intellectual properties

synthetic crude

there is an article in the Nov 12 New Yorker about “synthetic crude” being mined from tar sands in Canada. the article states that the US is importing more of this than all sources of oil in the mid-east combined. who knew canada was our #1 source of oil?

“Thanks to what’s happening in the tar sands-output now tops $1 million barrels a day-Canada has become America’s No. 1 source of imported oil. By 2010, tar sands yield is expected to double, and by 2015 to triple. Depending on how you look at things, this is either a heartening prospect or a terrifying one.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_kolbert
(unfortunately this link is currently only to the abstract, not the full print article)

terrifying because a) keeping cars and trucks on the road with fossil fuel is just no good for global warming and other related environmental issues, no matter what the source, middle eastern or north american, and b) the mining operation devastates the landscape. the Suncor Millennium Mine in Alberta is 1800 square kilometers, and the entire thing will be razed. i’m sure a lot of people don’t care about a relatively small percentage of the vast canadian wilderness, just like the arguments for oil drilling in the arctic national wildlife refuge centered on it being a “relatively small” area, the arguments against remain the same: it completely destroys what are fairly virgin ecosystems, which affects way more than just those plants and animals who live in it. there are ripple effects for thousands of miles, and it affects the whole planet eventually.

what will probably cause more global concern than the ecosystem destruction is the estimated net effect on the atmosphere:

With unconventional oil extraction, however, the damage to the environment tends to be higher all around—more land gets disturbed, more pollutants are produced, and then there are the greenhouse gases. “All unconventional forms of oil are worse for greenhouse-gas emissions than petroleum,” said Alex Farrell, of the University of California at Berkeley. Farrell and Adam Brandt found that the shift to unconventional oil could add between fifty and four hundred gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere by 2100. There is a great deal of support in Washington for measures that would, in effect, subsidize high-carbon fuels.

i had no idea about these operations or the lobbying going on to support them until i read the article, or that most midwestern cars and trucks were already running on the stuff. it’s amazing to me that after all we’ve learned about how globally destructive they are, people (investors) just aren’t willing to give up with the carbon-based fuels, and instead of spending billions mining another toxic resource invest more heavily in greener technologies. Suncor has a statement on their website about how the profits from the oil sands allow them to invest in sustainable technologies and renewable energy, but i see that as a load of PR bullshit, or at the very least, a nice way of saying “we know we can’t rape the land forever so we’re investing in our company’s future, but while we can, we will.”

Filed in environment | Tagged with greenwashing, new yorker | Comment (1)