The tar sands are rightly called one of the world's greatest environmental crimes, as I've written. No company that invests in the Canadian tar sands can legitimately call itself green.
Yet BP, the oil company that lavished millions on advertising its move "Beyond Petroleum," announced this month it's putting $3 billion into this dirtiest of dirty fuels!
BP is buying a half-share of the ironically named Sunrise field:
"BP's move into oil sands is an opportunity to build a strategic, material position and the huge potential of Sunrise is the ideal entry point for BP into Canadian oil sands," said Tony Hayward, BP's group chief executive.
The company ultimately plans to produce 200,000 barrels of oil a day from the field.
Shame on you, BP!
Just how bad are the tar sands environmentally? As The Independent explains:
The booming oil sands industry will produce 100 million tonnes of CO2 (equivalent to a fifth of the UK's entire annual emissions) a year by 2012, ensuring that Canada will miss its emission targets under the Kyoto treaty ...
The oil rush is also scarring a wilderness landscape: millions of tonnes of plant life and top soil is scooped away in vast open-pit mines and millions of litres of water are diverted from rivers -- up to five barrels of water are needed to produce a single barrel of crude and the process requires huge amounts of natural gas.
What does BP have to say about the environment in its press release?
The result will be the development of a major new Canadian oil field and the modernization and expansion of the Toledo refinery to allow far greater use of Canadian heavy oil and to increase clean fuels production by as much as 600,000 gallons a day.
Clean fuels? Do they really think we are that ignorant and gullible?
Mike Hudema, the climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace in Canada, had a more accurate description:
By jumping into tar sands extraction it is taking part in the biggest global warming crime ever seen and BP's green sheen is gone.
If the tar sands are "beyond petroleum," then BP should just stick with good old petrol for the sake of the planet and stop its greenwashing ads.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Oil: enough energy to melt glaciers!
The hidden cost of coal
Comments
View as Flat
GSchmidt Posted 5:12 am
19 Dec 2007
Dr. Gerald Schmidt
Positive Ecology Project
http://www.positive-ecology.org
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:15 am
19 Dec 2007
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stopgreenpath Posted 8:27 am
19 Dec 2007
if you can smugly object to wilderness being destroyed by tar sand production, then you better f**king object to wilderness being destroyed by new remote wind and solar "farms" which are getting the "green housekeeping stamp of approval" from a bunch of "against it" types who pretend to be "with the planet."
examples? sierra club, nrdc, energy justice, LADWP, Schwazenneger, "solar and clean energy initiative" referendum for 2008, and a bunch of other greenwashing eco-terrorists. many of the solar arrays being planned use ENORMOUS amounts of water (which they contaminate beyond reuse) in a parched desert area, and use natural gas all night. is this really what you are signing up for?
ONLY ACCEPT RENEWABLE POWER WHICH IS GENERATED IN PREVIOUSLY DEVELOPED, PREFERABLY URBAN AREAS. NET-METERED ROOFTOP PV COULD PROVIDE ALMOST ALL OUR POWER NEEDS IN CA, SO WHY ARE UTILITIES INSISTING ON DESTROYING OUR DESERTS TO SELL YOU RESOURCES YOU ALREADY OWN???
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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Sam Wells Posted 9:21 am
19 Dec 2007
And you know what, those Canadians love the investments because they're so tired of hypocritical Americans telling them what to do. I can see their point.
Unlike American businesses, these heavy industries in Canada are fairly clean. They don't have hundreds and hundreds of Super-Fund sites, over 15 nuclear dumps, and impaired waters which are no longer fit to drink or bathe like the US. Don't get me started how we screwed up everything in the US, as it is quite a list.
If you have verifiable proof, monitoring measurements, and expert scientists on hand I suggest you reveal your hand about the facts you found about the tar sands of Canada.
Got milk?
Onward through the fog
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danielbell Posted 10:01 am
19 Dec 2007
ohgreen.com/blog
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charlesjustice Posted 3:24 pm
19 Dec 2007
Mr Sam Wells: Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada has signed away Canada's right to an independent energy policy. The Security and Prosperity Partnership with the United States commits Canada to a fivefold increase in dirty oil production from the tar sands. Was it a coincidence that Canada acted as an American lap-dog during the Bali negotiations? Canada can neither significantly reduce its GHG emissions nor slow down tar sands extraction without threatening U.S. energy security. And we all know what happens to countries who are even perceived as threatening U.S. energy security, don't we.
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dannyc Posted 6:59 pm
19 Dec 2007
http://tinyurl.com/2kp48z
It's all really well-researched and illuminating stuff. Here's a quote:
"The biggest problem with Corporate Responsibility, however, is not that it doesn't go far enough. It is that it's taking us in completely the wrong direction.
"For many large companies, CR is primarily a strategy to divert attention away from the negative social and environmental impacts of their activities, and to continue operating without being forced by governments to change their core business practices. It is no coincidence that the Corporate Responsibility pioneers are companies who have come up against the most brand-damaging public criticism: Shell, Nike, BP, Wal-Mart, Rio Tinto, McDonald's. In fact, it would seem that the more egregious the industry, the more outrageous the greenwash."
Check it out.
D
PS I should declare an interest here - the magazine also includes one of my poems. But don't let that put you off...
http://adaisythroughconcrete.blogspot.com
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:50 am
20 Dec 2007
Don't like electricity?
Stop using it.
My Log
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amc89 Posted 3:25 am
20 Dec 2007
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Ken Ward Posted 3:46 am
20 Dec 2007
CERES was founded by environmental groups to advance the Valdez Principles in the investment world. In March, 2006 it announced...
"BP Receives Top Score in First-Ever Ranking of 100 Global Companies on Climate Change Strategies"
http://www.incr.com/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=543&sr ...
Ken Ward
ken[at]brightlines.org
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stopgreenpath Posted 1:01 pm
20 Dec 2007
why not PV on every single rooftop in america before we start "disturbing" nearly A MILLION SQUARE ACRES of CA desert (dynamiting, depleting all groundwater, killing every plant, animal, reptile, bird and insect, and making communities uninhabitable) to feed Mc Mansions in cities??
if pursuing true sustainability using existing technologies that do not destroy one inch of crucial ecosystems makes me a "purist," then the world needs a LOT MORE PURISTS. this is simple common sense - you don't ADD tons of remote, enormous power plants and power lines to wilderness (in order to increase utility chokeholds on customers) until you've exhausted all local remedies for excessive energy consumption - starting with large-scale distributed generation and conservation.
no greenhouse gases, no lost wilderness, reduced thermal heat island effects, truly green power, free electric bills for ratepayers - what's not to love? check out san francisco and berkeley's new city plans if you think i'm all by myself in this. i'm not, and i'm sorry if you've been brainwashed into thinking greenhouse gases are the only environmental issue out there, so it's cool to kill off everything else unnecessarily with no advantages except to utilities.
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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