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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I heard that interview - interesting and
self-serving how various media spin things to suit themselves- this 33 second
video gives a bird's -eye view of the oil spill in Mayflower Arkansas that
happened a couple of days ago <A
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u30m8U6VP3E">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u30m8U6VP3E</A>
Yikes! </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial> They are saying this pipe was 70 yrs. old,
and therefore not as strong as what would be installed these days, (then why was
it still being used one wonders?), but that pipes put in now would be 10 x
bigger. In the States there sure seems to be very little buffer between
residential areas and where oil companies can do fracking, drilling + place
pipelines! The crude is all important it would seem. I hope there are
better guidelines/laws in Canada! </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Lori S.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B>
<A title=eleanor7000@gmail.com href="mailto:eleanor7000@gmail.com">Eleanor
Grant</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=All@gren.ca
href="mailto:All@gren.ca">GREN2</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, April 03, 2013 1:05
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [All] Tom Homer Dixon on "The
Tar Sands Disaster"</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<P dir=ltr>Local prof writes in New York Times:<BR>"Canada is beginning to
exhibit the economic and political characteristics of a petro-state."</P>
<P dir=ltr>On As It Happens today (April 2), he said he wrote the article with
"oil sands" all the way through, and the NYT changed it to "tar sands".
He said it's a bad mental state we've got into, when if you say "tar sands" in
Canada you are considered unpatriotic. In fact he's received mail since
the article appeared, telling him to get out of Canada because he's
un-Canadian.</P>
<P dir=ltr><A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/the-tar-sands-disaster.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/01/opinion/the-tar-sands-disaster.html?_r=0</A></P>
<P dir=ltr>OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR<BR>The Tar Sands Disaster<BR>By THOMAS
HOMER-DIXON<BR>Published: March 31, 2013 </P>
<P dir=ltr>WATERLOO, Ontario</P>
<P dir=ltr>IF President Obama blocks the Keystone XL pipeline once and for
all, he’ll do Canada a favor.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Canada’s tar sands formations, landlocked in northern Alberta, are
a giant reserve of carbon-saturated energy — a mixture of sand, clay and a
viscous low-grade petroleum called bitumen. Pipelines are the best way to get
this resource to market, but existing pipelines to the United States are
almost full. So tar sands companies, and the Alberta and Canadian governments,
are desperately searching for export routes via new pipelines.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Canadians don’t universally support construction of the pipeline. A
poll by Nanos Research in February 2012 found that nearly 42 percent of
Canadians were opposed. Many of us, in fact, want to see the tar sands
industry wound down and eventually stopped, even though it pumps tens of
billions of dollars annually into our economy.</P>
<P dir=ltr>The most obvious reason is that tar sands production is one of the
world’s most environmentally damaging activities. It wrecks vast areas of
boreal forest through surface mining and subsurface production. It sucks up
huge quantities of water from local rivers, turns it into toxic waste and
dumps the contaminated water into tailing ponds that now cover nearly 70
square miles.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Also, bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested
in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the
form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America
returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands
production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more
carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.</P>
<P dir=ltr>There is a less obvious but no less important reason many Canadians
want the industry stopped: it is relentlessly twisting our society into
something we don’t like. Canada is beginning to exhibit the economic and
political characteristics of a petro-state.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Countries with huge reserves of valuable natural resources often
suffer from economic imbalances and boom-bust cycles. They also tend to have
low-innovation economies, because lucrative resource extraction makes them fat
and happy, at least when resource prices are high.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Canada is true to type. When demand for tar sands energy was strong
in recent years, investment in Alberta surged. But that demand also lifted the
Canadian dollar, which hurt export-oriented manufacturing in Ontario, Canada’s
industrial heartland. Then, as the export price of Canadian heavy crude
softened in late 2012 and early 2013, the country’s economy stalled.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Canada’s record on technical innovation, except in resource
extraction, is notoriously poor. Capital and talent flow to the tar sands,
while investments in manufacturing productivity and high technology elsewhere
languish.</P>
<P dir=ltr>But more alarming is the way the tar sands industry is undermining
Canadian democracy. By suggesting that anyone who questions the industry is
unpatriotic, tar sands interest groups have made the industry the third rail
of Canadian politics.</P>
<P dir=ltr>The current Conservative government holds a large majority of seats
in Parliament but was elected in 2011 with only 40 percent of the vote,
because three other parties split the center and left vote. The Conservative
base is Alberta, the province from which Prime Minister Stephen Harper and
many of his allies hail. As a result, Alberta has extraordinary clout in
federal politics, and tar sands influence reaches deep into the federal
cabinet.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Both the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary caucus are
heavily populated by politicians who deny mainstream climate science. The
Conservatives have slashed financing for climate science, closed facilities
that do research on climate change, told federal government climate scientists
not to speak publicly about their work without approval and tried,
unsuccessfully, to portray the tar sands industry as environmentally
benign.</P>
<P dir=ltr>The federal minister of natural resources, Joe Oliver, has attacked
“environmental and other radical groups” working to stop tar sands exports. He
has focused particular ire on groups getting money from outside Canada,
implying that they’re acting as a fifth column for left-wing foreign
interests. At a time of widespread federal budget cuts, the Conservatives have
given Canada’s tax agency extra resources to audit registered charities. It’s
widely assumed that environmental groups opposing the tar sands are a main
target.</P>
<P dir=ltr>This coercive climate prevents Canadians from having an open
conversation about the tar sands. Instead, our nation behaves like a gambler
deep in the hole, repeatedly doubling down on our commitment to the
industry.</P>
<P dir=ltr>President Obama rejected the pipeline last year but now must decide
whether to approve a new proposal from TransCanada, the pipeline company.
Saying no won’t stop tar sands development by itself, because producers are
busy looking for other export routes — west across the Rockies to the Pacific
Coast, east to Quebec, or south by rail to the United States. Each alternative
faces political, technical or economic challenges as opponents fight to make
the industry unviable.</P>
<P dir=ltr>Mr. Obama must do what’s best for America. But stopping Keystone XL
would be a major step toward stopping large-scale environmental destruction,
the distortion of Canada’s economy and the erosion of its democracy.<BR></P>
<P dir=ltr>(Thomas Homer-Dixon, who teaches global governance at the Balsillie
School of International Affairs, is the author of “The Upside of Down:
Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization.”<BR>A version of this
op-ed appeared in print on April 1, 2013, on page A19 of the New York edition
with the headline: The Tar Sands Disaster.</P>
<P dir=ltr>More NYT on tar sands:<BR><A
href="http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/tar+sands">http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/tar+sands</A><BR></P>
<P>
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