One Blue Marble Blog

Nova Scotia is home to the Sydney Tar Ponds, 31 hectares surrounding the old Sysco steel plant that have been poisoned with 700,000 metric tons of toxic waste. Sysco went bankrupt years ago, leaving this mess for government to wipe clean with taxpayer money — more than $400 million if the project comes in on budget. Meanwhile, the good people of Sydney suffer from high levels of cancer, heart disease, and other assorted illnesses. Sometimes toxic orange sludge oozes through their basement walls.

If Sydney’s problem is a national embarrassment, then how should we describe the Alberta Tar Sands, where the vast tailing ponds already cover more than 5,000 hectares? It will be bigger tomorrow, and bigger again next week. Five thousand hectares. The Sydney Tar ponds 160 times over. It boggles the mind. (Take a photo tour).

Don’t let the Alberta government bamboozle you with disarming facts and figures. There is no credible, workable plan to clean up this toxic moonscape. But Alberta’s unnatural disaster isn’t only about the tailings ponds, it’s about air, and water, and destroying lives — in First Nations’ communities and halfway around the globe in the world’s poorest nations.

The tar sands release about 100 tonnes of benzene every year — one of the most potent human carcinogens — and 63,000 tonnes of harmful volatile organic compounds. And it will worsen with each passing year. Depending on economic circumstances, tar sands development is expected to double or triple over the next decade, emitting a chemical legacy that will poison Canada for generations. (See Environmental Defence downloadable PDF).

But One Blue Marble is a site that fights climate change, so here our story will grow even uglier. As Environmental Defence says, in the campaign to slow climate change, the Alberta Tar Sands are Ground Zero. Carbon dioxide emissions from the Tar Sands alone are already greater than 145 of the world’s nations. Burning a gallon of Alberta oil releases almost three times the greenhouse gas emissions as burning a gallon of light, sweet Saudi Arabian crude.

In 2007, tar sands greenhouse gas emissions topped 40 million metric tonnes. When oil prices rise again — and let’s face it, they will — oil companies working the region will increase production to emit up to 142 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2020. By the Alberta government’s own estimates, the tar sands will account for 400 million tonnes of GHG emissions in 2050. (See Environmental Defence).

The Conservative Party won the last Canadian election because most Albertans support a unrealistic laissez-faire approach to slow climate change, and the federal Tories won every Albertan seat. Stephen Harper’s government will not impose meaningful emissions caps on tar sands oil because Alberta is their bread and butter, the region that brought them to power after more than a decade in the wilderness. But having a government — and an environment minister — that are apologists for tar sands degradation has placed Canada at odds with the rest of the world. Their obeisance to tar sands imperatives makes it impossible for this government to put firm caps on emissions from other industries, like our coal-fired power plants.

To create the impression that Harper and his cronies are working doggedly to stave off climate change, the Conservatives ripped a page from George W. Bush’s playbook, that’s just as successful here in the Great White North. The government has embraced so-called intensity targets to cut emissions, asking industry to produce less pollution per unit of production. So over the course of the next dozen years, Alberta’s oil companies need only take a baby step towards efficiency, and the Conservatives will pat themselves on the backs for a job well done. But here’s the math: If oil companies cut their tar sands emissions by 15 percent per barrel produced, then double production, total emissions still increase by 85 percent.

It’s easy for industry to limbo under an emissions stick that’s already over their heads. But fundamental dishonesty hides behind any intensity target, because as long as the fossil fuel industry makes a few nips and tucks, they’ll exceed government standards while destroying our reputation and the planet. In fact, intensity targets actually encourage fossil fuel industries to increase production and send their emissions through the roof. That’s the Conservative plan.

But this isn’t just my opinion. To name just a few, the CD Howe Institute (PDF), Deutsche Bank, the Pembina Institute, the analysts at Point Carbon and Carbon Finance, and the Conservative government’s own environmental commissioner have admonished Harper’s business-as-usual plan. After the last international climate change summit in Poznan, Canada was named the Colossal Fossil, the world’s worst climate villain, by more than 450 NGOs. Negotiators and newspaper editorialists around the globe singled out Canada for scorn and ridicule.

There is but one way forward. Even if the rest of Canada goes crazy embracing energy efficiency goals and transitioning to a low-carbon economy, Canada will fail to meet even the impotent emission goals outlined in Turning the Corner because of the Alberta Tar Sands.

Canada needs courageous leaders who will impose hard caps, we need tar sands polluters to pay heavy taxes for emitting CO2, and we need a plan in motion to shut down and clean up the whole disaster. A gradual approach would have been preferable, but years of dithering by the Conservatives — and Liberals before them — have created an urgency that cannot be ignored.

Fossil fuel industries must pay heavily for their carbon pollution as that will force them to transition to low-carbon technology. The money that is raised through either a stiff cap-and-trade policy or a carbon tax can be used by government to help industry deploy carbon capture and sequestration technology — if it can be proven to be effective. If not, we need to prevent further Tar Sands development until we can access the oil without destroying the planet.

We don’t hate Albertans, but we do hate what Alberta is doing to the environment and to Canada’s international reputation.

Until Albertans come to grips with this tragic legacy and take steps back from the abyss, Alberta is Mordor.

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More about President Obama’s visit at West Coast Climate Equity.

Three publicity campaigns are working to convince President Obama to turn his back on tar sands oil at Obama2Canada, Forest Ethics, and Avaaz. Please support them!

You can also buy the bumper stickers on this page to help spread the word! Designed by NY art director Tara Keleher for One Blue Marble.