The worst kind of news

People of the world, people of the cyberland, people who in the past couple words i've written were obligated to take a breath:

The tar sand oil fields of Alberta must not go forwards, for both environmental and political reasons.

from the sierra club:
ExxonMobil and Shell, is rushing ahead with multi-billion dollar investments in new and expanded tar-sands projects. Canada already exports more oil to the U.S. than any other country. Total Canadian oil production is projected to increase by 50 per cent to 3.9 million barrels per day by 2015. By then, 3 of every 4 barrels of oil produced in Canada will come from the tar sands.
This could make Canada a global tar baby. Tar sands oil is the worst type of oil for the atmosphere. A barrel of tar sands oil produces 2.5 times as much greenhouse gases as a barrel of conventionally produced oil because so much energy is required to separate the tar from the sand and upgrade the tar to oil.
Tar-sands production of greenhouse gas emissions was 17 megatonnes in 1990 and is projected to increase to 70 megatonnes by 2010 — the largest single addition to Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. A frenzied rush to expand development could sink any chance Canada has of meeting our Kyoto Protocol commitments.
Tar-sands development is environmentally destructive in other ways. Air pollution in the form of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and volatile organics; destruction of huge swaths of boreal forest and wetlands by strip mining; ravenous consumption of water from the Athabasca and other rivers at the rate of three to six barrels per barrel of oil produced, not to mention water pollution and tailings dumping.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1128462610430&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795

Political ramifications of this sort of action exist in the short, medium, and long term.

In the short term, Canada compromises its duty to its citizens, and tramples the rights of the citizens of the world, by allowing this to happen. That which degrades our enviornment to that extent cannot be argued as a good thing. For in the long term, and skipping the medium for a moment, the long term costs of treating people for various illnesses and afflictions relating to environmental degradation are impossible to predict but knowable. The costs of cleaning up the mess involved is also not predictable but knowable. The simple act of compromising present and future citizens health and environment for medium-term future citizens economic gain is a thing that we as citzens must not consent to by doing nothing.

Write letters to your MPs expressing your anxiety over this project.

We have to do something, even when our environment minister tells us "They are sending out a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. But there is no minister of the environment on Earth who can stop this from going forward, because there is too much money in it."

well, if this is true and he is powerless to do much of anything, why dont we fire him and get someone who will at least try. He just admitted he doesn't have a job.