Book Review: Stupid to the Last Drop
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10.12.07
Peter Gorrie of the Star reviews William Marsden's new book and notes:
Like jet skis, the oil sands mines are a classic example of a harmful technology that should never have been created but was, simply because it could be, and because it would make a few people fabulously rich.
As Marsden describes it, the industry is so damaging and irrational that you'd think someone would slam the brakes.
Instead, projects are rubber-stamped and supported with generous tax breaks and lax oversight. Through the stories of families sickened or financially devastated by polluted water or air, Marsden describes how the government and regulators ignore victims and trample opponents.
In fact, he says, the oil sands, combined with Alberta's growing mania for extracting natural gas from coal seams by injecting toxic chemicals into the ground – thereby poisoning some of the dwindling supply of drinking water – threaten to create a parched, deforested, polluted wasteland. "At the end of the day you will have a pot of gold with no place to live." ::The Star
Read TreeHugger earlier: Oil-at what price? , A North American overview, Andrew Nikiforuk on Canada's Highway to Hell and Joe Romm on the tar sands — Canada’s version of liquid coal
Vice Magazine's new online TV network VBS.TV has a great documentary called Toxic Alberta which not only goes into the environmental aspects, but also the human ones -- aboriginal peoples forced off their land, their fish and game poisoned, epidemics of cancers. Where you have oilfield workers getting paid $70k but since there's no housing, they end up living in their cars...it's been a real crisis in terms of population growth and management.
view here, flash video.
On top of that, the boneheaded, braindead use of natural gas to boil water to reform bitumen results in the little town of Fort McMurray producing a staggering 20% of all of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions! ... and in terms of water use, it's diverted the Athabasca (and polluted it), resulting in a real water crisis. If they were to actually extract everything from the tar sands it'd pollute the equivalent of 10 Lake Superiors....
I asked the Green Party if they would establish a moratorium on oil sands production and I got no answer. Is anyone brave enough, politically, to put the brakes on the 'Alberta miracle'?
I'm from Alberta, a province the size of Texas. We have 3 million people, and 2.8 million of those people live 600km or more away from the tar sands. Basically, northern Alberta is already a deserted wasteland.
The problem is not with producers, who are only supplying demand. The problem is with consumers' disgustingly unsustainable lifestyles.
Do your part to bring oil back to under $50/bbl and the tar sands will once again become economically unviable.
I'm from Alberta, a province the size of Texas. We have 3 million people, and 2.8 million of those people live 600km or more away from the tar sands. Basically, northern Alberta is already a deserted wasteland. The problem is not with producers, who are only supplying demand. The problem is with consumers' disgustingly unsustainable lifestyles. Do your part to bring oil back to under $50/bbl and the tar sands will once again become economically unviable.
By that logic, it would be OK to produce things with slave labor as long as consumers had a high demand level.
The producers, and the country they're in, have a responsibility to make things in a way that isn't unnecessarily harmful. Unfortunately, there's just too much money to be made and you "enlightened" Canadians are showing yourselves to be no better than the rest of the money-loving, planet-destroying world -- despite your nearly universal Canadian attitude to the contrary.
As long as oil remains under $50 /barrel, how will governments or individuals get the financial slap in the face that they need to seriously look at alternative (renewable) energy sources?
I say, let's tax and increase the royalties on every barrel extracted, to the point where producers will have no choice but to raise prices. This will affect lazy and greedy consumers in the only place they really care about, their chequebook.
I am half way through reading this book and would like to say that I am disgusted with what I have read so far. I knew nothing of what was going on in Alberta. It clearly shows the disrespect the politicians have for the environment and some of it's people. It shows how the whole thing is motived by greed. It's not something you here much about in the news. I am ashamed that Canadian governments at levels could be doing this. It also shows the poor planning for the future of the Canadian people. Itwill probably leave us fuel bankrupt in a decade or so.
I am so glad to see how this book has made an impact on those of you who have commented on this site! I am the daughter of Debbie Signer, one the "small town girls" from chapter 13, whose ground water has been contaminated by improper drilling methods in rural Alberta. I encourage more people to become informed and to pass along the message. There is a reason we don't hear more about these issues in the media. The more civil unrest we, as Albertans and Canadians, are willing to demonstrate, the better our chances are of an environmental and economic resolution.
Thanks,
Kristie Signer