我是 Mason

To those of you who love Canada, Nebraska and the Earth:

I attended a program yesterday presented under the auspices of the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital. Two films: Dirty Oil and Pipe Dreams. The first exposes the reality of the tar sands production in Alberta and the second the impact on Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer and Sandhills.

As an aside, while we were sleeping, Nebraska’s legislature passed a law giving the right of eminent domain to commercial enterprises! TransCanada laid its first (already leaking) pipeline through Nebraska with the power of the law (to take right of way easements).

This pipeline carries “dirty” oil, the spills of which are virtually impossible to clean, as the weight of the “sludge” needed to carry the oil under pressure, fouls the surface and then sinks to the bottom of waterways and aquifers.

The extraction of oil from tar sand requires: the razing of the important Canadian Boreal forest (clear cut), with the destruction of native hunting grounds and natural life; the poisoning of fish and game — and humans; the building of the largest tailing ponds ever created; the use of more energy than any other such extraction project, with dramatic carbon dioxide effluent. The data is is staggering. Scientists have proclaimed that if this continues, it will lead to the destruction of the Earth.

Most of the oil produced will be exported from our Gulf refineries, and the TransCanada business plan itself shows that gasoline prices will increase in the mid-west (what irony) due to increased demand for oil exported from America.

To destroy the Boreal Forest is unconscionable. C$100 billion will not make up for the destruction of the Earth. C$100 billion is not enough to offset the introduction of rare cancers to the indigenous populations; it is not enough to compensate for creating generations of asthmatic children as the beautiful air of the North is sullied. The US jobs offered for building the pipeline will last for one season — the damage and risk will last forever.

Please note how your representatives are voting: to wit, Virginia Senator, Jim Webb, has voted to fast-track the re-newed permit application.

We may no longer remain sleeping. A future “I told you so”, will not reclaim a lost Earth.