Ethical Oil FAIL: so slimy it gets mixed with Saudi crude anyway
“To boost support for a US pipeline for its oil sands crude, Canada claims it’s more ethical than the Middle East. Is there such a thing as ethical oil?”
In a word, no:
“There are ways to make oil production more ethical, but it will never be an ethical industry,” Ms. Alpern says. “It’s an inherently dirty way of making money.”
Critics say the ethical oil campaign is simplistic and disingenuous. “Canadians are good people, therefore we make good oil? It’s a kindergarten argument,” says Andrew Nikiforuk, an environmental journalist based in Calgary, Alberta, and author of “Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.”
The heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands got its “dirty” environmental reputation because of the massive amounts of toxic waste water and carbon emissions produced during mining and the process to separate the crude from the sand, not to mention the clear-cutting of vast swaths of boreal forest necessary to extract the oil sands. Oil sands production has been estimated to create up to 20 percent more carbon dioxide emissions than conventional drilling, prompting a group of US mayors in 2008 to pass a resolution urging American cities to stop using fuel from oil sands.
In two words, hell no:
The whole notion of ethical oil sets up a false dilemma because the very viscous Canadian crude needs to be cut with lighter oils from places like Saudi Arabia in order to be transported down a pipeline, says Chris MacDonald, a visiting scholar for the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics at the University of Toronto. “So what’s the point of having ethical oil if you are mixing it with this ‘conflict oil’?”
Response from Stephen Harper and ever-faithful shills?