During a visit to Washington, D.C., Ralph Klein, the Premier of Canada's western province of Alberta, spoke about the vast energy potential in his region, and assured U.S. government officials that Alberta's oil reserves are a "solution" to getting the United States off of "foreign" oil. Of course, this "solution" requires Canada dig up an area the size of Florida, create one of the world's largest single greenhouse gas (GHG) producers, destroy the Kyoto protocol, create a water crisis and ensure a greater percentage of youth drop out of high school.
The Alberta tar (oil) sands are the world's most expensive, most polluting source of oil under large-scale production. Yet Alberta's tar sands are positioned to be the main supply of "domestic" oil to the United States for the next century. The sands hold proven reserves of 175 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia. Although Albertan oil sands extraction was not officially recognized as economically viable until 2003, production in the province more than doubled between 1995 and 2004, to 1.1 million barrels a day. This growth has rocketed Alberta's oil resources to international acclaim, earning the oil sands the nickname of "black gold." The region is predicted to produce five million plus barrels per day by 2030.
To extract oil from the Tar Sands, the ground needs to be super heated with either natural gas or nuclear energy until the tar separates out. The extraction process itself requires 4-5 barrels of water for each barrel of oil produced. Even though the development of the tar sands is still in its infancy, Albertans and people in the neighboring provinces Saskatchewan and Manitoba are feeling the water crunch.
The tar sands industry also uses large quantities of energy and produces massive amounts of wastewater, known as "tailings." Already, two toxic tailings dumps from Canadian tar sands mines are visible from space with the naked eye. What is being created in Alberta is a moonscape that can never be repaired.
The United States, as the world's largest oil consumer at 20--23 million barrels a day, has encouraged the growth of the tar sands development in neighboring Canada. The tar sands development is so fast that by 2015 it will release over 97 MT (97,000,000 Tonnes) of GHG's into the air. In addition to the obvious impacts in exasperating the growing climate crisis due to human induced global warming, the tar sands will also create other global worries.
If further development continues, the tar sands will almost single-handedly guarantee that Canada will not make its obligations under the Kyoto protocol. Several countries at the last round of Kyoto talks in Montreal (COP 11/MOP 1) were already looking for ways to skirt their obligations, or dismantle the agreement altogether. If an industrialized country like Canada, who played a major role in bringing the agreement to fruition, fails to meet its obligations it does not bode well for "developing" countries or the agreement in general. It is a very real possibility that with Canada falling behind the only international agreement on the climate will fall with it.
In addition to environmental impacts, the development of the tar sands will displace several first nations communities, create a province wide job shortage and shoot Alberta into the lead with the nations highest high school drop out rate (because young people are going north to work in the tar sands).
It is time to draw our own line in the sand. The tar sands can be stopped. Much of the tar sands leases have not yet been allocated. The pipeline to provide energy to the tar sands has not been built and just suffered a major set back. This is a fight that we can win and our future may be held in the balance.
