| Stop the Pipelines, Save the Planet! Join the protests to limit Canada's ability to export tar-sludge and tar-based (dirty) oil and help save the planet. Stopping Canada's proposed Keystone XL (eXtra Large) pipeline which will pipe tar-sludge from the Alberta Tar Sands to Texas and which will wreck havoc on the ecology of the Great Plains, and the Gateway which will bring even greater devastation to the province of British Columbia, is a good first step. The Gateway is actually two 1,172 kilometre pipelines across the width of the province of British Columbia. One pipeline will carry tar-sludge from the Alberta Tar Sands to the port of Kitimat to be loaded onto supertankers bound for China. The other will be used to carry condensate back and forth e.g. low octane gasoline to be mixed with the tar to make tar-sludge, so the tar will flow through the first pipeline then extracted from the tar before it is loaded on to supertartankers and sent back to the Tar Sands to be mixed with more tar. The energy required to extract the condensate from the tar and pump it back and forth over 1,172 kilometre pipeline will not only make leaks a regular occurrence but add to an already exorbitant energy and environmental bill to ship tar and jobs to China. This is nuts. The pipelines will devastate one of the largest remaining pristine ecosystem in North America of which salmon spawning grounds are the foundation. The temporary jobs that the construction of the pipelines will create will be at the expense of the more permanent seasonal jobs of those who depend (Canadian and American fishermen) on the salmon making it to the more than one hundred spawning streams that the pipelines will traverse, and returning safely to the Pacific Ocean. And it will be only a matter of time before the hundreds of gas and tar-sludge supertankers, that will make their way to and from the port of Kitimat every year, cause an accident more long-lasting and more devastating than the Exxon Valdez. The toxic cargo of spilled tar-sludge and gas (the result of a predictable collision between an incoming supertanker filled with gas and an outgoing supertanker filled with sludge) will create a killing zone, poisoning mature salmon trying to make their way to the spawning grounds, and their offsprings returning to the ocean. There are countless little brooks and rivulets garlanding the islands and inlets of the Great Bear Rainforest in remote northern British Columbia, many without even a name. But the salmon know them well, and return each September, paddling relentlessly against the current, leaping over rocks and little waterfalls, shedding their skin and dying from the outside in to give life to another generation. Chris Turner Destroying our environment, risking the life of the planet, all for the benefit of an ideological and commercial competitor is insane. The mining and the washing with hot water and steam, heated by burning billions (eventually trillions) of cubic feet of precious natural gas**, of the tar-coated sand and gunk to extract the tar to fill the Gateway [to China] and the Keystone pipeline will cause the province of Alberta's (population approx. 3,500,000) greenhouse gases emissions to exceed that of most European countries and make Canada the number one producer, per-capita, of the Doomsday gases. Together, the Keystone and Gateway pipelines, if built, will lead to, at the very least, a doubling of greenhouse gas emissions, emissions which are already at a level which may seal the fate of the planet. Think of a baking oven with a door (greenhouse gases) that can’t be opened and a heating element which cannot be turned off (the sun). The oven will eventually melt and whatever was baking inside will have been burnt to a crisp. This is what will happen to the earth if the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reaches that tipping point. From Tar Nation Without additional pipelines to get its tar-sludge and dirty oil to market, it will be difficult for Canada to justify increased tar-sludge and dirty oil production from the Alberta Tar Sands and the extraordinary amount of life-destroying land, water and air pollutants this creates. Canada has, to quote Oppenheimer, "become Shiva, the destroyer of worlds." Stopping the pipelines may be our best hope, at this time, of militating Canada's apocalyptic gamble with the future of life on earth. --------- * With the Gateway to China Pipeline Canada will be fuelling China's economic expansion and strategic objectives at the expense of its main trading and defense partner the United States of America. The Gateway to China pipeline is Harper's less than subtle argument, some might call it blackmail, to convince the President to sign on to Keystone or see the bulk of Tar Sands oil exports go to his country's main geopolitical rival. Since the plan was announced in 2005, Enbridge executives have talked vaguely [lied] about "the Pacific Rim" and name-dropped California, but recent talk has dropped much of that pretense. Globe and Mail, Sept 16, 2011 The Chinese have agreed to finance the estimated seven billion dollar cost of the Gateway pipeline and have made it abundantly clear that they do not intend their pipeline to be used to deliver a strategic and economic resource to the United States. Canada has placed Obama in an impossible situation. If Gateway goes ahead, then so must Keystone. Canada has left the President no other choice. ** The Tar Sands are expected to use up all of the readily accessible natural gas reserves, requiring the building of another expensive pipeline to the Arctic, if Canadians are to continue heating their homes with this still relatively inexpensive fuel, whose price is expected to skyrocket as the Tar Sands burn up all the stuff close to home. Bernard Payeur
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