The oil sands that are destroying Canada – well, it’s not so bad
WE hear often enough that the oil sands extraction plants in Canada are destroying vast areas of the countryside. The usual shout is that they’re destroying an area the size of Wales (something which usually has us English wondering whether they wouldn’t like to come and deal with the real thing).
You may or may not be surprised to find out that there’s ever so little, just a tad, a touch, of hysteria about this. A spot of exaggeration you might say even. Here’s a little report of a trip up there to see the oil sands projects. Note picture 8: that’s the one after all the devastation that’s done by the mining.
Yup, the land is so polluted and wasted that the buffalo roam there. Well, a buffalo at least. For they restore it to the rolling grass and arboreal forest it was before they got there.
True, this doesn’t solve the problem of the CO2 emissions but that’s a very different story indeed. Mining for oil sands just doesn’t destroy the countryside in the way that we’re told it does.
Photo: Mining trucks carry loads of oil laden sand at the Albian Sands oils sands project in Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada, on Friday, August 5, 2005. Oil sands _ also called tar sands _ are found in an area almost half the size of Colorado spread across central Alberta. (AP Photo/Jeff McIntosh)
Posted: 17th, September 2012 | In: Money Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
