Ethical oil
| A dirty dozen gems about |
| Not just a river in Egypt |
“”There’s no such thing as ethical oil. There’s only dirty oil and dirtier oil.
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| —Al Gore |
"Ethical oil" is an attempt to re-brand the Athabasca tar sands into more palatable terms, along with the Alberta oil industry in general.
The term was originally coined by right-wing hack Ezra Levant[1] in an effort to mitigate the negative publicity that development of the tar sands had gathered due to its massive ecological destructiveness.[2] It has since been adopted, unsurprisingly, by the oil industry itself.[3]
The argument runs something like this: "Sure developing the tar sands means tearing-up the landscape and dumping billions of tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere...but at least when oil is coming from Canada there's no money going towards supporting them godless Mooslims with their terrorism and shariah and all that. If we become the US' main provider they'll never have to go to war again! And global warming is probably a lie anyway!"
It has made a convenient shield for the Harper Government's aggressive expansion of the oil sands (which is unsurprising, given Harper's connections to the movement), to the point where it has repeatedly accused Canadian environmental groups of being agents of sinister foreign powers.[4]
[edit] Economics?
At this point the most adequate "ethical" justification for increasing crude production in Canada is to use it as emergency funding during a recession and/or funnel the cash made into developing technology that will make the extraction process more carbon neutral.[5] Indeed, Canuckistan had its recovery after 2008 sweetened thanks to resource industries in Western Canada picking up the slack from struggling manufacturing in the East.
This, of course, is a double-edged sword that could mean dangerous politics. There are growing signs that the economy is becoming over-reliant on the energy sector;[6][7] while this wouldn't be in a problem in, say, Saudi Arabia, the petroleum in Alberta is extremely unconventional bitumen.[8] China and other world powers are only lining up for it now in the fear of peak oil, and when the effects of AGW reach a breaking point demand for the stuff will plummet. No allegory to the Yukon Gold Rush needed.[9]
[edit] See also
- Clean coal
- Drill baby, drill
- NIMBY: A less-than-noble reason some oppose "ethical" oil.
- Not as bad as
- Oxymoron
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ Ethical Oil: The Case For Canada's Oilsands
- ↑ Google "Alberta oil spill." Have at Captain Picard's ultimate facepalm when ready.
- ↑ Through the aptly-named Ethical Oil Institute, in fact.
- ↑ Deep Climate
- ↑ Pretty much what the Norwegians do with their nationalized Statoil.
- ↑ Falling oil puts pinch on economy, The Globe and Mail
- ↑ Alberta Says Budget Deficit To Widen On Lower Oil Price, Bloomberg
- ↑ Canada oil sands emit more CO2 than average: report, Reuters
- ↑ And we all know what happened to Dawson City.