Greenwash Watch: BP stands for Beyond the Pale
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 12.28.07
What does BP stand for these days? Beyond Propaganda? ByeBye Planet? Bad Pollution? We just aren't certain anymore, now that it is spending $3 billion to buy into the stupid fuel, oil from the Alberta Tar Sands, global warming's new Ground Zero. Each barrel of oil out of the tar sands generates about a two thirds of a tonne of CO2, so BP's 200,000 barrels a day will generate about 127,000 tonnes of CO2 per day.
They will have to sell a lot of wind turbines and solar panels to compensate for that! ::Joe Romm
The Tyee recently wrote a good article on the silliness that is the Tar Sands:
You can't practice abstinence while running a brothel. Yet politicians of almost all stripes talk simultaneously about developing the Alberta oil sands while getting serous about reducing carbon emissions. Sound like a crock? It is. ::The Tyee
The Alberta oil sands projects represent the largest environmental disaster of our time (in Western Canada). I have spent some time working in and around those projects, and I was shocked by how bad it really was.
The landscape of Northern Alberta is typically densely forested, with rolling hills and deep muskeg. As you approach the oil sands projects, the vegetation gives way to a desert like moonscape for as far as the eye can see.
I am constantly amazed by how little we hear about the negative aspects of these projects - Especially in Western Canada. I guess that is what happens when the government rakes in billions and billions of dollars of easy money, and 50,000 - 100,000 workers have decent paying jobs.
Ryan
www.econiclife.com
and watch out for the threat of biofuels which in the form of palm oil involve cutting down the worlds rainforests!
I consider myself an environmentalist and I'd rather see new drilling for conventional oil with very strict oversight in Alaska versus strip mining it in Canada or Colorado.
We need a U.S. national energy plan, and it can't rely on paying other countries to rip out their forests, be it for fossil fuel or for biofuel.
We need an administration that takes sustainability seriously and we need environmental groups that are willing to make reasonable compromises. Too often it seems environmentalists are dead set on winning some particular battle, all the while the war is being lost on a grand scale.
What we truly need is the type of commitment on the scale of the Apollo program for space on earth with regard to sustainable energy and businesses.
We need small scale manufacturing instead of wasteful gluttony of products people only buy 10% of.
We need people willing to change this way of life for the better not buy what ever is the cheapest. We need better choices on our shelves and reasonable prices too.
We need a better energy management program for appliances than the energy star programs we have now.
We need energy efficient factory robots as well as buildings and homes now not later.
So good luck getting all we need to do done with in our lifetime.
people forget there is enough of us on this planet now we are a force of nature!
D~W