Oil Sands Truth: Shut Down the Tar Sands

Social Impacts

Social Impacts. Overnight injections of migrant workers will not build healthy communities and can have severely adverse impacts on existing communities, especially those of indigenous nations on their traditional lands. Such development brings vices and long term displacement too often. Drugs, alcohol and associated violence spreads. Hunting becomes difficult when the land is threatened, leading to a further loss of culture and tradition. In towns like Fort McMurray there is no planning for the future, but merely consumption in the present. However transient the individuals may be, the populations will not leave, as “development” takes on a logic all its own. All levels of run away development are subordinate to that development, not social need.

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Another sex trade murder in Edmonton

The housing crisis in Alberta, as it gets more and more desperate has as it's corollary more people-- in particular young, often racialized women-- working in the survival sex trade. This, like almost everything else in Alberta, comes from the extremity of the tar sands boom with no attention paid to human or environmental cost. The woman below is likely another victim of the tar sands.

--M

Sex trade slay
Fri, February 22, 2008
RCMP need the publics help with the latest homicide
By KEVIN CRUSH, SUN MEDIA

Grande Prairie suffering effects of uncontrolled growth

Grande Prairie suffering effects of uncontrolled growth
City's national ranking fell from fourth to 99th in one year
Dan Barnes, The Edmonton Journal
Published: Tuesday, February 19, 2008

GRANDE PRAIRIE - On a brilliant, blue sunglasses-mandatory Monday, the good folks of Grande Prairie were enjoying the outdoor pleasures of a city that just two short years ago was ranked the fourth best place to live in the country.

Ahead of Calgary. And Vancouver. And yes, even Edmonton.

North Dakota: Keystone Pipeline Approved

New Pipeline Approved
Feb 21 2008 7:19PM
KXMBTV Bismarck

The Public Service Commission gives the go-ahead for a 218 mile oil pipeline through eastern North Dakota.

The Keystone Pipeline will run through eight counties. You can see it on this map.

The pipeline will carry about 600-thousand barrels of oil per day from Alberta to Illinois and Oklahoma.

Commissioner Kevin Cramer says it's in the public interest to build the pipeline.

Ottawa Citizen Op Ed on Tar Sands

Matt Price and Allan Adam

Citizen Special

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Todd Korol, Reuters

Canadians are becoming familiar with the scale of destruction in the
tarsands, something that First Nations of the region have known for some
time now.

And people around the world are learning why our country has taken such an
obstructionist role on global warming. Canada and the Bush administration
stand alone against the rest of the world because with the tarsands we are
housing the single most destructive project anywhere on Earth, and the
Americans are getting the oil.

Apples, not Applause, for AFN's Fontaine

Feds Expand TFW Programs

Ottawa expands work program
2 new offices to help ease labour needs
Feb 12, 2008 04:30 AM
Nicholas Keung
IMMIGRATION/DIVERSITY REPORTER

Ottawa is expanding the temporary foreign worker program into Ontario to help fill the province's labour needs, a move some fear could further hurt already underutilized and underpaid skilled immigrants.

Immigration Minister Diane Finley announced yesterday the opening of the program's two new offices in Toronto and Moncton, N.B., in addition to the three already established in Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.

Excerpt from Alberta Liberals / Kevin Taft on "Labour Shortages"

Oil Price Closed Above $100 a Barrel; World Leaders Ignore this Signal of Impending Shortages

Press release, The Oil Drum

The price for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil closed above $100 for the first time on February 19, 2008. "Rising oil prices have been giving a clear signal of pending shortages for over five years now," according to TheOilDrum.com. By ignoring this signal, world leaders are steering the world toward an energy disaster characterized by shortages, high energy prices, inflation, civil unrest and famine.

Utah: Meetings set in 3 cities on oil shale, tar sands

Meetings set in 3 cities on oil shale, tar sands
Feb. 16, 2008 12:09 a.m. MST

Public meetings have been scheduled in three Utah cities to discuss development of the state's oil shale and tar sands resources. The shale and sands resources fall within the jurisdictions of the Moab, Monticello, Price, Richfield and Vernal BLM field offices.

The Bureau of Land Management has set up the following informal meetings:

Big oil's enemy within

Big oil's enemy within
The ultimate threat to big oil comes not from green campaigners - but its own shareholders
February 20, 2008 12:15 AM

Tony Hayward
New BP boss Tony Hayward has overseen a reversal of policy towards tar sands.

Business leaders are now pleading with governments for regulation. When did that last happen? Executives usually hate anything that interferes with their freedom of movement. But climate change appears to have changed all that.