Canada is facing an environmental and energy crisis

MACSPECTRUM

WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Apocalypse soon? Canada is facing an environmental and energy crisis

Page: A13
Date: Wed Apr.12, 2006

Frances Russell Frances Russell When it comes to political scandals, this is the genuine article. It combines unethical and irresponsible behaviour with lack of transparency and accountability at the top. It's both federal and provincial in scope. It's the biggest yet.

Canada faces an environmental and energy crisis within the next decade. Not only are the politicians refusing to debate it. They are pretending it doesn't exist. Worst of all, they have no plan, no idea, how to deal with it.

Here are just some of its components:
Canada has less than 10 years of proven conventional oil reserves left, *Statistics Canada* reports. In 2004, our oil production averaged 1.4 million barrels per day (bpd). We exported 1.6 million bpd to the U.S., requiring us to import some 963,000 bpd to meet our domestic demand of 1.75 million bpd.

Canada has only 8.7 years of domestic natural gas supply remaining, also according to *StatsCan*. We produce 17 billion cubic feet per day (bcf) and export 9.7 bcf to the U.S., leaving us with less than half, 7.3 bcf. Even the ever-optimistic and industry-serving National Energy Board now admits Canada's natural gas situation is "unsettling."

Canada's Prairies face an "impending water crisis with far-reaching" implications, says a new study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Dr. David Schindler, the study's lead author and Canada's most renowned environmental scientist, states the deadly combination of global warming, population pressure and the rapacious demands of Alberta's oil industry is draining all western rivers dry. Summer flows are down by 35 to 40 per cent on the Peace, Slave and Athabasca rivers. The South Saskatchewan's flow has dropped a frightening 80 per cent since 1910. Several lakes have simply dried up. And the glacier that feeds the Bow River is melting so quickly that there may be no water left in it in 50 years.

Not only has not a single alarm bell gone off in Edmonton and Ottawa, federal and provincial politicians have ramped up the looming environmental and economic disaster.

And all with virtually no public debate.
Exploitation of Alberta's Athabasca tar sands, chiefly to serve the U.S. market, is now Canada's Job One.
But every barrel of tar sands oil requires 1,000 to 2,000 cubic feet of natural gas and from three to six barrels of water. By comparison, an average Canadian home burns 9,000 cf of natural gas per month in winter. In full production, Fort McMurray's tar sands plants will demand an additional 175 million litres of water per day above the 138 billion litres a year already allocated.

As for climate change, every barrel of tar sands oil produced releases 125 kilograms of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere.

What happens when -- and it is when, not if -- Canada, a cold country, reaches a domestic supply crunch sometime in the next decade? Thanks to the proportional sharing clause contained in the North American Free Trade Agreement, we can't turn off the tap on either oil or gas. We can't even turn it down. We will have to go short ourselves.

And there's more, much more, all exposed in a major new report by the University of Alberta's Parkland Institute, the Polaris Institute of Ottawa and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, entitled Fuelling Fortress America: A Report on the Athabasca Tar Sands and U.S. Demands for Canada's Energy.

Most Canadians probably know bits and pieces of this biggest-ever Canadian political outrage. But it's not until they are all pulled together that its staggering impact emerges.

The planned $7 billion Mackenzie Valley pipeline, projected to deliver 1.9 billion cubic feet of natural gas through 1,400 kilometres of some of the most fragile ecosystems on Earth, terminates at a tiny station called Bootis, adjacent to Fort McMurray. The pipeline isn't for natural gas consumers; it's for the tar sands.

Alberta has set its royalty rate on tar sands production at a ridiculous one per cent. Ralph Klein's government collected more revenue from gambling than from the tar sands in 2004-05. Reacting to Imperial Oil's threats to withdraw from the pipeline last fall, Ottawa came through with concessions totalling $2.8 billion. And this at the same time Imperial's parent, ExxonMobil Corp., reported a $10 billion quarterly profit, largest in U.S. history.

There has never been any public discussion about our loss of energy sovereignty, about Canada's energy security, about Canada's environmental and economic future. Why? Because Canada, alone among oil-producing nations, has not had any energy policy, federal or provincial, for over 20 years. Since Brian Mulroney's government threw Canada's storehouse of non-renewable, strategic resources onto the unfettered free market, federal and provincial governments have prostrated themselves before the oil companies and the deep integrationists in the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.

The media mainly keep mum.
This scandal is epic. Year after year, it worsens. Year after year, there is no debate, nor even questions.
FrancesRussell@mts.net

PenguinBoy

Although I would take any report from the Parkland institute with a grain of salt, we should be doing more to conserve energy as well as look at alternate ways of eploiting the tar sands (e.g., nuclear energy, as opposed to natural gas).

The biggest bang for the buck would probably be conservation, but that means that individuals would have to adjust their lifestyles - for example, driving smaller vehicles, driving less, choosing smaller houses, etc. Unfortunately, most folks aren't prepared to do this - yet. If energy prices continue to rise, conservation might catch on a bit more. IIRC, Western Europe uses ~1/3 of the energy per capita that we do, and has a pretty decent standard of living. With our harsh climate and vast distances to travel, we might not be able to cut our energy consumption quite as much as they do, but we should be able to get by on a lot less energy than we use today.

MACSPECTRUM

simply changing light bulbs all over the country would be an immense help
first thing i did when i moved to shangri-la was change all my bulbs to low-e

Beej

Good job, the little things add up. When I owned a place in AB I also changed all the regular-use lightbulbs, got a programmable thermostat and a couple other things. There's a lot more that can be done, some big and some small.

Vandave

We produce 1.4, but export 1.6?? Huh????

The tar sands alone have reserves of 180 billion barrels. With a demand of 1.75 million per day, that translates to 650 million barrels per year, or about 280 years of reserves.

Greenman

I used to be an optimist.....

but now I'm a pessimist and I think we as a species are toast.

When I walk down the street there's always someone littering, reno construction crews and home owners who pour paint and all sorts of other household liquids down city sewers, cut down trees in their yards because it spoils their view.... we fish and hunt till depletion and poison the environment that's left.

I've noticed a big change here in Toronto in the past 20 years in the amount of litter on the streets. Perhaps the budgets have been cut for outside workers but you'd think with the 'green education' of the last 20 years it would have made a difference. People are just too damned lazy to walk the extra half block to deposit that coffee cup or candy wrapper into a garbage bin.

Then there's the corporate polluters.... the ones in this part of the world flaunt the existing laws and those in other lands have free reign.

Humans are the worst parasite on the face of the planet. The saddest part is the countless other life that we'll be taking with us and all in the name of the almighty dollar..pound...(insert your currency here)

I applaud those who do what they can to slow the inevitable - I do what I can too and will continue to do so but for me I don't see it getting better.

Too little, too late.

__________________
MacPro Dual-Core Xeon 2.66 5GB RAM 10.5.8

highapostle

Visiting Europe, it's amazing how much energy conservation they do. For example, in hotels and apartment buildings, the lights in the hallways and stairwells are usually off, but there are light switches on timers by each room and the elevators. Also, most showers have seperate controls for water flow and water temperature, so you can turn off the water while soaping up. Nothing major, certainly didn't require much adjustment on my part, but I imagine it must make a not-inconsequential difference.

__________________
Black Macbook Core 2 Duo
Upgraded Sawtooth (900 Mhz)
12" 867 Mhz PowerBook - RIP

jasonwood

Climate is changing and it always has been. The idea that we will eventually be extinct, at least on this earth, is not pessimistic, it's reality. Just look at the variations in climate over the last few billion years. The earth's climate has been known to change rapidly and abruptly throughout history. Even if we eliminate all forms of pollution tomorrow, I'm not convinced that will have a considerable impact on when we will go extinct.

I wouldn't say I'm against environmentalism. I drive one of the most efficient cars on the market and I turn off the water when I brush my teeth... but I'm just not convinced, scientifically, that it makes a difference.

__________________
Jason Wood

Greenman

I agree Jasonwood. I've been around long enough to know we certainly are nothing special as a species. We have no particular right to escape extintion. What bothers me more is what we'll leave behind. I've heard the argument " volcanos and large beds of burning coal put more carbon diox int the atmosphere than we ever did." I think it's not the individual ingredients of pollution that is the serious problem. It's the chemical combinations of all of them that is seldom if ever thought about. The Mercury in out teeth, Flouride and other chemicals in our water, food and air, the chemicals/drugs we ingest... our compromised imune systems... the whole situation is far too complex to say "Buy the 'right' product and we'll all be saved"

Some interesting and probably depressing reading:

http://www.museletter.com/partys-over.html

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Everybody.html

__________________
MacPro Dual-Core Xeon 2.66 5GB RAM 10.5.8

MacDoc

Extinction is one thing and I tend to agree to a degree.
BUT choices made now will impact quality life post bottleneck ( max population/max energy demand ) 50 years out.

Collapse by Jared Diamond is fascinating reading about successful choices in the past and unsuccessful ones.

Yes climate has changed in the past but not with the this kind of speed. For a planetary system the size of the North Atlantic circulation to drop 30% in a couple of decades shows the incredible pace of change.

Most climate scientists are resigned to it being irreversible at this point - Greenland WILL melt and sea levels WILL rise in the 4 meter range over the next 100 years. That resignation is most worrying for me.

Can WE cope.....yep....it's the rest of the ecosystem where changes that would normally occur over millenia are changing in a human lifetime. Ocean ecosystems off England have moved 700km north in just 30 years.
Even something like the change in PH of whole Pacific is measurable even now That change has enormous consequences for the food chain.

Further out I think one way or the other the human population will drop either by choice or Ma Nature taking some serious swats.

It's the bottleneck that my daughter will see the peak of that is of concern for me. I'd certainly like to see the attempt made to at least slow the change.

Hey my dad's alive and when he was born population was 1.5 billion or so, now 6 billion and climbing to 9 by the time my daughter is my age

If we see major changes in a couple of decades...and we have.......50- 60 years out is seriously scary as the rate of change appears to be increasing.

__________________
Are you backed up??? if not why not? - Superduper is FREE!!
Find out more here
Support Green- buy Bullfrog Power http://www.bullfrogpower.com/