Tar Sands: our addiction to oil hits rock bottom

Once a pristine forest and watershed, the Athabasca River Valley in Northern Alberta has been irreparably scarred by the largest fossil fuel project on the planet: the Tar Sands. It is a large deposit of oil mixed with sand underneath the Boreal Forest. Despite the profits for large corporations, the Tar Sands produces oil at a staggering cost. If its expansion is not sharply curtailed soon, the Tar Sands will become an environmental quagmire the size of Florida.

Conventional fossil fuels are bad enough, but fuels made from the Tar Sands are even worse.

Undercutting all our efforts to curb climate change

Producing one barrel of Tar Sands oil generates three to five times the greenhouse gas emissions the production of the same amount of conventional oil would. We have already depleted our cheapest and cleanest oil sources, so we are now mining the dirtiest—at precisely the moment when the world is undertaking efforts to fight global warming. The Canadian government predicts that greenhouse gas emissions from the Tar Sands will triple in the next decade, undercutting the sincere efforts of people and governments around the world to mitigate climate change. Unless production from the Tar Sands is curbed, neither Canada nor the U.S. will be able to keep their climate promises.

Undermining the environment

At each step of the process, turning tar sands into oil undermines the local and global environment. First, the Boreal Forest's rich ecosystem (or mere "overburden" as the industry refers to it) must be ripped open to expose Tar Sands sludge. Then otherworldly trucks as tall as apartment buildings dig up four tons of earth for every one barrel of Tar Sands sludge they extract. Next comes the resource-intensive process of separating the oil from the sand, requiring huge amounts of water and energy, and producing vast quantities of global warming pollution. For surrounding communities, the process also produces toxic waste: 11 million litres (3 million gallons) a day pour into the surrounding water.

Stopping the Enbridge pipelines

From ground zero in Alberta, Tar Sands oil travels through pipelines to refineries in Canada and the U.S. New pipelines are being constructed to move Tar Sands oil to refineries, and each new mile of pipeline threatens more forests, streams and rivers. Though the richest deposits of usable material in the Tar Sands will be exhausted in only forty years, these lands will be scarred and debilitated far into the future.

Moreover, Tar Sands crude refineries pollute the air and water and undermine community health. From the refinery to your gas tank, Tar Sands oil is prolonging our addiction to dirty oil just as we are set to transition into a clean energy economy.

A global crisis, a local crisis

Global repercussions aside, the Tar Sands has proven to be an environmental disaster for its surrounding communities. Elevated levels of cancer have appeared in communities downstream from the lakes of toxic waste required by Tar Sands operations. Sulfur dioxide and ammonia waft through the air.

We are working with several local First Nations communities who are standing up to Tar Sands corporations and their complicit government representatives.
Learn more about communities downstream from the Tar Sands >>

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