The "Rethink Alberta" campaign by an environmental group called Corporate Ethics International out of San Francisco puts de-cart before de-horse. Alberta, like Columbia, Afghanistan, Peru or BC are in the business of supplying drugs to the addicted. Americans are addicted to oil [and coke, heroin, pot,etc], their demand pulls the supply supply chain to do whatever is necessary to fill it. The 800 gorilla is unnecessary demand.For sure the Tar Sands are one of the worst polluters on the planet, like the ads say "the oil sands industry is responsible for toxic lakes large enough to be seen from outer space, an increase in greenhouse gases, killing wildlife and increasing disease rates among native populations." Their billboards compare the death of wildlife caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to the death of more than 1,600 ducks in a tailings pond attached to the Syncrude Project. All of which and much more is true, but Alberta and its oil barons are playing the quick, irresponsible, maximum quarterly profit game. They avoid all costs possible, they denounce all regulations as communism, they buy off the governments just like good little capitialists.
i think the "Rethink Alberta" folks oughtta rethink their campaign, i think they oughtta refocus it on the gorilla. Its now widely accepted in engineering circles that 66% of America's energy demand could be and should be being wiped out by effeciency. Why not aim a shot at the Empire's ineffeciency and how saving energy gets a double payoff in that you don't have to destroy the planet mining it, ya can't spill it, and ya might even end up with some left for your kids and grandkids. If ya use way less energy the gorilla's not going to pull on the supply chain as hard and Alberta won't keep destroying its corner of the earth faster and faster every day.
So let 'er rip, give them 'ol Albertans hell for their beng just like all the other capitialist pigs and supplying legal or illegal drugs to our poor addicted brethern. But remember there wouldn't be a tar sands or deep water wells or oil shale projects in the US west or Saudi sheiks bankrolling boogeymen if it weren't for the gorilla.
What Those Who Killed the Tar Sands Report Don't Want You to Know - The tailing ponds are leaking and the project is polluting the river among other things.
