Evil Americans Still Ruin the World for Petrodollars

[Louis VI the Fat]

That is, their neighbours to the north:

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.
Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...n-climate-deal

Oh Canada! Will you be to the environment what Japan and Norway are to whalery? What Bush was to internation law? To your own people what Shell has been to Nigeria?


This is a dead-end policy. Canada's environment is slowly ruined. Canada is big, but so are the oceans, which turned out not to be infinite either. Human destruction and waste must have a finite limit.

Canada's economic benefits of resource plunder are limited. A G7 country can not rely on plundering resources. Diversified, value-added economical activity is where it's at.
Surely, Canada should not follow the path of other oil and resource rich countries and brush all considerations aside in search of a quick buck. It is an oft noted paradox that wealthy resources in practise, in the long run, have an adverse effect on economic and social development.

[Subotan]

I posted this in the EB Tavern yesterday, as I thought that it was both an excellent article, and that Meth would like it.

<3 George Monbiot btw

[KukriKhan]

Evil Americans Still Ruin the World for Petrodollars

So, it's actually "Teh Evile NORTH Americans Still...."?

Still, I get your point; the greatest insult you can offer a Canadian is: "You're just like the Americans".

--------

Funny thing about trees. Plant new ones, and they grow, too. Toxic waste containment, on the other hand, needs looking to, it sounds.

[rory_20_uk]

If undertake carefully it could be OK - but probably not profitable as a consequence.

At the moment it is a similar process to what is happening to the Rainforests.

Roll on Nuclear / solar / hydro / geothermal power!

[Furunculus]

I posted this in the EB Tavern yesterday, as I thought that it was both an excellent article, and that Meth would like it.

<3 George Monbiot btw

what does "<3" mean anyway?

[Subotan]

It's like a heart, so it's similar to love. Ofc, I don't actually love hiom, but he's my favourite journalist, and I always read his articles.

[Furunculus]

ah, i see.

in that case i believe Monboit to be an:

- | - |
-( )o( )
- || ||

[KukriKhan]

It's like a heart, so it's similar to love. Ofc, I don't actually love hiom, but he's my favourite journalist, and I always read his articles.

*headsmack*

I've been reading it: "less than 3" for years, and never understood.

D'uh.

[Subotan]

ah, i see.

in that case i believe Monboit to be an:

Meh. He's tried to put John Bolton under citizen's arrest once, so he's hardly a namby pamby liberal without the balls to do the things he preaches.

*headsmack*

I've been reading it: "less than 3" for years, and never understood.

D'uh.

Where did you learn that rubbish? Mathematics?

[Furunculus]

"The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush."
ah, 'multilateralism', consensus must have become a dirty word of recent times then?

"The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works."
i love these great moral judgements, given with any explanation or rational for how the judgement was assessed.

"In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this."
a nation that refuses to sign up for targets it has no intention of achieving, how refreshing, i could only wish that more kyoto signitories were as honest.

"Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share."
an equal share of wealth re-distribution?

"By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void."
so the enforcement mechanisms never worked then, but we should all just pretend that they really did?

"At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations."
so a unanimous decision was required, and they refused to agree, damn them!

"The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th."
again, policy somewhat in advance of the demonstrated science methinks, lets come back in six months and see if those metrics are still a valid way of stopping anthropogenic climate change.

"In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans."
ooh, politics, how nasty!

"A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth."
LOL

"But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world."
need a new enemy George, to focus the minds of the proles on the coming revolution, necessary now that saint obama runs the US?

"By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark."
thanks, but i've had my fill of doom-laden projections of the future based on worst-case modeling that fails to include a host of other pertinant modifiers.

"The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar."
oh those baddies! *shakes fist*

"Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. "
The British right? I gotcha this time, did-n-i, can't fool me!

"The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan."
Think of the cuddly animals!

"I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada."
That's it boys and girls, the battle lines are drawn, the high-priest of alarmism/marxism has spoken. Get ready for the revolution.

[drone]

Obligatory (language warning)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Blame Canada

[Subotan]

I'm an oil baron and I'm okay
I dig all night and I steal all day

I cut down trees, I rip up dirt
I turn Canada 'to a lavat'ry
On Wednesdays I go chopping
And have buttered wildlife for tea

I tear down trees, I destroy and burn
I love to crush wild flow'rs
I put on devil's clothing
And put hippies behind bars

I burn down trees, I poison natives
Thanks to the sands of tar
I wish I'd been Arabian
Just like my dear Abdull-ah

[Crazed Rabbit]

What a heaping mound of Bull****, a rant unbound by reason or facts or objectivity, overflowing with rhetoric to make up for the lack of factual arguments.

Tar Sands is simply the enviro's latest rallying point.

Here's the deal; companies dig and drill up oil mixed with other components. Then they refine it, and it's oil. Canada doesn't have such nigh on impossible regulations as the EPA, so it's a target for environmentalists. Yeah, some parts don't look nice. The 'pollution' is hype, grossly exaggerated. I suppose we could just pay more money to Saudi Arabia and other fundamentalist whack job places so every square inch of the continent is kept pristine.

Because of reasonable regulations, Canada has an abundance of oil, which puts it's people in a good position. They also supported tar sands even when it wasn't profitable, so they would be operational when it was profitable.

Of course, the enviro's don't want anybody to have oil, so they scream and rant, as displayed here. They want the oil to just sit there, unused, while energy prices and the cost of living rise. So they scream these falsities about governments acting sensibly and not heed their alarmist screeching.

CR

[Sigurd]

Yeah... My company is going to bring up our share of this "dirty oil".
We are not going to dig for it like the Canadians do. We are going to use our North Sea technology, drilling wells to it. I have seen the presentation and it involves steam in a closed system. There will not be any large deposits of toxic water.
There are still some issues that needs ironing out, and if we should be able to pump CO2 back down into the wells or store it in some other way. This technology is new and is being developed.

My company has established a research centre in Alberta to see if some new technology, especially for these kinds of operations can be developed.

Some info about this project

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Pretty ridiculous article unfortunately.

[Megas Methuselah]

I TOLD YOU SO!!! KLANADA!!!!





( )

[Louis VI the Fat]

Pretty ridiculous article unfortunately.

Tsk. When we Euros patronisingly condemned the US of Bush, where were the Canadians to stand up for their southern neighbours, eh?
Yet, here you, Rabbit and others are, standing up for the evil empire to your north.


With that Nobel prize winning Marxist in the Oval Office we can't possibly scold the Yanks. (For now..)
So the Canucks will have to stand in. Bring down that neo-liberal, neo-colonial fascist Harper, says I!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...pt-petro-state

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Yes, Canada's record on carbon emissions is disgraceful, shameful, loathsome etc. The tar sands of northern Alberta are an international scandal. But the problem is not in a former Prius of a country turning into a Hummer. Canada's dilemma is much more interesting that that. It is the decline of a democracy (partly as its media died, thank you Conrad Black) and the descent of a nation into a political stasis, and it could happen to any country that doesn't mind the political store. What takes place when a nation can't decide on a government and lets a rightwing minority, quivering with hate, have just enough power?


Catastrophe, that's what.


Countries supposedly get the government they deserve. I'm not sure Canada deserved Harper. Canadians can agree with Judge Monbiot's assessment but ask the court to take into account our previous, as Rumpole would say.


First, no one disagrees more with Harper's refusal to slow climate change than Canadian voters. Indeed, more than three-quarters of Canadians say they are embarrassed that Canada hasn't taken an international lead on the issue, a recent poll revealed.


Even Albertans – home of the tar sands because they need the money and who is to say them nay – agree on this. Quebeckers, the sophisticates of the nation, are 86% in favour of Canada taking action. Toronto, while suffering economically, is maniacally devoted to hemp, bicycling and meticulous recycling rules. We hate green garbage incompetents. We love the Kyoto protocol, we want to prostrate ourselves in Copenhagen next month, but until we make our mind up about whether to make Michael Ignatieff prime minister, we can't.
May I humbly beg for patience with my country, which is stuck like a beaver in a dam of its own making.


Second, Canadians are still smart and decent. Only the government hews to the party line. On every issue, from abortion rights to rendition for torture to fair treatment of non-white citizens who had the temerity to take a holiday and can't come home because they lost weight and don't quite look like their passport photo, Harper is determined to turn Canada into America-lite. He doesn't mean the America of Obama. He means the America of Ronald Reagan and George Bush, with its private affluence and public squalor.

American travellers used to shove a Canadian flag on their backpack for better treatment overseas. I'm sorry that the reverse has happened and Canadians now switch the conversation to Obama as quickly as possibly before the subject of clubbing seals arises.
We have shamed our better natures. But we Canadians will rid ourselves of Harper and rise again to be the decent and intelligent nation you Brits once patronised with such delight.

[Reverend Joe]

Pollution is the solution. Canada has it right, except for the part where they try to contain the toxic waste... let the waste go free!

[Subotan]

Nobody appreciated my cover-song...

[Crazed Rabbit]

Tsk. When we Euros patronisingly condemned the US of Bush, where were the Canadians to stand up for their southern neighbours, eh?
Yet, here you, Rabbit and others are, standing up for the evil empire to your north.


With that Nobel prize winning Marxist in the Oval Office we can't possibly scold the Yanks. (For now..)
So the Canucks will have to stand in. Bring down that neo-liberal, neo-colonial fascist Harper, says I!

I might be a tad more convinced if such articles actually appeared in Canadian papers, not as condescending screeds in leftist British papers. And they didn't include such ridiculous statements as "The tar sands of northern Alberta are an international scandal."

Also, didn't Canada already re-elect Harper once? That's the only poll that matters. Not one opinion poll, and certainly not a couple leftist enviros ranting in a British paper, which is everything you've provided so far.

CR

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

I was going to respond after I read the article, but scrolling through I didn't think that I could say anything more accurate than this.

What a heaping mound of Bull****, a rant unbound by reason or facts or objectivity, overflowing with rhetoric to make up for the lack of factual arguments.

Harper may not be the greatest Prime Minister that Canada has ever had, but he is damned good at governing the country properly. And frankly, for Canada that makes a nice change from previous administration. Harper was re-elected by Canadians once, and current polling has him in majority territory, regardless of his abject lack of charisma. That says something.

[Louis VI the Fat]

I might be a tad more convinced if such articles actually appeared in Canadian papers

This week in Canada's tamest paper, the Globe and Mail:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dear citizens of Canada,


Like most of the world's people, I have always held your nation in high regard. Yours is one of the best-loved countries on Earth, renowned for being friendly, peaceful and responsible. Your government is now burning this goodwill.


After abandoning the commitments the previous government made under the Kyoto Protocol, ensuring that Canada will be the only signatory to wildly miss its targets, the Harper administration is now sabotaging the climate talks that will culminate in Copenhagen next month.
During the negotiations in Bangkok in October, developing nations were so dismayed by Canada's wrecking tactics that most of them walked out while your officials were speaking. In Barcelona this month, non-governmental organizations attending the talks presented Canada with their Fossil of the Week award: Yours was the country that had done the most to prevent an agreement from being reached.


The excuses made by the Canadian government for its filibustering and obstruction become more feeble by the day. As I understand his current position, your Environment Minister, Jim Prentice, will not contribute to an international treaty until his government knows what its domestic policies will be, and he will not formulate its domestic policies until there's an international treaty. He appears to be seeking to delay and weaken any international agreement, while claiming that there is no point in setting strong national targets if the rest of the world isn't pulling its weight.
Canada's tactics have caused shock and revulsion everywhere. They are dragging your good name through the mud. Stephen Harper and Jim Prentice threaten to do as much damage to your international standing as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did to that of the United States.
No one who has followed this process has any doubt about which interests the government is protecting. The Canadian oil sands are a threat hanging over the whole world. The extraction and processing of this material is so polluting that it makes crude oil look green. Canada already has almost the highest per-capita greenhouse-gas emissions in the world. The full-scale exploitation of the oil patch threatens to turn your beautiful country into the dirtiest country on Earth.
The oil-sands industry is causing damage out of all proportion to its value – not only to the world's ecosystems but also to Canada's.


Oil has a politics all of its own: To extract it, you must close your eyes and ears to the people you are harming. As the Nigerians, the Iraqis, the Russians and the Ecuadoreans can testify, this process brutalizes a nation. It creates a political class that owes its existence to a primitive and destructive industry. The industry will employ that class to trample your civilized values: social justice, human rights, environmental protection, the common decencies we owe to other human beings.


No one who has seen images of the oil-sands operations can quite believe what Canada is doing to its own land. No one can quite believe that this prosperous country is treating its aboriginal peoples like Nigeria treats the Ogoni of the Niger Delta. The oil sands are turning Canada into a harder, crueller place.
This is the oil curse that so many other countries have experienced. Some people in Canada boast that the oil sands will make you a second Saudi Arabia. This may be true in more than one sense: They could turn you into an oil-dependent state whose politics revolt the rest of the world.


Your government's behaviour in the talks is so destructive and the development of the oil sands is so damaging to global efforts to prevent climate breakdown that I have decided to break my self-imposed ban on flying to travel to Canada.


I hope to add my voice to those pleading with your government to stop wrecking the negotiations. I hope to encourage you to rise up against an industry that is attacking the prospects of all the world's people and wrecking your national image. We know that at heart you are a decent and sensible people. Please don't disappoint us.

It is not Canada vs. the world, it is private Canadian and foreign interests vs Canadian citizens. Rogue corporations are plundering and destroying Canada.

Surely Canada can not let itself be treated as Nigeria?

Only two oil sands operations set to meet rules to deal with liquid tailings Posted: December 1, 2009
Section:

Simon Dyer and Joe Obad, December 1, 2009, Calgary, -- A comprehensive review of regulatory documents filed with the Alberta government suggests most oil sands mining operations will not comply with a new provincial law designed to limit increases in tailings, the toxic liquid waste produced by oil sands mining operations.


"Two mines have proposed plans to start cleaning up the legacy of toxic tailings on the landscape," said Simon Dyer of the Pembina Institute. "It is troubling that other companies are not willing to make the same effort and have submitted plans that appear not to meet the directive rules."


The review conducted by the Pembina Institute and Water Matters found that only two oil sands operations reported they would meet the rules to reduce toxic tailings between 2011 and 2013 (the start date for binding rules to capture and start solidifying liquid tailings). The seven remaining operations submitted plans that will not comply with rules for reducing their production of liquid tailings by the first target date in 2011. Some companies submitted plans suggesting they may not meet the rules for tailings management for over 40 years.


Oil sands companies were required to submit tailings management plans by September 30, 2009, in accordance with the newly released Alberta Energy and Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) Directive 074: Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes. The ERCB released the directive because of concerns that oil sands companies were not adequately addressing the clean up of tailings waste.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

It is not Canada vs. the world, it is private Canadian and foreign interests vs Canadian citizens. Rogue corporations are plundering and destroying Canada.

You're joking, aren't you? The provinces where these things take place, namely Alberta, are some of the best places in the world to live. I think, Louis, that you are exaggerating. Whether it is intentional or whether your entire viewpoint on the situation comes from the article and a few minutes on Google, I respectfully think you need to perhaps consider some more options. I'm still deciding on the best article to post in response, but it might take a while.

[Subotan]

And they didn't include such ridiculous statements as "The tar sands of northern Alberta are an international scandal."

I'd say it's an international scandal. Seeing as what those tar sands are doing to the global climate, international is the only way to describe it.

You're joking, aren't you? The provinces where these things take place, namely Alberta, are some of the best places in the world to live.

Maybe we should ask someone who lives there, hm? Meth?

[Gregoshi]

Nobody appreciated my cover-song...

Oh I did. Yes I did!

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Maybe we should ask someone who lives there, hm? Meth?

I have never revealed my current place of permanent residence on this forum, nor have I revealed my past ones. Don't presume. Besides, as far as I know Meth lives in Saskatchewan. Though I'm sure that you've lived there.

The tar sands aren't an international scandal. Their impact on the environment as opposed to their benefit is practically nonexistent, or at the very most is significantly overblown.

[Subotan]

Oh I did. Yes I did!

Thanks

I have never revealed my place of permanent residence on this forum. Don't presume.

Apart from the fact that it says Deutschland as your, uh, location, and it has done for some time? It is not unreasonable to assume that you are living in Germany.

Besides, as far as I know Meth lives in Saskatchewan.

So?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Apart from the fact that it says Deutschland as your, uh, location, and it has done for some time? It is not unreasonable to assume that you are living in Germany.

Not entirely unreasonable, no. Still, it isn't safe to presume. Since you joined two years after I did it is possible you missed some of my earlier posts on the issue.

So?

He isn't in the same province, and is over 700 kilometers away. Without being disrespectful to him, I don't think that simple proximity gives him any more of an understanding of life in Alberta, especially since he doesn't necessarily directly benefit from the sands (being in Saskatchewan)

[Crazed Rabbit]

This week in Canada's tamest paper, the Globe and Mail:

Written by the same Brit who wrote the OP article, right? And with even less facts. Most of his argument amounts to peer pressure and nothing more. It is just a leftist enviro pretending his fringe ideas are shared by a significant amount of people.

It is not Canada vs. the world, it is private Canadian and foreign interests vs Canadian citizens. Rogue corporations are plundering and destroying Canada.

Surely Canada can not let itself be treated as Nigeria?

You must be kidding. Such hyperbole is absurd. Rogue corporations? You're manufacturing hype out of thin air. Try some facts with your rhetoric next time. I'm not going to pay attention to outrageous statements that don't have anything in the way of facts backing them up.

CR

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Written by the same Brit who wrote the OP article, right? And with even less facts. Most of his argument amounts to peer pressure and nothing more. It is just a leftist enviro pretending his fringe ideas are shared by a significant amount of people.

Indeed. The Globe and Mail may well be one of the best papers in Canada, and indeed I read it regularly, but that doesn't make their opinion sections and guest pieces any more rational than anyone else's.