands is small compared to other mining and other agriculture practices. They have a lot to fix. I try, but can only get a few hundred thousand trees planted, and a few million people on wind instead of coal or gas. There is much to be done.

 

Please try to think or understand before you correct people that are actually correct. I'm sorry, that doesn't sound quite as condescending as your comment.

Tar sands are the mislabeling from Europeans. Bitumen is the substance. In the Canadian fields lighter hydrocarbons are added to make it flow, making a synthetic oil. There is no tar, it was ignorant people that put that label down. In canada the substance was used to make canoes waterproof, in Egypt it was used to waterproof boats and make mummies. The substance is a heavy oil, and I was using the more technically correct name, not the mislabeling.