Let's Get our Head out of the Tarsands

On the occasion of the Montreal climate change conference, it's time that Canada took a deep breath and resolved to shut down the Athabaska tar sands projects.

Not only is this project destroying any chance that the country might have to fulfill its treaty obligations under the current Kyoto Protocol, but it threatens to take the whole world down with it.

Oil extraction from tar sands is extremely wasteful in terms of energy and greenhouse gases. For every litre of fuel that makes it into your tank, another litre's worth of greenhouse gases has already been released into the atmosphere, six times as much as for conventional oil. It also consumes a large part of our natural gas production, which could otherwise be be used as a cleaner alternative fuel. Using this source of synthetic crude oil is like cutting all energy efficiency in half. As production grows, so do the country's emissions. Half of the growth in Canada's emissions comes from this project.

The "peak oil" theory seems to point to the world's oil supply drying up quickly within very few decades. Just in time to slow the environmental disaster of global warming, even if the world fails to voluntarily take the loaded gun away from its head. This is a built-in fail-safe. But if we start developing production capacity for nonconventional oil such as the Athabaska and Orinoco Belt deposits, we make it economically possible to ignore the problem indefinitely. It's like buying a case of vodka for an alcoholic who had just run out, and helping him find his car keys.

It takes some backbone to shut it down, and the energy addicts around us are going to complain, but it has to be done. It's the biggest cause of GHG increase now and it will only get worse. We can't pretend that it isn't there.

[] permanent link Comments: 0