THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 109, June 22, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
WILL WE RUIN THE CANADIAN TAR SANDS?
By Dennis T. Avery
POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM, MODERN SOCIETY'S ENERGY NEEDS, & THE TAR SANDS OF CANADA'S ATHABASCA
BASIN: THE CANADIAN TAR SANDS AS THE WORLD'S BEST HOPE TO BRIDGE THE GAP BETWEEN TODAY'S
FOSSIL-POWERED ENERGY SYSTEM & THE ENERGY SYSTEM OF TOMORROW -- THE OPPOSITION OF POLITICAL
ENVIRONMENTALISTS & THEIR MEDIA ALLIES TO BUILDING & MAINTAINING A BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE -- WHAT OPTIONS
DO THE ECOLOGY KOOKS LEAVE THE HUMAN SPECIES, SHORT OF LIVING IN MUD HUTS & FREEZING IN THE DARKNESS?
FULL STORY:
The Washington Post is wailing about the environmental ruination of that great ecological wonder, the Canadian tar
sands.
Canada’s Athabasca Basin holds more hydrocarbons (oil) than anyplace else in the world. It has a huge patch of tarry goo,
the remains of a once-vast inland lake, spotted amongst 40,000 square miles of jack pine and black spruce growing amid
mosquito-rich swamps. The same evergreen-and-swamp vista extends in a broad band for more than 2000 miles, from the
Rocky Mountains in the west to the shores of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast.
The Athabasca’s population density is less than four people per square mile.
The oil used to pool along the banks of the Athabasca River, where the Indians smeared it to waterproof the seams of their
birch-bark canoes.
Today, the Athabasca is the world’s best hope to bridge the gap between today’s fossil-powered energy system and the
energy system of tomorrow, be it nuclear, solar, fusion, or something not yet tried.
The Washington Post doesn’t want any bridge. Its front page on May 31, 2006, headlined “Canada Pays
Environmentally for U.S. Oil Thirst: Huge Mines Rapidly Draining Rivers, Cutting Into Forests, Boosting Emissions.”
Author Doug Struck quotes Elsie Fabian, an elder in an Indian community who says:
“The river used to be blue. Now it’s brown. . . . The air is bad.”
She complains that she can see steam from a strip mine 10 miles away.
“Giant machines cleave the earth into a cratered moonscape,” writes Struck, who says eco-groups are calling for a
moratorium on the expansion of the tar sands oil production.
Northern Canada, of course, has lots of water. The whole region is covered with rivers, lakes and swamps. The oil
companies say they re-use their water up to 18 times, and then store it in lagoons — though they’ve yet to figure out how
to treat the wastewater, other than just letting it evaporate.
They’re required to restore the “moonscape” after they get the oil out of the sands.
Indian chief Jim Boucher says his people are creating native-owned companies to provide trucking, catering, and other
services to the oil companies. Boucher says “the hunting, trapping, fishing is gone.” That may be true right around Fort
McMurray, but, if his Indians are really keen on hunting and trapping, instead of paychecks, there are thousands of square
miles of Canadian wilderness not far away.
The tar sands development is “putting unacceptable pressure on the environment,” says Julia Langer, of World Wildlife
Fund-Canada.
That’s pretty much what we heard from the California Wilderness Coalition, when it sued to stop a federally approved
geothermal power project at Medicine Lake in northeastern California two years ago. The two proposed power plants would
impact only 15 acres each, and would produce no greenhouse gases. Remember, it’s the eco-activists who tell us
greenhouse gases are the most important environmental calamity in the world. Nor would the geothermal plants produce any
radioactive wastes. The plants would even feed into the existing Bonneville power grid without any extensive new
transmission lines.
If the environmental activists and their media allies are protesting the Alberta tar sands and California’s Medicine Lake
geothermal plants, what option does society have left — short of mud huts and darkness?
We’ll just have to take the advice of Patrick Moore, one of the original Greenpeace co-founders, who now says, “Build safe
nuclear power plants and reprocess their fuel.”
That would leave the Athabasca Basin to the blackflies, the mosquitoes, and whatever Indians still want to track and shoot
the moose. Good luck to them and the World Wildlife Fund — which we assume will relocate its headquarters from chic
Toronto to the tarry banks of the irreplaceable Athabasca.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior analyst for the United States
Department of State. Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421. Email: cgfi@rica.net
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