Showing posts with label Alberta tar sands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alberta tar sands. Show all posts

Saturday 12 December 2015

The Tar Sands Killer.




       Tar sands, probably among the dirtiest and environmentally damaging fuels man produces. It is not pumped out of a hole in the ground, you have to remove all the topsoil and vegetation growth, and in so doing destroy all the wildlife in the area. What you leave behind is a wasteland, a barren desert, in the case of Alberta tar sands, the largest in the world, the effect on wildlife is devastating.
       Not a new video, but still very relevant today.


        In Northern Alberta, oil development activities bring an enormous number of people into a fragile ecosystem. Historically, population figures have been very low for this region. Water is easily polluted because the water table reaches the surface in most areas of muskeg. With the ever-increasing development and extraction of resources, wildlife are recipient to both direct and indirect effects of pollution. Woodland Caribou are particularly sensitive to human activities, and as such are pushed away from their preferred habitat during the time of year when their caloric needs are greatest and food is the most scarce. Humans' effect on the Caribou is compounded by road construction and habitat fragmentation that open the area up to deer and wolves.[118]

      Wildlife living near the Athabasca River have been greatly impacted due to pollutants entering the water system. An unknown number of birds die each year. Particularly visible and hard hit are migrating birds that stop to rest at tailing ponds. There have been numerous reports of large flocks of ducks landing in tailing ponds and perishing soon after.[119] Data has been recorded since the 1970s on the number of birds found on tailing ponds.[120]

        There has also been a large impact on the fish that live and spawn in the area. As toxins accumulate in the river due to the oil sands, bizarre mutations, tumors, and deformed fish species have begun to appear. A study commissioned by the region's health authority found that several known toxins and carcinogens were elevated.[121] Aboriginal communities that live around the river are becoming increasingly worried about how the animals they eat and their drinking water are being affected.[122]

        While there has been no link yet made between the oil sands and health issues, Matt Price of Environmental Defense says the connection makes common sense. Deformities in fish and high concentrations of toxic substances in animals have also been identified.[123]
       This not being done because there is a shortage of oil, there is actually a glut of oil on the market. It is simply done to make money for already rich corporations. However, there are people who are prepared to make a stand and do what they can to impede this filthy destruction of the natural environment by rich greedy corporations.



Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

Sunday 19 January 2014

Toxic Tar Sands, Cancer And Profit.


     The grasping hand of the corporate world will devastate, communities and the environment, in its endless quest for profit. No risk is too big, no damage too great, as the fallout from their plundering and marauding, doesn't infect the marble halls of the world's stock exchanges, nor their shareholders bank accounts.

 
   
     The Alberta tar sands project is one of the corporate world's most brutal destructions of of pristine natural environments on the planet. It stretches for mile after mile of what used to be green mountains and abundant wildlife, but is now a filthy wasteland of sterile black slush. What is worse, is that to get at the oil in the tar, the companies use some of the most toxic substances in existence. This in turn finds its way down streams and rivers, into the water table.

 
Lake Athabasca is fed by the Athabasca River, which flows through the project region, and earlier studies have found unsafe levels of arsenic, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon in the lake’s fish, as well as in sediments, water and wildlife.
 
      Among the local population down river from the project, there has been an increase in cancers, Of course the usual vomit is emitted by the mouthpieces of the project, stating that the increase in cancers may be due to better detection and/or lifestyle. Obvious they can't or wont, see any connection between toxic water and wildlife, and increase in cancers.

 

    This rape and plunder of the planet will continue as long as the present system of capitalism exist. As long as the financial mafia control where the investments go, and the aim is increase wealth for the shareholders, you and I, and the environment, will just have to take what we get. It is their world, or it is our world, there is no middle road, no compromise.

 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk