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“Animals are dying, disappearing, and being mutated by the poisons dumped into our river systems. Once we have destroyed these fragile eco-systems we will have also destroyed our peoples and trampled our treaty rights.”
Indigenous people in Alberta
Warning: these two videos contains strong language (but they do give you an excellent introduction to tar sands!).
Tar sands are vast deposits of oil locked inside sandy deposits under the forests of Northern Canada. As oil prices have risen and other sources dry up, this expensive source of oil has become sought after and an industry has boomed, bringing jobs and great wealth to Alberta Province. But the cost of this gold-rush is unmatched by any other single industrial activity on the planet: the digging up of tar sands is destroying precious forest, poisoning people, and contributing to climate change three-times faster than other types of oil. What’s more the Canadian Government is letting the companies themselves set the rules.
“The horrendously carbon-intensive … tar sands in Canada, cannot be developed. The carbon emissions from … tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century.”
James Hansen, Head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Read on:
- What are Tar Sands?
- Tar Sands: Local Destruction
- Tar sands: a Global Catastrophe
- Who's Responsible?
- People & Planet is taking action on tar sands
- Tar Sands Report References
