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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>I'm afraid you're probably right- fossil fuels seem
to blind its seekers to everything else in order to get at it, kindof like a
gold rush. This episode of <EM>The Nature of Things</EM> called "Shattered
Ground" shows some of the problems that have arisen in the States from fracking,
and how incredibly close they get to schools, playgrounds, homes etc. People are
getting sick. There's also a story included about how they have the right
to go on private property and drill without getting permission from the owner!
Pretty shocking.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial><A
href="http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/The+Nature+of+Things/ID/2332883489/">http://www.cbc.ca/player/Shows/Shows/The+Nature+of+Things/ID/2332883489/</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial>Lori S.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>----- Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV><B>From:</B> <A title=sustainab@hotmail.com
href="mailto:sustainab@hotmail.com">Peter Kofler</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=strothjkl@sympatico.ca
href="mailto:strothjkl@sympatico.ca">Lori Strothard</A> </DIV>
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style="BORDER-LEFT: #000000 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"
dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, April 03, 2013 2:39
PM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> RE: [All] Tom Homer Dixon on
"The Tar Sands Disaster"</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>Better guidelines/laws in Canada? Sadly, I don't think this is
generally the case. The common element between Canada and the US?
- The same fossil fuel industry types and the "cowboy
ethos" they share. For the most part, we've evolved into "me too"
jurisdictions as far as anything which applies to the fossil fuel industry
goes - that is, anything the US does - we generally do too - but never exceed
any of the guidelines they set.<BR> <BR>Big Fossil Fuel tends to
corrupt and despoil everything it touches, considering <U>all</U>
benefits and costs - this will become clear as we slide further down the
fossil energy depletion curve. A. Nikiforuk talks about this in one of
his more recent efforts: "The Energy of Slaves".<BR> <BR>
<DIV>
<DIV id=SkyDrivePlaceholder></DIV>
<HR id=stopSpelling>
From: strothjkl@sympatico.ca<BR>To: eleanor7000@gmail.com;
All@gren.ca<BR>Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 09:21:39 -0400<BR>Subject: Re: [All] Tom
Homer Dixon on "The Tar Sands Disaster"<BR><BR>
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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"
target=_blank>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>
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<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal">-----
Original Message ----- </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; BACKGROUND: rgb(228,228,228); font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><B>From:</B>
<A title=eleanor7000@gmail.com href="mailto:eleanor7000@gmail.com">Eleanor
Grant</A> </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><B>To:</B>
<A title=All@gren.ca href="mailto:All@gren.ca">GREN2</A> </DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><B>Sent:</B>
Wednesday, April 03, 2013 1:05 AM</DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT: 10pt arial; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal"><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"
target=_blank>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"
target=_blank>http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/tar+sands</A><BR></P>
<HR>
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