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Have you heard? Have you taken even a cursory peek lately into the oversized eco nightmare that is Canada's monstrous, pollutive, disgusting hellholes of rapacious greed and pollution and destruction and sheer capitalistic joy?

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They are, you might say, the finest example we currently have of a massive, soulless industry and a major first-world government shoving a giant middle finger in the face of all notions of progress and environmental integrity. They're not the only ones, to be sure -- the coal industry's middle finger is downright callused from flipping everyone off so aggressively -- but for sheer gall, for shamelessly stomping a greasy black boot heel into the face of environmental progress right now, the oilsands simply can't be beat.

They are true wonders, testaments to mankind's remarkable power to continue -- against every hunk of knowledge and common sense -- to rape, maul and utterly devastate everything we supposedly hold dear, all in the name of filthy profit.

Despite whatever good vibes you might've been feeling from all those rumors of a healthy global push toward sustainability and alternative energy, the oilsands remind you: no one really gives a flying f--k. Not when hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake. You cannot help but be perversely impressed.

Some argue the oilsands are the future of synthetic petroleum. Experts say there's enough black gold stuck deep in that greasy bitumen -- spread across a region the size of Florida -- that it could last us until we lose what's left of our souls and/or entirely block out the goddamn sun, whichever comes first. The problem, of course, is getting the toxic gunk out of the ground.

The numbers are simply astonishing: The amount of land, water, natural gas, and CO2 emissions required to produce a single barrel of synthetic oil from the oilsands is staggering enough, but when you add in all the contaminated rivers, the toxic tailing ponds (2.2 million Olympic-sized swimming pools' worth, and counting), the decimated landscape, the dead animals, the increased cancer rates among anyone living within a 100-mile radius, well, you've got more than enough charming data to effortlessly destroy any glimmer of positivism you might've enjoyed from composting your pizza boxes.

But that's not the ugliest part. The ugliest part is, the oilsand project is expanding as fast as inhumanly possible. It is already, according to various reports, the largest energy project in the world. Bigger than Saudi Arabia. Bigger than Wal-Mart. Bigger than Jesus.

So ugly and rapacious are the oilsands, so generally repulsive are the before/after images of what's being done to the land, you think there must be something wrong, like this can't really be happening; surely this must be illegal, you think, imagining a team of U.N. inspectors returning from Alberta any minute now and recommending immediate sanctions, military action, a coup against the government. You think this way because you are all sorts of adorable tofu utopian cotton-candy cupcake. You are also viciously naïve. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2009/10/07/notes10070
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Originally posted by Niki2:
Yup, I agree. If it weren't for our rapacious appetite for oil and oil-based products...but that's no excuse for your cow-towing to it--and making a hefty profit doing so, by the way, which is REALLY what's at the bottom of all such things.

Down here, at least around me, we get this impression of Canada as very forward-thinking, clean, decent, etc., while America is a filthy, environmentally-destitute capitalist system. This says that's a false impression. I got as much right to complain about it as anyone...AND to bring it to people's attention, don't I?

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Together we are greater than the sum of our parts

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