Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signed off on a controversial pipeline project to import oil made from Canada's tar sands, in a very dirty and very carbon intensive production process. Producing oil from tar sands oil emits 3 times as much CO2 per barrel as conventional oil production techniques do. That's because they have to literally cook the oil out of the sand using steam heated with vast quantities of Natural Gas, emitting vast quantities of CO2 in the process. Large areas of forest are destroyed to create the enormous open pit mines and the huge holding ponds for toxic waste water created in the processing of tar sands into oil. The complex of toxic waste water ponds that are clustered around the tar sands processing plants are so big they can be seen from orbit. There is little realistic hope that these areas can be returned to anything close to their original state as boreal forests.
State Department Signs off on Controversial Tar Sands Pipeline
The U.S. State Department approved a controversial pipeline project today that, once built, will carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, into the northern United States.
Extracting oil from the tar sands is an energy-intensive process that destroys pristine boreal forest, releases three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional crude oil, and contaminates three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced, leaving sprawling, toxic tailings ponds that can endanger wildlife.
The oil also contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel, six times more nitrogen and five times more lead than conventional oil, toxins that are released into the water and air when the oil is refined.
President Obama left the final decision on the Alberta Clipper pipeline project to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has been targeted this summer by demonstrators opposed to the pipeline.
Unfortunately Secretary Clinton decided that Enbridge Energy's profits were more important than putting the brakes on CO2 emissions. I'm sure that Canada's Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper is quite pleased with Secretary Clinton's decision to open up the spigot to what the Sierra Club's Carl Pope called "one of the dirtiest fuels on earth".
Native, Green Groups Oppose State Department Dirty Pipeline Permit
"The tar sands pipeline connects U.S. refiners and consumers with the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive crude oil on earth," said Kevin Reuther, Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy's legal director. "Tar sands crude is causing massive environmental degradation in Canada and results in significantly more greenhouse gas emissions. This is the absolute wrong step to take if we want to create a greener energy future."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton needed to find that allowing the pipeline to be built across the U.S.-Canadian border would be in the national interest of the United States. In fact, these two pipelines will hurt the United States.
"Importing dirty tar sands oil is not in our national interest," said Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. "At a time when concern is growing about the national security threat posed by global warming, it doesn't make sense to open our gates to Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. This pipeline will lock America into a dirty energy infrastructure for years to come. This is exactly the kind of project the State Department should be protecting us from."
This being the Oil Industry, naturally the pollution the tar sands operation created hasn't been confined to the huge holding ponds of toxic waste water. Tar sands pollution has migrated into the streams and rivers flowing downstream to a couple of very large lakes. One of them is Lake Athabasca, it's larger than the State of Delaware. On the shores of the lake is Fort Chipewyan, a town of 1,200. Thanks to tar sands pollution Fort Chipewyan is now experiencing an astronomical rate of cancers.
Why is Cancer Sweeping Tiny Fort Chipewyan?
A generation ago, Lake Athabasca was clear and clean enough that Fort Chipewyanresidents drew their drinking water straight from it, and thought nothing about dipping a cup over the side of a canoe during hunting trips. Those days are long gone, as industrial development -- particularly the explosive growth of the oil sands -- accelerates along the Athabasca River, the main tributary of Lake Athabasca.
A few months after arriving in 2001, Dr. O'Connor noticed a set of disturbing symptoms in a patient: yellowed eyes, fatigue and abdominal discomfort. It was disturbing not only because it pointed to cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and deadly cancer of the bile duct. The symptoms were all too familiar for Dr. O'Connor,
whose father died of the cancer 13 years ago in Ireland.
"I know a lot about it, but I never expected to see it again," he said. "Without treatment, you're dead in about a month. My dad lasted six weeks." Dr. O'Connor said at least three residents of Fort Chipewyan, and likely another two, have died of the disease within the past five years. Statistically speaking, there should be only one case for every 100,000 people, and none at all for a community the size of Fort Chipewyan, he said.
There are similar patterns with other serious diseases. Since 2001, he has
diagnosed five cases of leukemia and four cases of lymphoma, a cancer that
originates in the lymphatic system. In the past year, Dr. O'Connor has treatedat least six patients with Graves' disease, an immune-system ailment, and has seen entire families stricken with lupus, another serious autoimmune disease. So far this year, six people have died of colon cancer, the youngest just 33 years old, the doctor said.
He visits a number of northern communities in his weekly rounds, and no other has been hit by the kind of cancer cluster seen in Fort Chipewyan. Those other communities do not draw their drinking water from the Athabasca River or the lake, however.
Canada's First Nations Cree people have been victimized by the development of tar sands. This this is an all too familiar pattern of disregarding the rights of native peoples, one that has been repeated innumerable times across North America over the past 4 centuries. The Cree are now taking their protests of tar sands development to London, joining the yearly Climate Camp protest there.
Cree aboriginal group to join London climate camp protest over tar sands
Canadian First Nations seek to highlight UK's 'criminal' role in CO2-heavy oil schemes
"It is destroying the ancient boreal forest, spreading open-pit mining across our territories, contaminating our food and water with toxins, disrupting local wildlife and threatening our way of life," she said.
It showed British companies were complicit in "the biggest environmental crime on the planet" and yet very few people in Britain even knew it was happening, said Deranger. She was speaking ahead of an annual Climate Camp...
The U.S. should be reducing tar sand oil imports not INCREASING imports of dirty tar sands oil.
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This is a carbon double whammy because to reach the tar sands we are destroying Boreal Forest ecosystems the earth's largest repository of stored carbon.
Boreal Forest
The Boreal Forest ecosystem supports nearly 50% of the world's remaining intact forests and is the world's largest and most important carbon storehouse – holding 22 percent of the total carbon stored on the earth's land surface, and almost twice as much carbon per unit area as tropical forests.
The Canadian Boreal Forest stores an estimated 186 billion tons of carbon in forest and peatland ecosystems, equivalent to 27 years worth of the world's carbon emissions in 2003 from the burning of fossil fuels.
For an Administration that talks like it 'gets it' on Global Warming and the environment, this is an extraordinarily counterproductive step in the wrong direction. The U.S. giving this pipeline a green light is in effect North America coming together to step on a climate change accelerator.
This is sooo disappointing. IMHO Global Warming is the most important issue we will face during my lifetime.