First, the electric car will not end oil consumption, or “dirty fuel” consumption, as oil and coal are where most of our electricity comes from here. We’ll just be using it to make the new juice that powers our electric cars.

Second, we do have technologies and techniques that are much “cleaner” in practice to extract oil from challenging sources like sands and shale.

Third, we also need to exploit Alaska’s oil and natural gas. Those new technologies and techniques can also minimize damage to ANWR by drilling down and out from one surface location instead of ravaging thousands of acres.

Fourth, there has never been an off-shore accident in US oil operations that released any significant amount of oil. Certainly any amount greater than the natural surface of the ocean/gulf floor. Legislating that we do not have access to drill off-shore, in the same areas where Cuba is actively contracting to have China drill, is a major mistake.

Finally, we have Senators (Kennedy) who won’t allow a Wind farm miles from his Cape home because he’s afraid he might be able to see it on the horizon, while pretending to be an Alternative Energy Advocate?!? We need to be able to use all reasonable sources of energy: Wind, Solar, Hydro, Geo, Nuke, Oil, Clean(-er) Coal… the kitchen sink!

Summary, we continue to restrict our own options for political reasons even when, in many cases, environmental issues are minimized or mitigated.

Pray for us down here, and we’ll try to help you guys up there, too.

Chad

Everyone talks about making the tar sands more environmentally friendly. Exactly how are they going to get rid of the massive tailings ponds?

Exactly how are they going to stop surface stripping massive swaths of land?

Exactly how are they going make machines the size of buildings and make them cleaner?

This is a red herring. Tar sands oil will never be anywhere close to clean and when all these companies disappear, Alberta is going to have a severe liability on their hands. They may have to drain away their royalty reserve to repair half their province so it doesn’t look like Mordor.

Pollution from the tar sands affects everyone. The tar sands would be in the future Canada’s bogey man when it comes to GHGs because they are expanding with no oversight and at lightning speed. Only the price of oil has slowed it.

I agree that there should be no scapegoats and that we need a policy that universally attempts to protect the environment through industry, energy, transportation, urban intensification etc. etc. Unfortunately we have our biggest federal political parties colluding to ensure nothing is done.

America can do whatever it chooses and we will have very little affect. The electrification of the vehicle over the next 10 years spells the end of North American oil consumption. Alberta and Canada would be well served to wipe off our dirty glasses and read the writing on the wall or we will find ourselves pretty lonely and at the back of some very long queues.

If (its an important if) Canada is dealing with its emissions on a holistic basis (ie making enough savings elsewhere) then the emissions from tar sands are not an issue for US customers.

The idea that everyone must cut emissions, and then attacking certain bogey men, rather than focusing on overall cuts, is a bad move. It means that we do not follow a cheapest possible solution, which in effect means that you will end up cutting emissions less for any given amount of expenditure.

Here, as always, I support a carbon tax, to enable everyone to understand the true cost of their emissions.