Oilsands never 'green' - From Montreal Gazette
Tell the Alberta premier to get his head out of the oil sands. But, astonishingly, his government is spending $25 million on a brazen PR stunt designed to delude the world into believing the oil sands are "green."Stelmach's agent in Washington, deputy premier Ron Stevens, was attempting to persuade the U.S. government to leave Alberta off a list of countries producing "dirty oil," from which imports would be banned.
U.S. advocacy group National Resource Defence Council certainly didn't. Spokeswoman Liz Barratt-Brown said calling the oil sands sustainable was "ludicrous," given the "enormous amounts of global warming and toxic pollution" they create. OK, so they're a bunch of sad-sack lefties.
But listen to Clement Bowman, a Canadian pioneer of oil-sands development, who's just won the equivalent of a Nobel prize for his work on energy research.
Bowman wrote Prime Minister Stephen Harper, warning him that, until environmental issues are dealt with, the oil sands have "hit a wall."
Today, as an area the size of Florida is defaced, Lougheed pleads for a halt to further expansion until the extent of the damage is determined.