Opinions Throwing petrol on a fire: the human and environmental cost of tar sands production (original) (raw)
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Throwing petrol on a fire: the human and environmental cost of tar sands production
Commonwealth Advisory Bureau, 2011
In this opinion piece, independent researcher Jennifer Huseman and Senior Lecturer in Human Rights in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Dr Damien Short, examine Canada’s tar sands oil industry and its effect on indigenous communities. They describe how the industry ‘externalities’ of environmental degradation and pollution are seriously affecting the health of indigenous communities and threatening their physical and cultural survival. Furthermore, due to the enormous carbon footprint associated with the exploitation of the tar sands, the authors argue that they are a danger to us all. They call for a halt to tar sands expansion, the instigation of effective environmental clean-up procedures and measures to address the health issues facing indigenous peoples as a result of tar sands operations. They also call on national and international financial institutions to immediately withdraw funding from the tar sands expansion and operations.
The Case for Phasing out Tar Sands
Alberta Institute of Agrologists, 2017
The Alberta Tar Sands released 68 Mt of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2014. Alberta’s climate plan allows them to grow to 100 Mt by 2030. Growing emissions from the production of oil and will entirely cancel out Alberta’s reductions in electricity, vehicles, and methane by 2030. Allowing Sands GHGs to grow that much will almost certainly prevent Canada from reaching its 2030 Paris Agreement targets. This paper proposed three steps to meet the target of ending Sands production by 2040: 1) Place a permanent moratorium on new Sands production. 2) Give a closing time for Sands projects and units of projects that long ago paid off the capital costs, starting with the initial Suncor and Syncrude units, which are over 50 years old. 3) Require each Sands project to lower its emissions annually by 3–4% per year (2–3 Mt) starting in 2018. Projects that fail to meet GHG reduction targets must be fined at a level higher than the costs to comply. A just transition for Sands workers will require research, thought, and consultations with impacted, workers and communities.
The Canadian oil sands: environmental, economic, social, health, and other impacts
WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment, 2013
As world energy demands increase, so will the exploration and exploitation of alternative energy resources. The present level of energy generation cannot meet the needs of future generations if the pace of population growth and energy consumption continues at the current rate. While some unconventional energy sources are still in research and development phase, others have been effectively implemented. The impacts of different energy operations are still being debated, with respect to environmental, social, economic, and health effects. The definition of sustainable development adopted by United Nations (UN) uses the expression "…meets the needs of the present…" to indicate the required development by a current generation to maintain its standard of living while minimizing environmental, economic, social impacts. Large industrial developments will affect a range of stakeholders, and may entail cultural and political change. The level of impacts and their implications depends on many characteristics of the development, such as its size, production rate, duration of exploitation, processes used (including treatment of waste streams), and regulatory standards. While local communities, businesses and surrounding areas are first expected to be impacted, certain developments can attract global attention. Canadian oil sands developments are of interest to oil producers because of the size of the proven reserves; but the scale of development and the perceived enduring impacts are of concern to different stakeholders. This work presents a discussion and analysis of the economic, social, health, and other impacts of current operations in Canadian oil sands that are of concern to different stakeholders, including some uncertainties in levels and persistence of
Posted by Nate Hagens on April 15, 2008-11:00am in The Oil Drum: Net Energy Topic: Supply/Production Tags: charles hall, eroei, eroi, net energy, oil sands, oil shale, tar sands [list all tags] This is third in a series of six guest posts by Professor Charles Hall of the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry describing the energy statistic, "EROI" for various fuels. As has been discussed often on this site, net energy analysis is a vitally important concept-just as we primarily care about our take home pay which is our salary minus the taxes, we should care about our 'take home' energy, which is what is left after energy costs have been accounted for. As important as it is, this measure is not easy to quantify, as: a)data is almost always measured in $ as opposed to energy terms, b) parsing non-energy inputs (and outputs) into energy terms is difficult, and c) analysis boundaries (including environmental impacts) are very disparate. As such, there is not (has not yet been) a consistent formula for EROI applied to all energy studies that has led to policymakers and analysts speaking the same language in useful ways. The lead paper in this months Royal Academy of Sweden's journal AMBIO will be about such an EROI framework, and we will link to it when it comes online. Professor Hall has been working in this area for over 30 years. Below are net energy analysis from Hall's group on the unconventional oil sources from tar sands and oil shaletwo resources that theoretically are enormous in energy scale, but practically are limited by flow rates, costs, and externalities. Just how limited is the subject of todays two-part informative post is below the fold. Remember, any specific numerical help via referenced literature, personal experience or knowledge to better inform Dr. Hall and his students would be appreciated. Definition Oil sands, also called tar sands, consist of bitumen mixed with sand. Bitumen or " very heavy " oil is composed of carbon rich, hydrogen poor, long chain molecules and is in a semi-solid or solid form. It has not been " cooked properly " by geological processes to yield the lighter fractions we The Oil Drum: Net Energy | Unconventional Oil: Tar Sands and Shale Oil-EROI on the Web, Part 3 of 6
Sustainable Colonization: Tar Sands as Resource Colonialism
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2016
Canada is one of the world's largest petrostates, owing to large shale oil deposits, also known as tar sands, which can be found within its borders. In recent decades, as the price of crude oil has increased dramatically, corporations and the Canadian state have worked together to open the oil deposits in Northern Canada for extraction and transportation. Despite a stated commitment to environmental sustainability by the United States and Canadian governments, both have endorsed tar sands extraction and transport. Government and corporate entities have tried to reframe tar sands as "ethical oil," yet all steps in the process involved pose tremendous ecological, social, economic, and cultural threats to First Nations communities in Canada, landowners in the Midwest and Texas, local ecosystems, and the global climate. This practice is part of a long-standing pattern of appropriating and using public and First Nations land for economic development. We argue that tar sands production on First Nations land is a practice of resource colonialism: the theft and appropriation of land belonging to indigenous people in order to access natural resources. By branding tar sands as "ethical oil" and labeling production companies as "sustainable," the public and private sectors bound up in the extractive economy claim to provide an essential public service while misdirecting attention away from acts of colonialism that make these resources available. In this article, we examine the ways in which corporate and state entities use the discourse of sustainability as a cover for continued resource colonialism.
‘A slow industrial genocide’: tar sands and the indigenous peoples of northern Alberta
The International Journal of Human Rights, 2012
In this article we discuss the impact of the tar sands development in northern Alberta on the indigenous communities of the Treaty 8 region. While the project has brought income to some, and wealth to the few, its impact on the environment and on the lives of many indigenous groups is profoundly concerning. Their ability to hunt, trap and fish has been severely curtailed and, where it is possible, people are often too fearful of toxins to drink water and eat fish from waterways polluted by the ‘externalities’ of tar sands production. The situation has led some indigenous spokespersons to talk in terms of a slow industrial genocide being perpetrated against them. We begin the article with a discussion of the treaty negotiations which paved the way for tar sands development before moving on to discuss the impacts of modern day tar sands extraction and the applicability of the genocide concept.
Extreme Energy as Genocidal Method: Tar Sands and the Indigenous Peoples of Northern Alberta
Extreme Energy Initiative, Human Rights Consortium, 2013
In this paper we discuss the impact of the tar sands development in northern Alberta on the indigenous communities of the Treaty 8 region. While the project has brought income to some, and wealth to the few, its impact on the environment and on the lives of many indigenous groups is profound- ly concerning. Their ability to hunt, trap and fish has been severely curtailed and, where it is possible, people are often too fearful of toxins to drink water and eat fish from waterways polluted by the ‘externalities’ of tar sands production. The situation has led some indigenous spokespersons to talk in terms of a slow industrial genocide being perpetrated against them. We begin the paper with a discussion of the treaty negotiations which paved the way for tar sands development before moving on to discuss the impacts of modern day tar sands extraction and the applicability of the genocide concept.