Edward Burtynsky on the Alberta Tar Sands
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 01.28.08
We have written many posts about the evil that is the Alberta oil sands, how it is stupid to the last drop, and how it is the highway to hell.
Now the Globe and Mail is running a week-long special report on it, including a photo essay by TreeHugger favorite Edward Burtynsky. For once they have dropped their stupid pay-per-view fence so that we can link to it. Burtynsky photographs are usually shown as huge prints; The Globe has put them in a tiny window with strange software but they are still amazing. ::Globe and Mail
Notwithstanding the fact that it is an environmental disaster, nothing is going to change in Alberta soon. The Globe writes:
The value and importance of the oil sands will make that much harder the choices that Albertans and all Canadians suddenly face. Canada has now become a major-league merchant of one of the most desirable – and dirtiest – sources of energy. The money is flowing in, and the profits are rolling out – good news for stockholders, the Canadian dollar and government coffers.
But there are environmental and social costs to stuffing our pockets while the oil speeds south. And Canadians will have to answer a question already being asked by many Albertans: When does a boom become a burden? ::Globe and Mail
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Last time I checked Flash wasn't "strange software".
LA: no, but arrows that move around the picture in the box and an inset picture that doesnt do anything are poor implementations of it.
It doesn't sound as if you were using the zooming feature. Once you zoom in, the inset becomes a map of the main image and the arrows pan around (for those who don't get the dragging concept).
It's actually a pretty good implementation of Flash.
The boom becomes a burden when a crapload of people with little to no qualifications other than brute strength come storming into the province and suddenly they aren't hiring as many people as they were ten years ago. That boom has dropped significantly in the passed five years. Even now people are STILL flocking in hopes of a job, especially people from the eastern provinces where over fishing has caused the same kind of problem.
So now, with so many people only qualified for oil extraction are out of work or not recieving the amount of work they used to. They will end up with a larger amount of people on EI and welfare.
ON TOP of that with the amount of money that those men are making up north there are more people deciding to have children earlier and having more of them. This is true for most rural communities, of course, but this is happening in the typical boom fashion.
ON TOP of all that, there are young people mostly males recieving a significant amount of money for their jobs and most of them don't decide to collect, save, and go to school. There is a lot of drinking, a lot of drugs and with those violence usually follows right along.
It's on the right path for an environmental and fiscal disaster.
When you start looking like American cities.