Canada revs up for fight over second tarsands pipeline

why is the US is dealing with Canada ?, it's not even a country, we should invade them and take away their oil and get rid of them in concentration camps (soft kill).

I have stood at the edge of tar sands before....some of the most vile, nasty and disgusting stuff you ever want to encounter. It is difficult to fathom how the world has allowed itself to become so desperate for energy that we are looking for ways to refine this stuff, and yet, every single minute of every single day we are being bombarded with incentives to spend our money on another new gadget, another new device, another new something that only digs us deeper and deeper into dependence upon things we don't need, things that are going to render us extinct.

I know that some of you don't what to hear this, but Obama is the only hope we have of stopping the XL pipeline . Stand firm, protest at the White House and in Congress, make your voices heard. Remember that the GOP side with Harper. If they win in November all is lost.

Harper is even blaming people like Robert Redford for polluting the minds of Canadians to the pipeline. But Harper has to deal with the First Nations before he can move the pipeline through BC because Canada already settle their land-claims with the First Nation Communities in BC. And from what I've heard they do no want it to go through their land.

We also need to stop them from developing another Tar Sands north of Fort McMurray where this existing tar sands is located.

You would not believe the advertising going on in Canada about the tar sands. They show pictures that make it look like a beautiful golf course. "Nothing to see here folks, just move along."

The conservative run government is being bought and sold to big oil. The once pristine waters in the Northwest Territories will soon be unfit the drink.

It was only a matter of time before they got Lovely Canada . They are fighting up there too , we must join them and throw off these corporate tyrants !

The Kochs: Oil Sands Billionaires Bankrolling US Right

They process about one in four barrels of US-bound Alberta bitumen, and pump millions of dollars into highly conservative, anti-green causes. Latest in a series.

By Geoff Dembicki, 22 Mar 2011, TheTyee.ca

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Oil Sands War graphic, Dembicki series

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Also in this series:
War Over Oil Sands: Report From Washington D.C.

In America's Capital, a Fierce Fight over Oil Sands
Breakfast With the Oil Sands' Top Salesman
Canada Teams with Oil Lobby to Fight US Clean Energy Clause
The Battle to Block Low Carbon Fuel Standards
How Enviros Helped Block a Pipeline Worth Billions
The Kochs: Oil Sands Billionaires Bankrolling US Right
Canadian Officials 'Aggressive' in Selling Congress on Oil Sands
Scandal Rocks Key Player in Canada's Oil Sands PR Push
Climate Group Says Washington's Oil Sands War Is 'David vs. Goliath'
Alberta's Hired Gun in Washington
War Cry of Oil Sands Lobby: 'Us against the World'
Gary Doer's Startling Embrace of the Oil Sands
Killer of US Clean Energy Laws Now Running for Alberta Premier
Oil Sands Lobbying Without End, Vows American Petroleum Institute
Could Financial Might Backing Oil Sands Shift to Renewables?

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Owners of Koch Industries, a major processor of Alberta crude, spent millions to foment and support a movement against Obama's climate change policies.
BC Activist Fights the Union Busting States of America

In Madison, where labour rights are under siege, a BC unionist joins the protest.
California's Anti-Green Politics: The Alberta Connection

Texas refiner banks big on oil sands and pours millions into Prop 23, a bid to halt Golden State climate policies, and maybe BC's too.

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What do Tea Party rallies, Republican victories, climate change deniers, Wisconsin's anti-union push and attacks on a cap and trade market for carbon emissions have in common?

They're all fueled in part by profits derived from Alberta's oil sands.

Those profits, flowing to a single company, are helping bankroll a libertarian offensive that many observers think is shifting America's political culture profoundly to the right.

One of the central tenets of that campaign is a disbelief not only in the pressing risks of climate change, but that humans are even causing it.

That article of faith is now being embraced by the American public, with only 51 per cent concerned about global warming, compared to 66 per cent three years ago.

And it's no exaggeration to say that the roots of this campaign can largely be traced back to two powerful businessmen: Charles and David Koch. Together, America's fifth-richest citizens -- each worth $21.5 billion -- own Koch Industries, a refining, pipeline, chemical and paper conglomerate.

continues at:

http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/03/22/KochBrothers/

Yes we have no bananas.
And we seem to be lacking balls too.

Let's sell the oil to the Chinese, they will pay with gold not soon to be worthless American dollars.

If the oil sands were in the U.S. it would be spun as a reliable, nessesary, resource and a alternative to dependence on foreign oil. Suck it up America...there's a new economic power on the block.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we do NEED to oil from tar sands and shale and even deep water drilling. When I say WEI am referring to the industrialized nations.

We have put our back against the wall and because we have chosen NOT to wean ourselves off of hydrocarbons we have no choice but to continue to drill by any means possible.

The only reasonable answer is to create a manhattan type project for sustainable/renewable energy so we can hopefully move away from hydrocarbons in a reasonable amount of time.

But unfortunately, this is just simply not going to happen. The clock is ticking. If fracking won't get us, global warming will.

I don't want to sound like a doomer, but this is the reality.
It may be too late to move to alternative energy sources in such a way that we can replace hydrocarbons. There would be a balancing act of using these disastrous methods to support civilization while we make our transformation. And hopefully we could make the transformation in time. But the transformation would take years, if not decades. Heck, it takes about 10 years to build a nuclear plant, and some would say that is not a plausible option. But it may be better than the alternatives?

I am not sure how this can work out with a happy ending.

Canada threatens trade war with europe over tar sands.

thought this would interest you jan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/20/eu-canada-tar-sands-oil-sands-ban_n_1288...

The way they've flat-butted the pipeline sections together, in a small quake the crude oil pipelines will snap like a twig. They've failed to figure leverage on the pipes correctly.

If death of animals is the objective they have succeeded admirably.

Hmmm...Canada government beginning to sound like US government...Canadian people beginning to sound like US people....protesting and marching and making noise about rotten government decisions.....
I would say Canadian and American unite and tell your government you are NOT going to take it anymore...clean air, clean water....that is what we want...but then again, I am not much of a nationalist....we're all in this together and we need to unite as humans, not as nation states

sighs... when are we going to switch to solar and retool/reconfigure our industries to stop using so much darn oil and more freely available and sustainable energy??? agreed, stop trashing the planet!

What angers me not only regarding talk about Keystone XL here but also talk about the Northern Gateway in Canada is that politicians in both places never see this as the global issue it is. Climate change effects ALL OF US. Taking away the rivers, forests and species that live there effects ALL OF US, particularly those who were there first. I said dropping the XL would not stop the tarsands. We really F--it up this time. And unfortunately I have to agree with the comment made at the end of this excerpt because I do think blood will be drawn because of this.

cont from above:
Officials at Enbridge Inc., which is proposing the western pipeline, say it has been in the works for nearly a decade, though its need has become more apparent as the economy in Asia has boomed while the American one, which until now has consumed 99% of Canadian oil exports, has slowed. By some estimates, Canada has the third-largest proven oil reserves in the world, with 175 billion barrels.

"It's an attempt to respond to the reality that the geographical location of the demand is changing," company spokesman Paul Stanway said, though he said the U.S., which imports more than 2 million barrels a day of Canadian oil, will remain the country's biggest export market. Chinese state companies have more than $16 billion invested in Canadian energy development and are helping fund Northern Gateway to ship their oil.

The Northern Gateway pipeline faces its toughest opposition in Canada. More than 4,000 people have registered to speak at hearings over the next several months — more than for any project in the nation's history.

Debate is especially intense here in British Columbia. Although some residents are eager for the tax revenue and thousands of local jobs the pipeline could bring, many who live along the corridor and in many First Nations territories, homelands of Canada's aboriginals, are mobilizing to fight it.

Crucial are the streams and tributaries of the Fraser and Skeena rivers that lie in the pipeline's path — possibly the greatest salmon rivers on Earth.

Along the coast, there are fears that piloting more than 200 oil tankers a year through the fiords of Douglas Channel and then southward could jeopardize the spectacular coastline of the famed Great Bear rain forest, full of azure waters and rocky waterfalls.

"We truly live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. We live right at the start of the Fraser River watershed, and if we have a spill, it will devastate everything from here straight to the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver," said Bev Playfair, until recently a municipal councilor in Fort St. James, where a hearing on the pipeline this month was preceded by dozens of townspeople marching down the main street with signs such as "Say No to Enbridge."

The most formidable opposition comes from the First Nations of British Columbia, most of which, unlike those in other provinces, have never signed treaties with the federal government and thus have never relinquished title to their historic lands.

"We have the ability to go to court in Canada and say, 'What you are proposing violates the Constitution of Canada.' And that's the trump card in all of this," said Art Sterritt, director of the Coastal First Nations' Great Bear Initiative.

On the Saik'uz Reserve, near the town of Vanderhoof, schoolchildren spent part of the afternoon before the pipeline hearing making signs and sitting quietly as tribal leaders explained the project and why it must be stopped.

"You've got to understand that it's a huge, multibillion-dollar project that they're trying to put through our lands. And it's going to be a tough fight, because they have so much money. They probably have 10 lawyers to our one," Geraldine Thomas-Flurer, the Saik'uz First Nation's liaison on the Northern Gateway issue, told the students.

Tribal Chief Jackie Thomas has held meetings and written letters pointing out Enbridge's record on accidents, including the spill of 810,000 gallons of oil from a pipeline in Michigan in 2010, much of which flowed 30 miles downstream into the Kalamazoo River. Enbridge has spent $700 million so far and workers are still trying to clean it up.

"It's going to be a war," she predicted of the fight ahead. "The only question is, who's going to draw the first blood?"
cont at link above.