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Page added on April 30, 2013
Tar Sands Is Worse Than You Can Imagine: Incredible Images You Have to See
Post Carbon Institute and Alternet have partnered to shed a powerful light on the true costs of our addiction to fossil fuels, starting with the Alberta tar sands .
Every powerful photo is linked to three meaningful actions that you can take right now to fight back against tar sands mining. We need your help getting the word out; please take a look at the images, take a stand , and share far and wide with your friends, colleagues and neighbors.
The mining of the Alberta tar sands is the biggest industrial project on earth and quite possibly the world’s most environmentally destructive. The visuals are hard to stomach, but the story is an important one to tell.
As conventional oil and gas deplete, the energy industry must resort to unconventional resources that are more expensive, more technically challenging to access, and pose far greater risks to ecosystems and communities than ever before. The result is destruction on an unprecedented level.
The tar sands tale is told frame by frame in the image deck, guiding us from the clear-cutting of pristine Boreal forest and creation of vast open-pit mines all the way to the pipelines that transport diluted bitumen across the continent.
The connection between the astounding environmental destruction taking place in Canada and the debate over approval of the Keystone XL pipeline here in the USis clear. As the recent rupture of the Pegasus Pipeline in Arkansas makes abundantly clear, the transport of diluted bitumen from Alberta via pipelines to oil refineries thousands of miles away poses unacceptable environmental risks.
As important, the Keystone XL Pipeline is a key litmus test for the Obama Administration and the country as a whole. And the rest of the world is watching.
Although the Canadian tar sands contribute a small percentage of total global oil production and the Keystone XL Pipeline is just one of many contested fossil fuel projects in the world (in fact, First Nations and thousands of other Canadians are fighting an equally dangerous tar sands pipeline, the Northern Gateway Pipeline), this decision by President Obama is a keystone of a different kind – representing the kind of energy future we want for ourselves and our loved ones.
For that reason, it’s not mere hyperbole to say that this is a life and death decision.
We’re reaching out to you to speak up against the Keystone XL Pipeline by sharing these images with your friends, family, and neighbors, and by clicking on one of the calls to action associated with each image.
9 Comments on "Tar Sands Is Worse Than You Can Imagine: Incredible Images You Have to See"
GregT on Tue, 30th Apr 2013 11:02 pm
The environmental destruction in these images is bad enough. What’s even worse, is the damage that can’t be seen. The damage to the Earth’s climatic systems. Once unleashed, CO2 can’t be put back into the bottle, and will cause a global mass extinction event.
But I guess our economies are much more important, than life on Earth.
Plantagenet on Tue, 30th Apr 2013 11:50 pm
The Canadians are well-known as environmentalists and careful stewards of the land. These photos are carefully selected to paint as black a picture as possible of this development in Canada, but I remain confident that the Canadians are doing a good job of protecting the environment there.
If there really were environmental problems in Canada then the Mounties would stop them!
DC on Wed, 1st May 2013 12:32 am
Ottawa subsidizes this destruction directly,to the tune of over a billion dollars a year. Alberta chips in by essentially ignoring the weak environmental regulations that do exist there AND rewards US oil corporations and the Koch Brothers by charging some of the lowest royalties in the world.
Subsidies and low royalties mean the Alberta govt is closing schools and cutting back on health care, while simultaneously maintaining the tar-sands are unqualified economic success story for Canada and Alberta. True double-think in action.
Even if the tar-sands were able to pay there own way(which it doesnt), none of that takes away from the fact that they creating a huge dead-zone up there that NO amount of paper money can ever fix.
BillT on Wed, 1st May 2013 1:35 am
Planet, I’ve seen pictures on other sites that were even worse. Hell cannot be made to look nice no matter how much you want to profit from it. We are killing the earth in our excessive greed for ever more. If you are under 40, you will probably get to ‘enjoy’ the hell being unleashed by hydrocarbon burning before you die. Your kids certainly will. And your grand kids will never see 40.
GregT on Wed, 1st May 2013 2:52 am
Plant,
If you think that the Canadian Federal Government is so environmentally responsible, look up Bill C-45, and you’ll understand why so many people are pissed off.
Arthur on Wed, 1st May 2013 9:14 am
Plant, where exactly in this pictures are the Mounties? Should they not be worried that their nice uniforms get a little untide from all that grease?
http://www.energy-reality.org/action/open-pit-mine/
paulo1 on Wed, 1st May 2013 1:47 pm
Go sands go as I am leaving for work in 10 minutes and have to drive there (Yaris).
You guys don’t use any petroleum products I surmise?
Paulo
Kelly on Wed, 1st May 2013 3:33 pm
I am a Canadian. I am an Albertan. I live 3 hours south of the “sands”. The strip mining up there is for American benefit. It is done by American companies who don’t care about my province. That mess is their fault. We help them out with their power needs and this is how we are repaid. Syncrude has destroyed our land. Syncrude is the devil.
northstation on Wed, 1st May 2013 8:05 pm
its even more heartbreaking when you see the before photos because all that used to be filled with some of the most pristine and beautiful boreal forests you ever saw before they turned it into an oil-soaked martian wasteland.