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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Time for us to say "No More Oil for War" to the US

TIME FOR US TO SAY 'NO MORE OIL FOR WAR' TO US

RICARDO ACUÑA / ualberta.ca/parkland

There are few things we progressive Albertans enjoy more than the opportunity to take a holier-than-thou attitude towards the United States.

Selling out sovereignty in orbit and the North

Selling out sovereignty in orbit and the North
Jan 22, 2008 04:30 AM
Michael Byers

Stephen Harper talks a fine game on Arctic sovereignty. He's told Canadians that we need to "use it or lose it." He's publicly berated U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins over the status of the Northwest Passage. He's even promised to build a deepwater dock on northern Baffin Island and ice-strengthened patrol vessels for the Canadian Navy.

Premier tells U.S. that environmental toll from tar sands is a "myth"

Premier tells U.S. that environmental toll from oilsands is a "myth"
5 days ago

WASHINGTON - Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach asked American business leaders Wednesday not to buy into the "myth" that oilsands production comes at too high an environmental cost, saying attempts to curtail it "don't make sense."

But he faced disbelieving protesters at every turn on the first day of his trade visit to the United States, including about 35 environmentalists who passed out flyers to guests arriving at a Canadian embassy reception.

N Dakota: Feds say Keystone won’t harm environment

Feds say Keystone won’t harm environment
Janell Cole N.D. Capitol Bureau
Published Friday, January 18, 2008
BISMARCK — The TransCanada Keystone Pipeline “would result in limited adverse environmental impacts” in North Dakota and other states it will pass through, the U.S. government says.

The State Department has released its final environmental impact statement on the project, though it will still accept public comment until approximately Feb. 11, then issue a final order, according to a cover letter to “colleagues and stakeholders” dated Jan. 11.

Globalization is Fueling Global Warming

Globalization is Fueling Global Warming
by Les Leopold
AlterNet (December 28 2007)

As global warming negotiations move from Bali towards a worldwide
treaty, it is important to address how global warming and global trade
work hand-in-hand.

Globalization is to global warming what warm water in the Gulf of Mexico
waters was to Hurricane Katrina. And, unless we wisely limit rapidly
accelerating global trade, we will see equally disastrous and deadly
results - worsening global warming and a continued chemical poisoning of
our world.

Hard Times Sold in Vending Machines

Hard Times Sold in Vending Machines
Worker migration from Atlantic Canada to the tar sands
January 8, 2008
by Stuart Neatby

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Big Oil's Profits and Plunder

by Ralph Nader, Nader.org
AlterNet (January 08 2008)

While many impoverished American families are shivering in the winter
cold for lack of money to pay the oil baron their exorbitant price for
home heating oil, ex-oil man, George W Bush sleeps in a warm White House
and relishes his defeat of the Congressional attempt to get rid of $15
billion in unconscionable tax breaks given those same profit-glutted oil
companies like ExxonMobil when crude oil was half the price it is today.

This is the same George W Bush who, calling himself a "compassionate

First Nations vow to occupy eastern Ont. site to block uranium mining

Keith Leslie, THE CANADIAN PRESS Published Friday January 11th, 2008

TORONTO - Aboriginals in eastern Ontario warned Friday that they would ignore a court order and illegally occupy the site of a proposed uranium mine north of Kingston later this month unless the province calls a halt to the project.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Storm of the Century

The Peak Oil Crisis: Storm of the Century
by Tom Whipple

Falls Church News Press (December 27 2007)

A "Perfect storm" refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events which,
taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their
chance combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature. --
Wikipedia

In recent weeks we have been bombarded with reports of perturbations in
the mortgage/liquidity crisis that is creating havoc in the financial world.

The travails of the "financial industry", as it is called these days,

Detroit: Say no to refinery expansion (for Albertan Tar Sands)

Detroit: Say no to refinery expansion
January 10, 2008

By ED McARDLE

In the debate over record gas prices, some experts point to dwindling supplies unable to meet soaring demand, while others stress lack of refinery capacity in the United States. Marathon Oil believes it has the answer.