Canadians’ desire to protect the environment and tackle global warming is being held hostage to the Alberta Oil Sands. If you live downstream, your water is being polluted and fish may be dangerous to eat. The resulting a cid rain affects those in Alberta and Saskatchewan. In BC, super-tankers may soon be routinely traversing the coastline carrying oil to Asia, while residents of Ontario suffer the continuing harmful emissions from refineries.

Our governments have no substantial plan to mitigate the environmental harm of oil sands production — production that is likely to accelerate in an era of dwindling world supply and increased demand from the USA (for “friendly” oil) and developing economies. Current oil prices now make the oil sands more lucrative. Tacking on the additional cost of environmental technologies may thus be negligible, but nevertheless necessary. Meanwhile, emission caps on other industries remain less severe than they should be so as to not appear unfair compared to the lenient caps on oil sands production.

The scale of oil sands development and its environmental impact are truly staggering.
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