listen, you are either "with" the planet or you are "against it."  

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.

Those tar sands are going to get developed, just like super-sized industries for natural gas, plywood (chipped pine wood), nickel, and gold.

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

stopgreenpath:  The only purpose your purism accomplishes is to delay doing anything about global warming.  It's ridiculous to compare the environmental damage from wind and solar farms with the damage caused by extracting tar sands.  Obviously, any construction project will disturb the local ecology but it's a question of scale.  The amount of forest that will be destroyed by tar sands extraction is an area equivalent to the state of Florida.  Nothing ese we do comes close.

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.

I recently read about the American environmental activist who keeps a blog with info and incriminating photos she took of the tar sands in Alberta, even though the Canadian government's been threatening her to take down the blog. When it comes to natural resources, the Canadian government is every bit as secretive, unscrupulous and defensive as the American government. Just look at the way they try to censor the annual commercial seal hunt in Atlantic Canada.

charles - how quaint of you to say that solar and wind farms might "disturb local ecology!" and that by promoting GREEN energy over total ecological obliteration makes me some sort of loonie obstructionist who is trying to kill the planet with greenhouse gases.

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.