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Oil sands on trial

DAVID EBNER

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

Latest comment posted at 8:52 PM EDT 07/05/08

Imperial Oil's fight to win the right to drain muskeg at an oil sands project begins Wednesday in an Alberta courtroom. At a time of intense public scrutiny of the region and the way the oil is extracted from the ground, the stakes have never been higher ...Read the full article

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  1. Daniel Cunningham from Victoria, writes: Don't hold your breath. Alberta would rather spend $25 mill on a PR joke than actually do anything constructive environmentally-wise.
  2. aging oldtool from Canada writes: Now if only politicians would quit going to bat for these companies when ever they need help.

    I am still irate Harper's conservatives gave the entire friggin' industry a bye on new greenhouse gas emmission even though its the largest single source of GHG in Canada and is only half completed.

    And the Alberta conservatives come across as the industry's PR agency. The latest example being the premier doing the circus routine in Washington on behalf of the industry.

    Frankly the only dead duck I want to see is a political one who has got himself stuck in tar sands goop reaching for a donation from these corporations.
  3. Paul Bowler from Canberra, Australia writes: Looks like oil at $US120 /barrel will not be enough to make the "oil sands" an economic reality!
  4. Joe Gopher from Canada writes: The planet has been in a ten year cooling trend which will continue for a while yet, according to the 'models'.
    Why didn't I hear about that in the news?
  5. Joe Gopher from Canada writes: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3066
    Oh dear, sea ice levels are up again.
    I'm guessing that won't be front page news.
  6. BC Refugee in AB from Canada writes: Joe...to be honest I don't give a rats a$$ about kyoto, etc until the entire industrial world is on board....any cuts we make will be offset ten fold by growth in BRIC. Having said that I am concerned about REAL environmental issues like water usage, tailings pond reclaimation, air pollution, etc. On those front we need to hold the oil sand industry's feet to the fire to ensure that they operate in a way that is accecptable to Canadians. I'm not advocating closure of the industry, it is the economic engine of this country right now, but we need to demand that the growth happens in a sustainable and careful manner. As my name suggests I am an economic refugee from the BC forest industry, I've seen what happend to companies like Mac Blo who buried their heads in the sand around environmental issues...they don't exist anymore and their industry is in a death spiral....
  7. Joe Gopher from Canada writes: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=3066
    Oh dear, sea ice levels are up again.
    I'm guessing that won't be front page news.
  8. r b from Calgary, Canada writes: 80% of oil from oilsands are recoverable only by in-situ methods, their surface footprint is tiny compared to the mines.

    Mines have terrible optics anyways, and most Canadians are too stupid to realize that all economic growth comes with some ecological cost, so the Alberta government should start slanting the table towards in-situ projects only.

    Still lots of oil, lots of jobs, and we can tell the rest of Canada to piss off and look after their own ecological disasters, starting with metro Toronto.
  9. Rick Drysdale from Canada writes: Six months ago the majority of Torontonians had no idea where the tar sands were. Not it is the worst polluter on earth.

    Give it a rest.

    More crap comes out of Ontario than the entire country. And I don't mean just the verbal pollution.
  10. Mark S Noel from NT, Canada writes: I guess if Toronto can't be booming no where in the country should. At least there are still jobs in Alberta and Saskboom, Canadians still have the opportunity to live proud and prosper. I'm sure that makes the cradle to grave Liberal cry, after all how can you control the peon class if they aren't poor and living on government handouts.
  11. Rick Drysdale from Canada writes: Hey Mark S

    You just discribed Mr. Flahertys attitude to us peons. Thats one man who wants to control us and the way to do that is to make us financially beholding to the government.
  12. Rudy Krueger from High River, Canada writes: In regards to the ducks and the oil sands. No person but a sicko would ever want such a thing to happen or would be indifferent about it. It drives me to the brink of patience to hear all the ranting and raving about this incident. Back in the days (before 1960) when we used to kill ducks for food in the prairies, that many would get shot and lost - full of deadly lead pellets for predators and scavengers to die on - in an hour of a weekend. Now we have ducks and geese crapping all over lawns, eating farmers out of house and home 12 months of the year. They are in swarms in Alberta and a lot of them don't bother to migrate because the weather is so good. In a few years they will have to be killed off one way or the other unless they die by the thousands from population concentration and disease before humans have to do it. I think there has been more rubbish about the dead ducks than the number of kids that died in the same space of time in Burma or north Africa.... I pass a packinghouse every day that dispatches 3500 cattle every 24 hours. You can tell a lot about Greenpeace by their cheap shots and ignorance. This is an organization primarily meant to give each generation of "Look at me mom, I'm a big boy now" hippy twits an opportunity to get their sorry names and faces in the news media. They are a damned cult. These guys shovel crap faster, further and in greater quantities than any corporate bigshots I have ever known or heard of. Their BS is just as bad .. worse maybe. Untruth is not justified by high-minded causes... it is untruth plain and simple. In fact we expect more of those who cast themselves as the public's conscience. There, I've said it. Feel much better.

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