Canadian Conservationist Garth Lenz Comments on US Approval of Tar Sands Pipeline

 

In case you missed it, this August 21st, the U.S. State Department approved a multibillion-dollar pipeline to bring the world's dirtiest, most carbon intensive crude oil to refineries in the United States. The Presidential Permit to Enbridge Energy is for the Alberta Clipper - a 1,000-mile/1,607-kilometer crude oil pipeline that will run between Hardisty, Alberta, and Superior, Wisconsin, bringing crude oil from the Alberta Tar Sands to the U.S. for further refining. There are a number of reasons why I think Americans should be concerned about this but first of all perhaps a little background information might be helpful.

First off, you have probably heard the term “oil sands” more frequently than “tar sands.” Acting on advice from PR companies a few years ago, the tar sands companies’ are now referring to the resource as oil sands. Apparently Tar Sands sounds too much like a dirty, sticky and unappealing substance, which is exactly what is found under the boreal forests and wetlands of northern Alberta and why “Tar Sands” has been the name we called the resource here in Canada up until a few years ago.

The United States imports more oil from Canada than it does from any other nation. The Alberta Tar Sands constitute the world’s second largest proven oil reserves. Only Saudi Arabia’s are larger and many experts feel that with increased surveying, the Alberta Tar Sands reserves will ultimately be found to be far larger than even Saudi Arabia’s reserves. Some experts are going so far as to predict that the reserves may be eight times those of Saudi Arabia! At its’ present scale and with almost $200-billion invested or committed in projects in northern Alberta, the Alberta Tar Sands are already the world's largest energy project. The environmental impacts of the present scale of development are staggering.

The processing of tar sands into oil is more carbon intensive and consumes more water and energy than any other fossil fuel refining process. Up to four barrels of water are drained from the Athabasca River to produce one barrel of tar sands oil and every barrel of oil generates two barrels of toxic waste. In one day, Syncrude – just one of the many operations in the tar sands – dumps 250,000 tons of these toxic tailings into the “pond” behind the Syncrude dam, currently the world’s largest dam by volume. These and other toxic tailings ponds like them, dot the landscape and can be seen from outer space. The toxic pollutants, held in holding ponds just a few metres from rivers like the Athabasca, find their way into the food chain with deadly health consequences for First Nations communities dependent on the land and rivers for their food. In the downstream community of Fort Chipywan, deadly and rare cancers have been occurring at an unprecedented rate.

The energy requirements of the Alberta Tar Sands are also having far reaching impacts. In order to meet the Tar Sands’ energy requirements, it has been proposed that a 700-mile natural gas pipeline be built to extend from the Beaufort sea through the Mackenzie Valley to the Alberta Tar Sands. The Canadian government recently estimated it might take 20 nuclear reactors to replace natural gas as a fuel source in tar sands operations by 2015. All this energy will be used to produce oil from the Tar Sands even though the greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times that of conventional crude oil.

Canadian writer Andrew Nikiforuk recently completed a report which discovered that “Alberta's oil sands produce more greenhouse-gas emissions than some European countries right now and will produce more than all of the world's volcanoes in just 11 years if the pace of development continues.” “The emissions are bigger than Estonia and Lithuania right now and in 2020 will be larger than countries like Belgium, Austria, Ireland and Denmark.” The Tar Sands are Canada’s largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions and the reason that Canada has abandoned its’ obligations under the Kyoto Protocol and has actively undermined it and other international initiatives to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

Building a major pipeline bringing Tar Sands crude to the U.S. for refining will be a major boost for expanding the Tar Sands. This will in turn bring about even more severe environmental impacts, both regionally and globally. Perhaps of even greater concern to Americans may be the fact that the environmental impacts described above are as much a byproduct of the later refining process as they are of the initial mining and recovery process. U.S. communities in the region of the refineries receiving Alberta Tar Sands crude, can expect to suffer from the same water consumption and pollution issues, energy challenges, greenhouse gas impacts and carcinogens in the food chain as communities living in the vicinity of the Alberta Tar Sands’ refineries and upgraders.

The U.S. approval of the Alberta Clipper pipeline is a massive investment, commitment to the status quo and will lock America into a dirty energy infrastructure for years to come. At a time when the way forward, both economically and environmentally, points in the direction of renewable energy and a green economy, investment in the Alberta Tar Sands seems backward. Not only is it investment in a fossil fuel future, but it is investment in a fossil fuel that represents the most deadly cocktail of environmental impacts of any fossil fuel and on a scale never before imagined. None of the the major energy projects in the Middle East are even close to the scale of the oilsands and the current scale will grow by five times by 2020.

Can this possibly be what was envisioned when President Obama campaigned on a promise to cut global warming and America’s addiction to oil while investing in a clean future? Imagine the possibilities if all the scientific and technological brilliance, entrepreneurial zeal and financial resources that are being invested in the Alberta Tar Sands, were instead invested in the research, development and marketing of renewable energy. This is the true tragedy of the Tar Sands. As long as this mammoth investment in the Alberta Tar Sands and similar projects persists, there will never be the motivation or resources to truly achieve the renewable energy alternatives which are the key to our future.

As I write this, Norway has just completed its election campaign where Norwegian investment in the Tar Sands was a major issue with five of the seven major parties opposed to investing in the Tar Sands. Prime Minister Harper recently met with President Obama in Washington to discuss the Alberta Tar Sands among other issues.
It is time for all of us to demand a positive, green and clean future for our children and tell our leaders to stop supporting investment in dirty and backward developments like the Alberta Tar Sands and start directing those resources to the green economy they have all been promising.


About the Author
Known as an outspoken advocate for the environment, Garth Lenz has been invited to show his work to The European Parliament, Canadian Senate, major corporations and business leaders. He has given numerous public presentations throughout Canada, the U.S., Europe, and Japan, on issues of wilderness and environmental protection. In 1993 and 1994, Lenz made major tours of Europe, the U.S. and Japan, in order to build the international campaign for the conservation of British Columbia’s temperate rainforests and Clayoquot Sound. During this same time, he helped develop the markets campaign to encourage corporate responsibility as a tool for forest protection and conservation. In this role he has given presentations to The New York Times, Nippon Telephone and Telegraph in Tokyo, Major Newspapers in London, GTE in Los Angeles and many others.

Lenz’s recent images from the boreal region of Canada have helped lead to significant victories and large new protected areas in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and Ontario. His boreal images and work from the Alberta Tar Sands received major awards at the Prix de la Photographie Paris, and International Photography Awards in 2008. In 2008, he was also awarded the Fine Print award in the Center for Fine Art Photography’s “Our Environment” exhibition for one of his Alberta Tar Sands aerial images.

Lenz makes his home in Victoria, British Columbia, with his wife and two daughters.


All images are © Garth Lenz

Visit Garth's website: http://www.garthlenz.com/

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