Alberta Oil Sands

One of the largest crisis's concerning the environment right now is the very debatable Alberta oil/tar sands. The extraction of the oil buried with in the sands has been polluting our water, air, and cutting down forests since 1967. Although the environmental devastation is huge, the oil sands' positive factor is that it produces a lot of income and jobs for Canadians.

The companies extracting oil from the sands are still operating because they receive a lot of support from the provincial and federal government. The government believes that the income and jobs generated outweighs the damage that is being done to the surrounding environment. In my opinion, the regulations that the government has set up that allow this to continue are a joke.

About 4% of Alberta's population is employed by the oil sands. This includes Engineers, construction workers, and anybody else who directly or indirectly works for a company associated with the oil sands. This is a significant number, but not high enough to say that Alberta's economy would crash if the oil sands were removed from the picture. The reason that everyone wants to extract the oil is because of the profit. If the price of oil continues to stay where it is right now, over 100 million dollars worth of oil will be extracted every single day.

It is obvious that the amount of oil extracted from the oil sands comes with a ton of negative impact to the environment. This is why the world is against the oil sands. There are an infinite amount of writers, environmentalists, and every day people who know that what we are doing is killing our planet one barrel at a time. Not only does it take a very large amount of water, space, and pollution to get the oil out of the ground, transporting it all over the world also produces pollution. And even worse, once it is made into gas the vehicles that consume it pollute the air even more. There is a seemingly endless chain of environmental destruction associated with the oil sands.

If you want proof here are some facts about the oil sands:

• the Alberta oil sands are responsible for 6.5% of Canadian green house gasses emissions
• The oil sands contributed 25% to the total increase of green house gasses emissions in Canada from 1990 to 2009
• worst of all, these numbers are growing

Read over these facts and do some research and see what others are saying so you can decide for yourself if it is worth it to continue extracting oil from the oil sands. In my opinion, the sooner we stop polluting, the sooner we can work on reversing global warming.

In the 2 minutes that it has taken you to read this, over 1800 barrels of oil have been extracted from the oil sands. That is enough to last an average car over 4 years but the question you have to ask yourself is if it is worth it.


References:

Wikipedia
Government of Alberta