The Athabasca Tar Sands Has Caused Great Environmental Damage

To what extent does the Athabasca Oil Sands take responsibility in promoting environmental stewardship? The Oil Sands are a mixture of sand, water, clay and bitumen. Bitumen is oil that is too heavy or thick to flow or be pumped without being diluted or heated. Throughout many decades, the environment has become a critical concern, and the responsibility the Oil Sands has taken is preposterous. The GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) emissions that are released into the environment undermines its practices. The only way environmental stewardship can be encouraged, is if the Oil Sands discontinues its oil development. Other alternatives such as stricter rules and regulations should be placed by the government of Alberta to ameliorate the environment.

The social community improvements of alberta as a result of the oil sands. The albertan government committed around 2.5 billion dollars in fixing up the communities of alberta as a result of the oil sands making so much money(Alberta government,march 15 2013). Some examples of this are the 1 billion in road projects, 241 million in building new neighbourhoods, and 103 million in wastewater treatment and to improve the old ones(Alberta government,march 15 2013). Air is rated good 99% of the time, drinking water consistently meets the the guidelines for canadian drinking water(Alberta government,march 15 2013). Which means the quality of life is good in the oilsands region. In conclusion the oil sands affect the communities of that region positively, by bringing in enough money to make improvements to the infrastructure.

O Canada! Our home of the Tar sands! True greedy love in thy government’s command. With sinking hearts we’d see it rise, the pipeline though no trees! It’s far and wide, O Keystone Pipeline, we are no match for thee. Our environment’s no longer free! O Keystone Pipeline you’ll be the death of me! This shocking parody of the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada”, provides a negative but factual insight of the disastrous effects that the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline would have on all parties involved. Tar sands oil is the dirtiest type of oil on the planet and if the Keystone XL Pipeline continues to be constructed like organizations such as TransCanada plan, not only will the environment suffer, but the people who are being

       The Alberta oil sands are a large contributor to the pollution of the air and water. They're responsible for 9.3% of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and 0.13% of global emissions. The oil sands already produce a large amount of air pollution but the emissions are

The environmental risks that come with such a massive pipeline to transport “tar sands” pose a threat on many levels. As a matter of fact the tar sands they are trying to transport are required to

The Athabasca River originates from the Columbia Ice-field and flows in a north-easterly direction about 1500 km to the Athabasca Delta and Lake Athabasca. Throughout its course, the river flows through (or adjacent to) many communities, including Jasper, Hinton, Athabasca, Fort McMurray, and Fort MacKay (with a combined population of more than 155,000 people). Due to its rich natural resources, Athabasca river basin is host of many mining and forestry industries and agricultural activities along the river (MRBB 2004). Particularly, there is an ongoing oil sands development in the region adjacent to the lower reach of the Athabasca River, north of Fort McMurray. All of these activities, in conjunction with the natural watershed geology, effluents from wastewater treatment plants (point sources) and runoff from both natural and altered landscapes (non-point source), have the potential to affect water quality in the lower Athabasca River (Hebben 2009).

The following document is a transcript from a sit down interview conducted between chief executive officer Jim Ellis who is responsible for the operations of the new Alberta Energy Regulator and Crystal Lameman who is known to advocate on behalf of Alberta First Nations. The interview is concerning the controversial Athabasca tar sands (also known as oil sands) which are known to contain large amounts crude oil in the world and the largest of three major oil sands deposits in Alberta (Terry, 2009). The Athabasca oil sands have made Canada the number one foreign supplier of oil to the U.S which creates close economic partnership between the two countries (Terry, 2009). However, the process of supplying the oil to the U.S involves the creation

The Alberta tar sands, is currently the largest construction project taking place in the world, and as such is a very important development. The Alberta tar sands are a necessary evil, because the world is running out of conventional oil, and they are the last remnants of oil. All of the easy oil has been discovered, and exploited, and the tar sands is the crude oil that we are left with. As we all know oil is what makes the world go round, and without it we would be unable to produce enough food, or perform many other important processes. Therefore, the Alberta tar sands are very essential for keeping the world supplied with oil. However, there are many negative effects from the development, and refining of the oil from the tar sands, which has caused much environmental damage.

They connected snow near the oil sands, whatever ends up in the snow can only get there from above from smoke snacks and dust from the mines (Natural Resources Canada 2013). If there are oil toxins in the snow they must be from industrial activity and within 50km that is exactly what they found (Natural Resources Canada 2013). The industry of the oil sands are releasing 13 toxic heavy metals into the river, which include arsenic, led, mercury, and chromium

The oil production in Canada has several significant issues that depict the destruction nature of the industry. These issues can be categorized as environmental, political, economic, and social. The environmental issues lead the pack; in that the environmental destruction associated with the industry is extensive. The environmental problems are climatic, land, water and air related (Best & Hoberg, 2015). Under climatic effect, studies indicate that the development of the tar sides has resulted to three times more greenhouse gases (GHGs) than in production of conventional oil. These environmental issues are caused by the composition of the tar sands. Unlike the convention oil, tar sands are a mixture of bitumen and sand. The process of separating the two results triples GHGs emissions when compared to conventional oil production (Koring, 2013).

An article from Chris Nelson (2015, December 10) frames the agreement as a waste of time, beginning with the words: “So imagine what 36,276 men and women accomplished in Paris these last weeks to deal with another global threat - climate change, if you answered ‘not much,’ then grab the first-prize ribbon.” These openly biased attacks on pro-environment initiatives are examples of how oil is framed in a way that legitimizes itself and rejects climate leadership to the degree where helping the environment is framed as a tactic to appear virtuous for other jurisdictions. Coverage from August of the same year reinforces the partiality of a paper that believes the government’s climate change adaptation strategies have little to do with humanitarian motives. To illustrate, Priaro (2015, August 22) writes, “there is little need for government to intervene to reduce the rate of increase in GHG emissions from Alberta with a misguided, unnecessary and debilitating climate-change plan that will only lead us to an economic dead end.” Journalist David Marsden (2015, January 6) follows, “we don’t need to create more means of harming our economic competitiveness” when speaking about climate change adaptation in Alberta. He continues to claim that the Premier “and her ragtag band of brothers and sisters in cabinet [are] intent on social engineering us to economic death” (ibid). The Calgary Herald was not entirely pessimistic; there is

The focus of most of the previous studies has been based on limited measured data and mostly during the open-water season. Therefore, the Canada-Alberta Joint Oil-Sands Monitoring Program (2012) identified a need for a more systematic and comprehensive quantification and modeling of the sources, transport, flux, and fate of materials and chemical constituents entering the Lower Athabasca watersheds. To achieve this objective, there was a requirement to develop a reliable integrated hydrodynamic, sediment transport and water quality models of the

Thousands of trees are cut down, hundreds barrels of fresh water are used daily, many animal habitats are destroyed, and the air and water are becoming severely polluted. The water that is needed to make crude oil is placed in special “ponds” also known as tailing ponds. The tailing ponds water contain toxic levels of mercury, lead, and naphthalene (which is cancerous since). A report shows that 40% of Canada’s emissions come from Alberta alone, and if all the crude oil in the sands were to be burned, 22 billion metric tons of carbon would reach the ozone

The other adverse effect of the Canadian oil sands is that pipelines and massive processes of refining oil sands in Canada are a source of pollution that pose a great threat to air, water, and land as well as human health. Additionally, the use of its products like natural gas that is used to run medium-sized turbines that produce electricity releases greenhouse gases. These emissions are mostly produced when steam is injected to reduce the viscosity of the crude and during refining. These further increases to the global warming effect that is already out of hand and it also negates the gains made by society by exposing them to the adverse negative

The oil sands are a topic that always seems to be contested, after all its effects on the environment and economy are significant. The CBC and The Globe and Mail have both released articles regarding the oil sands. One article supports the expansion of the oil sands through the use of numbers to dispute common reasons against its development; the other opposes its development through the concerns of those with expert power. The exceptional use of statistics allows The Globe and Mail to validate every point they make, creating an article with a quality that you can trust. On the other hand, the CBC article voices the concerns of professionals. This makes the article worth reading as their concerns are often based on knowledge rather than solely