Baby’s death attributed to tar sands pollution said Indigenous community. Photo by Ian Willms
Canada’s tar sands (oil sands) are the world’s largest industrial project.
Now we learn, after more than 50 years in operation, it is also one of the world’s largest single sources of air pollution.
Aircraft criss-crossed hundreds of square kilometers taking air samples to determine that the annual air pollution from the tar sands was equivalent to the rest of the entire country’s.
Measurements revealed that emissions from the tar sands were up to 6300% greater than what the oil industry was reporting.
Anyone who’s been in the area, as I have, won’t be too surprised. If you’re downwind your eyes burn and throat aches. Local indigenous peoples have complained about the health impacts of the pollution for decades.
However, the pollution’s impacts on human health and the environment have long been swept under the carpet by complicit provincial governments and an aggressive industry. (I was attacked for writing a National Geographic article, for example.)
Need-to-Know: Here’s what the world’s largest industrial project looks like
Imagine driving on a highway and to either side behind a thin screen of trees is a vast industrial landscape as far as the eye can see. Now imagine 700 kilometers of that highway.
See for yourself.Use Google Earth and search for Tar Island, Alberta or click the link.
Scattered along the banks of the Athabasca River, are some of the world’s largest collection of tailings-waste ponds—able to fill more than 500,000 Olympic swimming pools. These are so toxic, that ducks and other birds have to be prevented from going near them.
Zoom in to the surrounding area to what looks like a forest and notice all the lines and squares. Those are roads, pipelines, and extraction sites where the tarry bitumen (not oil) is cooked underground using lots of gas and water and then sucked to the surface.
These operations cover hundreds of square kilometers of boreal forest and wetlands in Alberta and farm fields in western Saskatchewan.
Need-to-Know: Oil and gas operations are Canada’s biggest source of air pollution AND CO2 emissions
The oil and gas operations are Canada’s biggest source of carbon emissions at 191 million tons of CO2 a year. Those are just the emissions from operations, (aka upstream emissions), not burning the stuff, (downstream emissions) which is far more. The vast majority of Canada’s oil and gas is exported, mainly to the U.S.
Unlike the U.K., European countries, and even the U.S., Canada’s CO2 emissions have been growing year after year. That’s recently changed under the current government which has set aggressive reduction targets for 2030. However, in the past, Canada has failed to meet even its weakest targets, largely due to an expanding oil and gas sector, and a bizarre love for oversized vehicles.
Need-to-Know: Canada is in a crucial fight to curb its oil and gas pollution
The federal government finally tried to clamp down on the oil and gas sector in 2022 by proposing a cap on their emissions amounting to a 42% reduction by 2030. (It is called the Regulatory Framework to Cap Oil and Gas Sector Emissions. )
That triggered an enormous lobbying effort by the industry and its supporters to water down the reduction plan. And the lobbying is working. The current version is far weaker with lots of loopholes and would bring a reduction of only 17% at best by 2030.
Source: Climate Messengers Canada
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