Me Tar Sands, You Insane

U.S. emphasis on Canada's tar sands a bad idea, says report

Posted at 2:43 PM on 04 Jun 2008

As the United States expands its oil-refining capabilities, more than two-thirds of planned capacity will be devoted to processing crude oil from Canada's tar sands, says a new report from the Environmental Integrity Project and Environmental Defense Canada. Tar-sands capacity is predicted to see a total increase of 1.9 million barrels per day, says the report, while conventional-oil refining drops off. Production of tar-sands oil is cheaper and much dirtier than regular ol' crude: Greens lament the air-polluting nasties spewed by tar-sands operations, as well as encroachment on Canada's boreal forest. Emphasizing the tar sands as a fuel source is insanity, says EDC's Matt Price: "Nowhere else are we talking about ripping up an area the size of Florida, creating massive toxic lakes you can see from space with the naked eye, and giving off three times the greenhouse-gas emissions to produce oil when compared with conventional crude." Well, when you put it that way ...

sources: Canwest News Service, The Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail
straight to the report: Tar Sands: Feeding U.S. Refinery Expansions with Dirty Fuel

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Comments: (5 comments)

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LOL topic title...

by Tasermons Partner at 10:46 PM on 04 Jun 2008

good National Geographic article last year

Athabasca tar sands in Alberta - insane environmental destruction. Big money. Big mess. Suicidal idea, it seems.

It's really hard to sell people on curbing their lust for money and stuff. Good US global warming policy would likely ban the import of fuels like this. Plus it really makes no sense in the arid west, since production requires so much water (and pollutes it too).

Stephen Brown (Sharon, PA)

by pianoyoga at 8:53 AM on 05 Jun 2008

Dirtier yes, but cheaper?

"Production of tar-sands oil is cheaper and much dirtier than regular ol' crude" - That can't be right, is it?

by infp at 9:57 AM on 05 Jun 2008

Tar Sands

Again, people should stop framing this argument in simplistic terms...........

The issue facing us isn't "to sell people on curbing their lust for money and stuff." The global economy is dependent on carbon fuels. Not just carbon fuels for "money and stuff", but carbon fuels to grow and transport food for almost 7 billion people. Carbon fuels for the production of clothes, the construction of housing........

The vast majority of the people living on this planet are just scraping by. Not because of evil corporations, or because of malfeasance on someone's part, but rather because of lags in development and complex economic distribution issues that have NEVER been solved in human history. Increased energy costs mean death in the third world, and we should keep that in the back of our minds as we work towards dealing with the CO2 emissions problems.

The "we should just consume less" approach to this issue is a simpleton solution that has no practical value.

Victory in Pattani

by MAD MAC at 9:58 AM on 05 Jun 2008

Bottomline

Does bottomline, next quarterly earnings report thinking, constitute mass insanity?

This toxic mess says it does.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 11:27 AM on 05 Jun 2008

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