The oil sands are widely thought to have colossal environmental consequences. The Boreal forests of Northern Alberta are being destroyed in order to reach the oil beneath, the Athabasca river is being increasingly exhausted, and wildlife is suffering. The damage caused by the oil sands project will have a lasting legacy on the earth.
The complicated and demanding process of extracting oil sands – a mixture of clay, minerals, water and bitumen, requires more energy than conventional oil. It produces 3 – 5 times more greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of oil produced - not including the emissions released through the destruction of the Boreal forest under the development. Protecting these forests is crucial in protecting the earth from climate change.
The oil sands project currently uses 370 million cubic meters of fresh water each year from the Athabasca river, free of charge. Most of the water used for the project is never returned to the river, but diverted into lakes called tailing ponds. The tailing ponds cover over 130 kilometers along the Athabasca River. (They are so large they can be seen from space!) The waste in these ponds are severely toxic to aquatic life, birds and humans that come in contact with it. Similar to DDT, the contaminated water permeates its surrounding soil, effecting life cycles of wildlife and plants. Worse, it is estimated that the tailing ponds are leaking more than 11 million liters back into the Athabasca River.
If oil sands production increases as planned, annual emissions are expected to swell from 27 to 126 million tonnes by 2015. The persistent development of the tar sands is pushing us closer and closer to ruin. Unfortunately, fossil fuels remain the most convenient, popular and affordable source of energy we have, and as our current energy situation makes evident, fossil fuels will likely continue to satisfy the majority of the world’s growing need for energy in decades to come. The oil sands are evidence that our days of cheap and easy oil are over. To be sure, the oil sands present an environmental controversy, but who do we have to blame?
25 Greenpeace activists though they had the answer. On September 15th, the eve of the meeting between Harper and Obama, 25 Greenpeace activists injected themselves into Shell’s Albian Sands mine with the goal of expressing protest of the heavy footed oil sands. After 31 hours of barricading some of the projects giant machinery to the point of temporarily shutting down the grounds, and revealing giant banners depicting the words “Climate Crime”, the activists finally released their chains and left peacefully.
Updates direct from the oil sands were recorded onto the Greenpeace activist blog throughout the event. Climate campaigner Mike Hudema wrote a few hours before entering the tar sands: “Today we are going in to say stop. We are going to stand in the way of the world's largest dumptrucks – over three stories tall and say no further. I am going because the tar sands represent the toxic future in store for all of us if our politicians continue to choose the health of big oil profits, over the health of our planet and the people on it. I am tired of sitting on the sidelines while our world is pushed to the brink of climate chaos. Tired of political stalling while millions are displaced or will die due to global warming. Today I will make a stand, like thousands before me and hopefully millions after to push for a better, greener world. Wish me luck!”
The blockade attempted to protest the symbol of the oil sands, but did this uprising really do anything?
Perhaps the daily work of the oil sands employees wasn’t the right place to interject. After all, it isn’t their fault that the world uses oil at a frightening rate. There are about 3,000 petroleum products in use today including gasoline, ink, crayons, dishwashing liquids, deodorant, eyeglasses, records, tires, amonia, and many others. The human race depends heavily on crude oil, and the question remains, as put forth by many sceptics of the Greenpeace activist - where did the activists get the fuel for the trucks they drove in on? The activists may have shut down the mine briefly, but in the grand scheme of things, this was a small inconvenience to the $67 billion energy project.
By breaking into the oil sands, activists out their lives and others at risk. Their actions could have had serious, needless consequences to many innocent people. Many people hope for a fossil fuel – free future, but such acts of disruption of many people’s everyday lives are no way to work toward such a goal.
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