Ten Years After 9/11 – Canada’s True Cost of Oil

Tar Sands pit mining is done in benches or steps. These benches are each approximately 12-15 meters high. Giant shovels dig the tar sand and place it into heavy hauler trucks that range in size from 240 tons to the largest trucks, which have a 400-ton capacity.

While we still need oil to meet our energy needs, true energy security will not be achieved through the expansion of the tar sands but through the development of alternate sustainable energy sources and through all of us reducing our consumption. This will be difficult but we need to do it for our children. Recently, on a rainy Friday evening as we prepared to pick up a video for our weekly family video night, I suggested we drive to the store as the weather was bad and my children were fighting the flu, it was my youngest child’s turn to choose and there is no way she was going to miss the trip. She looked at me with the shock and disgust only a four year old can really muster and implored, “Dad, don’t you know, under a mile, bike in style!”

The Tar Sands, also known as Oil Sands, – if you prefer the public relations created term – are now Canada’s largest, and fastest growing, single source of carbon. At the same time, Canada has gone from being one of the first signatories to the Kyoto Protocol to now becoming an obstacle to international efforts to reduce carbon and our dependency on fossil fuel.