Say goodbye to the momentum of the environmental movement for the next 100 years. According to "60 Minutes," geologists have determined that there is enough oil in Alberta, Canada to "solve America's energy needs for the next century" - a statement which will pose an enormous obstacle for environmental activists in coming years. The report concerns the oil sands of Fort McMurray, Alberta, located approximately 600 miles north of Montana. There are at least 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in the area, an amount second only to Saudi Arabia's 260 billion barrels. It is not yet known how many more barrels of oil are untapped in reserves beneath Alberta. However, there is a big difference between Saudi Arabia and Alberta, Canada: as opposed to Saudi Arabia's underground oil reserves, Alberta has oil sands - sand infused with crude bitumen that can be refined into oil products. In order to extract these oil resources, the land must be strip-mined. The environmental impacts of such practices will be devastating.
In order to extract the oil sands, not only will oil companies have to rip up the entire forest, but the actual sand has to be transported away from the site. Once the sand is removed, its absence impacts the environment immensely. Processing oil sands requires a huge amount of energy - an amount that will severely spike greenhouse gas emissions.
Strip-mining will affect more than simply the number of trees in the area; it will affect water flow and soil organisms, displace animal populations, exacerbate erosion and decrease carbon sequestration. The area of forest and sand which will be displaced is the approximate size of Florida.
Oil companies involved in the project have stated that 10 years is enough to restore the boreal forests of Alberta. Rick George, president and CEO of Suncor Energy, insists that visitors 10 years from now will not even be able to tell a mine was once there. He goes so far as to say that the landscape will be "pretty" and that in 10 years, his company will be "minin' at a different location." It's a funny fact that the mining industry has been in Fort McMurray for 30 years, yet not a single inch of forest has yet been restored. Even if the mining industry suddenly were to begin restoring the forests, it's highly doubtful that they would finish such a monumental job within 10 years, leaving the ecosystem destroyed for an indefinite number of years.
These are just the primary effects of harvesting oil sands in Canada. The secondary effect - allowing the United States at least 100 more years to continue on its path of careless consumption and oil dependency - could prove devastating for the earth. Even if you are one of the few who do not believe in global warming, there are other convincing reasons to be against oil dependency. Pollution is the obvious, proven cause of many public health problems. For every barrel of synthetic oil produced in Alberta, more than 80 kilograms of greenhouse gases are released and approximately five barrels of waste water are dumped into tailing ponds. We need clean air, clean water and clean soil in order to have a food source. It's that simple.
Recent sustainable development movements have been striving to find a way to continue development in an environmentally friendly way. But the new estimates of Alberta's reserves will prove to be a crippling blow to the environmental movement. Now that we have secured an oil supply for the next century, we will neglect long-needed energy reforms, thereby dooming future generations.
Beyond environmental implications, the recent announcement of Alberta's reserves has enormous political implications. The reserves have been known about for almost 30 years, but nobody cared - the price of refining oil sands seemed too high. But now with oil prices at approximately $67 a barrel, and with new technology, the technique of refining oil sands has become reasonable. Is Canada going to be the next world super-power, manipulating the United States with its vast oil reserves? Is this America's ticket out of the Middle East? Only time will tell. Yesterday, it may have seemed unlikely that Canada could be a huge world power, but today it seems a little more feasible. And perhaps tomorrow we'll forget about Middle Eastern foreign affairs, as we turn to exploit our neighbor's land.
It seems impossible to stop the extraction of Alberta's oil sands, esp-ecially since it is expected that U.S. com-panies will invest $100 billion dollars in Fort McMurray within the next 10 years. However, the environmental impacts can be mitigated if we continue to press forward the sustainable development movement. We can avert crisis if citizens begin to think about the consequences of personal consumption.
Laura Martin '06 thinks bogs are awesome.
