A couple days ago I calculated that this wildfire covered an area about one quarter the size of the state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island is the smallest of the United States states, but it’s still a fair chunk of real estate.
Just so. The tars sands will be developed regardless. Take away Keystone XL and the debate becomes whether Canada should have more energy independence (via developing the Energy East pipeline to refineries on Canada’s east coast) or diversify its customer base (via expanding its pipelines to the west coast to sell to China.)
What I want is natural, and your objection is political.
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“thanks for clearing that up. must explain why the oil companies didn’t care at all about getting the pipeline built.”
Some oil companies wanted it built, because they stood to benefit. Others didn’t, because they didn’t stand to benefit. Aluminum is fungible, doesn’t mean Alcoa doesn’t support things that make Alcoa more money and oppose things that make it less money.
That doesn’t change the fact that oil’s fungible, and regardless of which particular companies profit from the sale of Alberta oil, Alberta oil is going to be sold, and it is going to be burned, and the market price will reflect the supply.
there are people working to stop new export terminals. it’s a bit “nimby”, but in this case i’ll take it.
it’s we who allow these companies to operate as is. we can either throw our hands up in the air, say oh it’s just business, or: step by step we can slow things down.
fossil fuels are causing climate change. there’s still some wiggle room to control how bad things will get.
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Franklly, I think people in Europe would really appeciate liquification facilities in the US. And people in Moscow would rather that these plants never get off the ground.
agreed. and a manhattan project for renewables would likely disturb the world order, while climate change will help to re-enforce it.
it’s really no wonder we’re all headed down the path we are.
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The Tar Sands are expensive to exploit, and the product isn’t worth much. If the costs of transporting it to a willing buyer are sufficiently high, it won’t be profitable enough to mine.
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And people everywhere who are aware of the realities of climate change realise that doing anything other than leaving it in the ground is fucking suicidal.
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The tar sand deposits are particularly carbon intensive, yes. In terms of fossil fuels, there are energy sources that provide more energy, while producing somewhat less (not zero, but less) carbon dioxide emissions.
And one of those sources is methane-- natural gas
To transport natural gas requires either a pipeline, or
ships and a pair of facilities to liquify and deliquify natural gas for ship transport. The lack of such facilities on both sides of the atlantic means that Europe has one seller for Natural Gas–Russia-- which for political reasons, likes to choose its buyers.
So, in the medium short term, it would be helpful if there was a facility that could liquify gas, somewhere in the America, so that Russia couldn’t use its monopoly. In the long term-- nukes, solar, geothermal and conversion of furnaces to run on electricity.
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