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.
Head in the Tar Sands? The New York Times Runs Anti-Peak Oil Op-Ed
BY Anya Kamenetz
Tue Aug 25, 2009 at 10:33 AM
Earlier this month, the world's chief energy economist told the UK Independent that global oil production was likely to peak in 10 years, with a "global energy crunch" starting as soon as next year.
Canada's bloody oil
UK companies are extracting oil from our traditional lands. We believe it's killing us – and that's why I'm attending Climate Camp
o George Poitras
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 24 August 2009
Wood Buffalo Housing grows in slower economy
Aug 23, 2009
ALEX BOUTILIER
Fort McMurray Today staff
Even with a battered housing market and low oil prices driving Fort McMurray’s economy down, 2008 was a success for the Wood Buffalo Housing and Development Corporation, said president Bryan Lutes, at the non-profit organization's annual general meeting last night.
About 30 people shuffled into the Golden Years Society Activity Centre to listen to reports from Wood Buffalo Housing’s board of directors, from financial statements to planning goals.
Harper unloads labour, highways cash
Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services
Published Monday, August 24, 2009
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Prime Minister Stephen Harper came bearing gifts for the Northwest Territories Thursday, speeding up promised cash for highway improvements, plus funding a new labour and training agreement to boost the territories' workforce.
Cash for Highways:
The GNWT and federal government are in a seven-year cost-sharing agreement totalling $198 million to improve roads and airports in the territory.
If Opti (begun by Ormat, Opti's Israeli parent company) were to be bought out by competing energy companies, that would essentially send their "cogeneration" climate intensive, garbage-burning form of production mainstream. It also leads to further consolidation of the majors in the tar sands, making opposition more difficult.
--M
Keep An Eye On This Oil Sands Company
By Joseph Nguyen
August 21, 2009
Oilsands camps brimming despite cuts
By Dave Cooper, Edmonton Journal
August 18, 2009
The number of staff in Fort Mc-Murray work camps and lodges has remained high despite the cutbacks of major projects last fall, according to a census released by the Oil Sands Developers Group.
Native Americans to join London climate camp protest over tar sands
Canadian First Nations seek to highlight UK's 'criminal' role in CO2-heavy oil schemes
Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 23 August 2009
Native Americans are to join the Climate Camp protests in the City of London this week in an attempt to draw attention to corporate Britain's "criminal" involvement in the tar sands of Canada.
Five representatives from the Cree First Nations are coming to co-ordinate their campaign against key players in the carbon-heavy energy sector with British environmentalists.
State Department Gives Green Light to Canada-U.S. Oil Pipeline
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 21, 2009
The State Department has approved the construction of a multibillion-dollar pipeline from Canadian oil sands to refineries in the United States, prompting an outcry from environmental groups opposed to oil sands development.
Tar Sands protest comes to UK Climate Camp
Ecologist
18th August, 2009
Oil extraction from tar sands is causing large-scale environmental damage, say activists
The fight against the extraction of oil from the tar sands of Alberta in Canada will reach the UK later this month.
Representatives from First Nations, the group that speaks for Canada's aboriginal people, will join in the London Climate Camp protest from August 27th to 31st.
Search Narrows for Pipeline Bomber
Second threatening letter sets eyes on Tomslake community.
By Greg Amos, 17 Jul 2009, TheTyee.ca
The investigation related to the six northeast B.C. pipeline infrastructure bombings is narrowing in on a small community near the Alberta border, where bloodlines lead back to Sudeten Germans expelled from western Czechoslovakia after World War Two.
