The wife does not want to read another commentary on tar sands bitumen. She thinks that some people who worry about bitumen should get a life. You have to admit that it does give one pause when writing yet another commentary on bitumen, its producers, its pipeline devotees and its favourite government.
But it is necessary. Hearing of the Pembina Institute’s analysis of where we humans stand in the battle against global warming is both disquieting and concerning. Frankly, folks, we are losing the bloody battle. We are not only going to lose coastlines down the road but we are going to lose the ability to feed the world’s billions of people. And in case you are wondering why the world’s climate has become so unstable, why not ask the people who are releasing tonnes of carbon into our atmosphere every day.
Who are the idiots who are paying outrageous prices today for gasoline for big gas guzzling vans? Who thinks fracking (hydraulic fracturing of the subterranean structure of our earth) is a smart way to find more polluting oil? Or should we just pollute even more by exploiting tar sands? And why are we shipping millions of barrels of bitumen and fracked oil around North America in unsafe oil tank cars? Do the railroads really have to have their share of road kill?
But was that not a wonderful message the citizens of Kitimat, B.C. sent to the federal government and to Enbridge Pipelines the other day? It can be summed up as ‘take your pipeline and shove it!’ They do not want the pipeline, the oil tankers, the pollution, the bribes and an abused planet. Bless them.
And pipeline people lie you know. We keep reading this hogwash about the Texas Gulf refineries. TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline is supposed to send bitumen to these refineries. The truth is that those refineries can get all the American bitumen they want from much closer than Alberta. The TransCanada pipeline plan is to ship bitumen through those Texas Gulf oil ports to countries that do not care about the high pollution of refining it.
And then there is Canada’s Conservative government. These are the brain-dead ones who are waiting for the tar sands exploiters to tell them what the pollution standards should be in the Athabasca region of Alberta. In the meantime, the tars sands tailing ponds throughout the area are polluting the soil and the rivers and taking away the livelihood of the aboriginal peoples.
At least we Canadians can do something about government. Just you wait Mr. Harper, just you wait!
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Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
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