The Alberta Tar Sands are the world's third largest oil reserves and America's single greatest source of oil. Their refining produces far more carbon and consumes far more water and energy than traditional forms of oil production. NASA climate scientist James Hansen stated that if the Tar Sands continue to be tapped it is “essentially game over for any hope of achieving a stable climate." They are a visually compelling example of the true cost of our addiction to fossil fuels. Their proposed expansion would lead to the industrialization of an area greater than Florida.
Trapped under the boreal forest ecosystem of northern Canada, the Alberta Tar Sands are the world’s third largest oil reserves. Producing this oil consumes far more water and energy, and produces up to twice the greenhouse gas of conventional oil. The creation of mines and tailings ponds is also destroying the surrounding boreal forest and wetlands, which is the world’s most concentrated terrestrial carbon sink.
The tar sands are the world’s largest energy project, creating devastation on a vast scale. Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has referred to the Tar Sands development as "an enterprise of epic proportions, akin to the building of the pyramids or China’s Great Wall, only bigger.â€
Its tailings “ponds†are the world’s largest toxic impoundments. Visible from space, with individual ponds ranging in size up to almost 9000 acres, twenty of these vast unlined toxic lakes border either side of the Athabasca River.
Just seventy miles downstream lies the intact Peace Athabasca Delta, the world’s largest freshwater delta, and the only one at the convergence of all four of North America’s major migratory bird flyways. It is critical habitat for a wide range of species, the last remaining breeding ground for the Whooping Crane, and home to the world’s largest remaining herd of wild Wood Bison. Water consumption by the tar sands, and toxins from their leaching tailings ponds, threaten the ecological integrity of this Ramsar designated globally significant wetland.
Also just downstream from the Tar Sands live Dene and Cree indigenous communities who depend on the integrity of this ecosystem. In recent years, tar sands’ toxins have been discovered in the water and soil and cancer rates are significantly higher than in the general population.
The destruction of the carbon rich boreal forest and the resulting exploitation of the world’s third largest and most carbon intensive oil reserves is a global crisis. NASA climate scientist James Hansen stated that if the tar sands continue to be tapped it is “essentially game over†for any hope of achieving a stable climate. Canada’s tar sands are perhaps the most visually compelling example of all that is wrong with our addiction to fossil fuels and why we must change or face dire consequences for all life on Earth.
Proposed expansion plans for the tar sands would triple production and potentially industrialize an area the size of Florida in as little as twenty years.