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.
Powerful member of Congress slams Alberta to Texas tar sands pipeline
By Kevin Grandia July 6, 2010
Tyee.
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), a senior member of Congress and chair of the powerful Congressional Committee on Energy and Commerce has penned a public letter to the Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton, in which he states strong opposition to a planned oil pipeline that would transport Canada's controversial tar sands oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
In the letter Waxman writes:
Warning To Gulf Volunteers: Almost Every Cleanup Worker From The 1989 Exxon Valdez Disaster Is Now Dead
Michael Snyder
Jun. 30, 2010
Are you sure that you want to help clean up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? In a previous article we documented a number of the health dangers from this oil spill that many scientists are warning us of, and now it has been reported on CNN that the vast majority of those who worked to clean up the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska are now dead. Yes, you read that correctly. Almost all of them are dead.
CNRL announces oil sands production gain
John Shmuel, Financial Post
Jun. 30, 2010
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. revealed in its June forecast that its oil sands production will hit between 116,000 and 118,000 barrels a day for the month, after a maintenance shutdown in May helped boost efficiency.
The June figures are significantly higher than last month's, when the Calgary-based energy company produced 81,400 barrels a day after a partial shut down of operations for maintenance.
Debate Heats Up Over Oil Sands
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
NYTimes
July 1 2010
Stelmach buys U.S. ad touting oil sands
Article submitted to the Washington Post was rejected by op-ed section, so Alberta government turns to half-page ad
Josh Wingrove
Edmonton — Globe and Mail
Jul. 02, 2010
For lack of another way to reach U.S. lawmakers wary of the “filthy” Canadian oil sands, Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s office bought a half-page advertisement in Friday’s Washington Post championing its energy industry and a proposed pipeline that would reach down into the United States.
The Congo (actually, both Congo-Brazzaville and DR Congo) is supposed to be not only opening up to foreign tar sands development, but trusting people who learned how to carry it out in Canada. They have shown, much like BP, whether tar sands developers can be trusted anywhere.
--M
UN says at least 220 dead in oil explosion in eastern Congo
From the Associated Press
KINSHASA, CONGO —
The Collapsing Western Way of Life
The greatest threat to the Western Way of Life is the Western Way of Life itself.
By John Kozy
Global Research, June 18, 2010
The Age of Enlightenment was born sometime around the beginning of the
eighteenth century. A mere three-quarters of a century later, industrialization
ushered in the Age of Endarkenment, and human life has grown more and more
perilous ever since. The Golden Age of capitalism cannot be recreated merely by
applying the right mixture of spending, subsidies, re-regulation, and
A Run for the Canadian Border
By Marin Katusa
June 21, 2010
The Gulf of Mexico disaster has changed U.S. priorities, costs, and energy supply sources for years to come. But the fact that the U.S. needs energy isn’t changing any time soon and as mass sources of green energy are still a while away, the most likely alternative might be the most surprising one.
Ignatieff promises B.C. oil-tanker-traffic moratorium
By SCOTT SIMPSON, Vancouver Sun
June 21, 2010
Federal Liberals would formalize a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic on British Columbia's north coast waters, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff announced on Monday.
Scientist admits defaming oilsands researchers
June 21, 2010
CBC News
A scientist who works for the Alberta government has apologized to two scientists for calling their research "a lie."
Dr. Preston McEachern, an environmental effects biologist who works for the government of Alberta, issued a letter of apology and retraction to Kevin Timoney, a researcher with Treeline Ecological Research, and Peter Lee, executive director with Global Forest Watch Canada.
