Tories rewriting safety regs with no input from their own expert panel, says member.
http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/05/31/OilSpillPrevention/index.html
The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.
The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply
‘Green-energy’ project to burn railway ties stymied by Kamloops protesters
With financial backing of Canadian government and U.S. Department of Energy, businessman was feeling pretty optimistic.
Robert Matas
Globe and Mail
Manitoba businessman Kim Sigurdson was thrilled when Canadian Pacific Railway signed a contract to provide millions of old railway ties to his company for an innovative green project that would convert biomass into energy, heat and employment.
With the financial backing of the Canadian government and the U.S. Department of Energy, he was feeling pretty optimistic about the future of his company, Aboriginal Cogeneration Corporation. He obtained a permit from the B.C. Environment Ministry to move ahead with the project in Kamloops. It was exactly the kind of green business that the British Columbia government is trying to encourage.
But then the critics began to speak out, turning his first attempt to
develop a site for the project into an abysmal failure.
The economics of sequestration are expensive on a per-tonne basis. A tax would catch producers and consumers, a long-standing demand of producers in the oil and gas industry. It would give price certainty to companies. It would be much easier to keep the revenues in Alberta and other fossil-fuel provinces. It would be so much simpler to administer.
Jeffrey Simpson
Globe and Mail
Quebec is expected to receive somewhat more than $8.5-billion in equalization payments next year, up from about $8.3-billion this year. The payments will represent about 11 per cent of the government’s total revenues.
A big chunk of those payments come from the richest province, Alberta. So one would have thought that gratitude, if nothing else, might be extended from Quebec (and other equalization-receiving provinces, including Ontario) to Alberta.
No, a little Alberta-bashing apparently sells in la belle province, especially over the environment. Alberta has an environmental challenge, all right, because its greenhouse emissions are the highest in Canada, and Canada’s overall record is among the very worst in the world.
Vanessa Farquharson,
National Post
Film Review: Petropolis (3 stars)
While the debate over Alberta’s tar sands continues to rage, Toronto filmmaker Peter Mettler offers us a silent, 43-minute montage of aerial shots, taken from a helicopter flying over the Athabasca river, which together make one of the most profound statements on this issue to date.
A complete departure from his previous documentary, Gambling, Gods and LSD, Petropolis is at once a quiet meditation on the transformation of serene forest into industrial nightmare and an unabashedly-presented-by-Greenpeace political statement, soaked in a subtext of shame.
http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=2469703
and
Contribution by Anne Morris
An independent study recently published in the US-based Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggests that pollution from Alberta’s oilsands is nearly five times greater than industry figures say and twice as widespread. The study says toxic emissions from the oilsands industry are equal to a major oil spill occurring every year. Government and industry officials say contamination in area soils and rivers is natural, but the study links it firmly to oilsands mining. Read the rest of this entry »
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