Radiant Ocean Evening wallpaper
Short of reading multiple reports and books, one of the best condensed profiles of the environmental baggage that goes with tar sands/tar oil/bitumen, Our “safe” Canadian oil imports are much more dangerous than we’d like to believe
In fact, “tar sands” is a colloquialism for 54,000 square miles of bitumen that veins sand and clay beneath the boreal forests of Alberta, one of Canada’s western provinces. Black as it is, bitumen isn’t actually tar, though it looks and smells like tar, and has its consistency on a very cold day — hence, that term “tar sands.” (The corporations that produce the stuff prefer “oil sands.”)
Unlike oil, bitumen does not flow. Gouged and steamed out from under the forest, it is wrenched from the soil, barreled, and then refined into synthetic crude oil — at shattering environmental costs. The tar sands industry has ravaged Alberta’s forests, poisoned its air and water, and wrecked the livelihoods of its indigenous peoples.
An unavoidable reality is given a choice between 54,000 square miles of land that did have multiple uses – farming, tourism, wild game for native Canadians, extraction of other minerals and having gas at the pump 25 cents a gallon cheaper ( that is just an armchair guessimate as an example), my bet is the majority of Americans in the US and Canada will choose the cheaper gas at the expense of everything else. Expensive gas hurts the average working American in away that is difficult for them to compensate for. Many of us already drive as little as possible. The alternatives, within the realm of where to get oil, are not especially pretty either. Import more oil from Saudi Arabia or Venezuela? Oil sands do produce more pollution in the journey from mining to your gas tank, but all the other choices remain less than environmentally or national security friendly. Canada is said to be reviewing and is likely to implement more stringent environmental regulation to make mining oil sands safer and less damaging. That still leaves the urgent need for the US to clean up its act. We’re precariously close to having – and to some degree are already having – an oil version of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors.
Last July, as BP’s catastrophe in the Gulf was making news around the clock, the U.S. experienced its first big DilBit moment. Part of Enbridge’s Lakehead line broke, oozing black gunk into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River near Battle Creek, Michigan, iconic home to cereal-maker Kellogg’s. Twelve hours passed before workers responded to the surge of sludge, which by then had passed from the tributary into the river itself. The dark slop could be seen from bank to bank in the Kalamazoo, making its way to Lake Michigan.
One of the problems with piping oil sands into the US, along with the over zealous use of eminent domain to seize private land for the pipelines themselves, is the stuff has to be heated to flow. We’re using the same old oil pipe design meant for regular petroleum. The US has no real oil sands clean up technology. One underground ( the Keystone pipeline) pipeline to the Gulf Coast, just recently completed, has leaked seven times in nine months. A new proposed pipeline (Keystone XL) runs through the Ogallala aquifer, a 174,000-square-mile expanse of water that lies under eight states from the Dakotas to Texas and provides 30% of the nation’s irrigation for agriculture, as well as drinking water for 82% of the people within its vast boundaries. Life is tough without cheap gas for our cars. Life is really tough without drinking and agricultural water. If we’re going to pipe this stuff into the US – which I am betting the powerful corporations and their hand maiden politicians make sure continues – the least that can be done is to pipe it into the USA in a safer manner..
Tar sands report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
Andrew Nikiforuk’s book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
GE To Build Largest Solar Panel Factory In U.S. The least they could do considering they did not pay taxes for last year. They are considering several locations. There are lots of abandoned factories in Michigan and Ohio already zoned for industrial use so they have plenty of options that would require little red tape. This GE project will employ about 400 people.
Destroying Medicare – Rep. Paul Ryan’s(R-WI) Free-Market ‘Death Panels’
“For older people the prospect of getting and paying for private health insurance is daunting,” Guilloton wrote “For instance, in Connecticut a PPO with a $5,000 deductible would cost a 60-64 year old and spouse between $1,400 and $1,900 a month. And that cost presumes that they either are part of a company group plan or have no pre-existing conditions.
“The plan to return control of access to health insurance companies without addressing the issue of eligibility and cost control is simply to return to the very pattern of abuse in place before the attempt at health care reform.”
