Tuesday, January 15, 2008

The Problem of the Oil Sands

As we all know, Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are rising out of control. The increase is largely due to pollution in the Alberta oil patch.

Garth Turner had a good post last week about the issue. He says that in addition to the huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions, "one barrel of oil takes more energy than the oil actually delivers, plus about four barrels of water." The process results in huge quantities of polluted water and there's no way to clean it.

This link to Garth's post includes a lively comments section with lots of additional information and dissenting opinions.

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2 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...

If you're looking for information on the Tar Sands, try Pembina Institute or Suzuki foundation. They have a fair bit more than you'll get from Garth.

Cory Sampson said...

It's true a lot of the growth has been crowded out by the environmental loss. What we need is a carbon tax that will put money into the government so that it can redistribute it back to the people who will be inconvenienced by the carbon tax.