Our civilization's addiction to oil is being displayed in all its nefarious glory in the tar sands of Canada. According to Chris Nelder:
What we have here is arguably the most environmentally destructive activity man has ever attempted, with a compliant government, insatiable demand, and an endless supply of capital turning it into "a speeding car with a gas pedal and no brakes." It sucks down critical and rapidly diminishing amounts of both natural gas and water, paying neither for its consumption of natural capital nor its environmental destruction, to the utter detriment of its host. And all to eke out maybe a 10% profit, if it turns out that the books haven't been cooked, and if the taxation structure remains a flat-out giveaway.
Greenpeace recently announced a new campaign against the tar sands, pointing out that "Tar sands produce five times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil, because they are energy-intensive, requiring huge amounts of natural gas to separate and process the bitumen."
As I recently posted, processing tar sands leads to more pollution in the United States. Tar-sand oil production leads to more global warming, is being pursued because of peak oil, and continues the wholesale destruction of ecosystems, as Nelder enumerates:
Tar sands plants typically use two to four barrels of water to extract a barrel of oil ... and after it's been through the process, the water is toxic with contaminants, so it cannot be released into the environment. Some of it is reused, but vast amounts of it are pumped into enormous settlement ponds to be retained as toxic waste. These "ponds" are actually the largest bodies of water in the region -- big enough to be seen from space -- and some of the world's largest man-made ponds overall, with miles of surface area. It may take 200 years for the smallest particles to settle down to the bottom of this toxic brew, which also contains very high levels of heavy metals and other health-threatening elements ... With the tar sands currently producing at the rate of about 1 million barrels per day (mbpd), water levels in the river are already going down. Given such intense water demands, it's completely unclear how production can be increased to the target of 4 mbpd by 2020.
The natural gas used is so unsustainable, oil companies are considering putting nukes on top of the tar sands:
Professor Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University, a recognized expert on tar sands, puts it bluntly: "The supply of natural gas in North America is not adequate to support a future Canadian oil sands industry with today's dependence on natural gas" ... After gas, the next obvious choice is nuclear energy -- building dozens of nuclear plants to generate the heat needed to create the steam needed to drive the hydrocarbons out of the sand.
So how do we end this addiction? Let me modestly propose three broad policy goals:
- Use less oil in vehicles, which obviously means higher mileage standards, but should also include a sufficient program of R&D and government purchases of electric vehicles. But we need something that can help reduce the number of miles driven, or else oil use will creep up over the years as people drive more, so:
- Radically increase funding for light rail, electrified rail freight, buses, and high-speed intercity rail;
- and now for something different -- how about freezing construction of new highways, and instead using the money for R&D, public transit, and fixing the existing roads and collapsing bridges? The people organizing the recent fast against global warming called for a freeze on coal plant construction; to that demand we could add a call for a halt to new highway construction.
Between tar sands and other petroleum boondoggles on the one hand, and biofuels production on the other, we need to find ways to decrease the need for the use of fuel-based vehicles, for the sake of the planet and its people.
The tar sands blow
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
Children and riot police face off in Canadian “Moms” video
Comments
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JMG Posted 6:33 am
14 Sep 2007
It sounds nuts to an American at first, but a paving moratorium has the virtue of complete simplicity and rationality. I would modify it somewhat to allow for conversion --- that is, you can pour a new road if you depave and restore the same area elsewhere in the same local area. So pull a road out of a forest if you want to add a lane along a collector road, etc.
This, then, is a "cap and trade" system for pavement, which lies beneath (ha ha!) so many of our most serious problems. And the nice thing is that it rewards the right things -- you can move a lot more freight and people with rail, so there's an incentive to run more rail lines and less pavement for autos, etc.
I am afraid that I agree with Richard Register (smart architect) that mileage standards are no solution---you give an American a 50 mpg car and he will insist that that's all that he need do, and that there's no reason for him to move closer to his job.
What has to happen is that auto travel stops being the default choice. A strictly enforced paving moratorium would not only free up lots of money, stop new sprawl, encourage reformation and gridding within sprawl-pattern carburbia, it would also lead to real serious demands for bicycle friendly design and other options.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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JMG Posted 6:48 am
14 Sep 2007
I remember reading that there were 7 parking spaces for each car some years ago. Here's a frightening update:
AMERICANS LOVE PARKING LOTS
UPI - Purdue University researchers surveyed the total area devoted to parking in a midsize Midwestern county and found parking spaces outnumbered resident families 11-to-1. The researchers determined the county's total parking area to be larger than 1,000 football fields, covering more than two square miles.
"Even I was surprised by these numbers," said Associate Professor Bryan Pijanowski, who led the study in Purdue's home county of Tippecanoe. "I can't help but wonder: Do we need this much parking space?". . .
Pijanowski counted 355,000 parking spaces in Tippecanoe County, which is home to about 155,000 residents. He noted farmers could produce 250,000 bushels of corn in the same space taken up by parking lots.
http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007b/070911PijanowskiParkin ...
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Jon Rynn Posted 7:00 am
14 Sep 2007
All that parking could eventually be used for gardens, solar collectors, and John Todd-type recycling of waste water, and the parking lanes could be used for bicycles and light rail, me thinks.
Free parking lots now! No new pavement! No new coal plants!
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thebrowze Posted 7:49 am
14 Sep 2007
I'm not saying that mass transit isn't the answer, but it isn't a panacea either, and could do more harm than good if not planned carefully.
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ecoswift Posted 8:45 am
14 Sep 2007
It is a melancholy sight to see Albertans maintain a stubborn belief in the correctness of the concept of Barrels per Day while shocking stories of the oil sands perplex their fellow citizens elsewhere.
This impedes Albertans' ability to go off to work with a Clear Conscience to produce gasoline and energy for our cars, homes, and Neighbours to the South, and to thereby generate Profits, Jobs and Taxes.
Across the land, no one can be truly happy about circumstances like these.
Albertans point to their environmental programs, wind power developments and emissions reductions, but deceive only those paying attention. In fact, at least as troubling and philosophically burdensome as oil production is to diligent organizations such as the Sierra Club is the knowledge that a sizeable number of Albertans espy a dark seam of convenient dishonesty in "The Inconvenient Truth", and by and large feel Conservative in their politics.
Of course, this surprises no one. Albertans are well-known both for their Barbaric Behaviour and Rampant Paranoia; often frightening their children with bedtime tales of the National Energy Program and other capers in faraway Ottawa.
What is to be done? As he or she labours to bring conformity of opinion to Society, even the most saintly ecologist despairs of Albertans' salvation. Those respected arbiters of the public good make it very clear that Albertans daily commit the sin of Climate Change. About this, not a single shred of doubt can be found. Stated most simply: as well as offend those provinces that lack an oil sands bonanza, these oil barons are now going to destroy the world, damning the rest of us to Perdition along with them.
I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of Miscreants, is, in the present deplorable state of the Land, a very great Additional Grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making Albertans sound, useful members of the Commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the Nation.
I accordingly make this modest proposal. The viability of my proposed scheme is much reinforced by the very nature of the climate change conflict; a struggle which pits the faith of believers against that of non-believers: an essentially religious construct. Fortuitously, the oil sands industry is on hand to contribute the appropriate whiff of sulphur.
Almost 300 years ago, Mr. Swift modestly proposed roasting and eating children of the Irish poor. A similar kind of remedy was considered with regard to today's Albertans, but rejected due to the generally unappetizing nature of those hardy Westerners. But coming at the problem from the perspective of religious conflict has borne fruit.
Fortunately for Canadians, excellent models of demonstrated effectiveness from other religious conflicts exist now and in history; systems abounding with Clear Rules and Swift Punishments. In fact, one need look no further than another oil-rich Nation - Saudi Arabia - for a most competent deployment on its cities' streets of an organization known as The Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
These stalwarts arrest unrelated males and females caught socializing, enforce store closures during prayer time, dietary laws and dress codes, prohibit the consumption or sale of alcoholic beverages, and prevent the practice or proselytizing of other religions within The Kingdom. I suggest to you that in comparison to the laws that might be passed by the David Suzuki Foundation, the strictures of Sharia law might seem squeamish indeed.
And historically, each of the Roman Catholic Church's Inquisition in Spain, the Puritans of the American colonies and, more recently, the Taliban of Afghanistan, have been more than up to the task of putting together Robust Guidelines for the behaviour of their Flocks, complemented by impressively effective enforcements including, but not restricted to burning at the stake, shooting, stoning, and ritual disembowelment. To be sure, even the fairest application of laudable methodologies like these may inadvertently fracture a few innocent skulls and amputate a few blameless hands, but omelets are seldom made without there being a few eggs broken. A certain degree of conviction is all that is needed.
And I think the necessary conviction is available. Not to put environmentalists on a pedestal, but I believe few citizens could be found who would disagree that the righteous certainty of the average Greenpeace zealot measures up well to that of Torquemada or Mullah Omar; and in fact be even more affronted by those who stray from the true path. After all, Torquemada or Mullah Omar had only mere sinners to reform.
I likewise have no trouble whatsoever imagining the Liberal's Stephane Dion or the NDP's Jack Layton dutifully laying into Albertan backs with the flog, if warranted by virtue's propagation or the chance of a photo op with Al Gore. Luckily, predisposed as they are to solving the problems of the world on Alberta's back, it seems sure that for these Gentlemen and their congregations the step would not be a large one.
Therefore, it is clear to the meanest imagination that no great difficulty stands in the way of immediately setting down a minimum of Ten Commandments for Albertans' behaviour, together with punishments of sufficient persuasiveness.
Most Albertans will eagerly embrace these codes of behaviour for the new clarity brought to the Rights and Wrongs of non-renewable resource development and Sport Utility Vehicle ownership. Too, laws such as these may well lead to the sweet and significant joy that would flow from living in a society free of the temptations of Hydrocarbon production and use. And given the considerable extra time for leisurely contemplation gained as we walked or bicycled about our business, or rested by our modest huts after an active day in the fields, we could dream of a future day when the human species has withered away entirely, allowing the Earth to revert to a new Eden; a garden as it was in the time not only before Albertans, but before even Adam and Eve.
Until that halcyon moment, to some it may seem artful or clever to fling names such as Luddite or neo-puritan at our hard-working ecoevangelists, but cruel labels like these are grossly unfair - for when on the side of the angels, the Cause is all the justification any religion has ever needed to stop mollycoddling unbelievers, or infidel Albertans as the case may be, and take decisive action.
:)
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