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Pelosi Visits Canada and Big Oil Continues its Political Hogwash
By Sierra Club | Kate Colarulli
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
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Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Ottawa this week has once again set the green-washing, political spin machine of the tar sands industry in motion.
As Big Oil prepares to talk through their bought mouthpiece of the Canadian premier, here’s the misinformation we can expect to hear and the truth behind the spin.
PR Fiction: The tar sands industry is good for North America.
Fact: Scientists, think tanks, over 25 indigenous tribes, dozens of businesses large and small, and tens of thousands of citizens across both countries are raising serious concerns about the industry’s reckless expansion and the resulting harm caused to nearby communities, water, land and air. The tar sands industry is systematically destroying one of the most important ecosystems in the world. The boreal forest being sacrificed to tar sands is a vast part of the critical “lungs” of our earth. Rampant tar sands development is poisoning waters, leaving behind toxic waste lands large enough to be seen from space and exacerbating global warming.
PR Fiction: The toxic waste ponds are a thing of the past, and the industry is recycling water.
Fact: Ninety percent of the water withdrawn for mining is not returned to the river. The toxic sludge ponds responsible for killing thousands of birds and other wild animals are growing. Every day, 80 Olympic sized swimming pools of poisoned water are produced. By 2030 these ponds are projected to triple in volume.
PR Fiction: The tar sands industry is greening itself with a change from open-pit mining to in situ mining.
Fact: More direct forest loss is expected from in situ mining and the greenhouse gas emissions are worse. In situ mining consumes incredible amounts of natural gas, and fragments critical woodland caribou habitat. Sulfur dioxide emissions intensity is three times higher from in situ mining operations than from open pit mining operations.
PR Fiction: The tar sands are a necessary evil.
Fact: The good news – news you will never hear from the tar sands oil industry – is that we do not need tar sands oil; oil demand in the US has been on a steady decline. Current technology and know-how can substantially reduce our dependence on foreign oil today. The United States does not need to be dependent on foreign countries for our energy; we have the technology, people, and resources needed to become energy independent. But we will never become self-sufficient if we continue to pay one billion dollars a day for oil from other countries, especially Canada, whose oil is the dirtiest and among the most expensive in the world.
PR Fiction: Tar sands pipelines are a safer, more reliable alternative to risky deepwater drilling.
Fact: All pipelines leak. The most recent spill by Canada’s largest pipeline operator of one million gallons in Michigan is only the most recent tragedy in a long litany of spills and leaks from Canadian pipelines throughout the US. The latest proposed expansion to the sprawling web of pipelines, the Keystone XL, will only expose more American communities to the threat of spills and leaks along its 2,000 mile route.
The tar sands industry is comprised of the major oil giants – Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, and others – looking out for their bottom line. We should not be fooled nor surprised by their willingness to distort the truth to increase their already massive wealth or to use a diplomatic G8 visit to promote their own interests.
Simply put, the tar sands are too dirty for green-washing tactics to clean up. Their continued development and use is a growing threat to American leadership in clean energy policy, and can only lead to a toxic legacy of pollution and destruction for future generations.
Tagged with: keystone xl, pipeline, pelosi-markey, sierra club, nancy pelosi, edward markey
