For those of you that are unaware, the Province of Alberta is the world’s largest exporter of oil to the United States. Since the invasion of Iraq, instability in the Middle East has made the arduous and expensive process of exploiting Alberta’s oil sands lucrative. Since then, it has become one of the most magnetic oil reserves in the world, with both foreign and domestic corporate interests operating in the Province paying unbelievably low taxes for the privilege of raping the Canadian wilderness. In return, numerous Albertans have gained from the boom while some haven’t, and the rest of the country really hasn’t – but that’s not really an issue of import next to the damage that process itself is doing.

According to Environmental Defense, the excavation of the oil sands is, itself, producing enormous amount of greenhouse gasses. The process is also poisoning local water supplies. Of course, and not surprising in the least, output is projected to grow to a level that, by 2015, will see 3 million barrels of oil produced a day.

Money, as we’re all aware, is far more important than the environment. It is also, in some cases, worth running the risk of creating public health problems as well. But as long as the bank is fat, it’s easy enough to dismiss such concerns as long as those benefiting continue to benefit – and that most certainly includes both the Albertan and federal governments.

While futile, the question must be asked – how much damage must be caused before the Province, and Ottawa, realize what it is they’ve done? Besides the global affects of the greenhouse gasses produced, what of the affects on the environment itself? On the ecosystem and ground water? How much of the northern Albertan landscape has to be turned into something that more resembles the surface of the moon than the earth before we wake up to the fact that it wasn’t worth it in the end?

You know, it’s interesting how easy it is to forget that this planet has finite resources, and that the longer we abuse it the more assured our own demise as a species becomes. Of course, there are those that will argue until their dying breath that that isn’t the case, that we couldn’t possibly consume so much of this planet’s resources as to actually cause our own extinction. Then again, the last two times the world went to war we exclaimed after each - never again - and look how that’s turned out.

Any species that has already created a means with which to destroy itself several times over certainly can’t be taken at its word with regards to the exploitation of its own environment. Destroying is, in truth, the only thing that we actually excel at. Even our creations cause destruction. Truthfully, the seeds of some of our most brilliant advancements have come from our never-ending love affair with exacting the art of killing one another in a more timely and efficient manner.

Nowhere in the natural world does that phenomenon exist, and that fact is something that we should take to heart. That is, if we haven’t wiped out every living example on this planet before we finally do. Because every hour of every day, three species, be they plant or animal, are rendered extinct. That’s 500 species a week. Given the law of averages, we can’t avoid the inevitable forever.

I’m the last guy in the world that wants to give Ezra Levant the attention that he seeks. That said, I’ll not deny that some of the points that he’s made during his recent appearances before an Alberta Human Rights Commission Officer have been excellent, but the fact remains, in my opinion anyway, that Ezra Levant is still riding the same train that he boarded two years ago when he, while still the publisher of the Western Standard, decided to run the controversial Mohammed cartoons.

At the time I accused Levant of running the cartoons for a very specific reason – not one steeped in ensuring press freedoms but rather one steeped in getting himself, and his publication, as much press as was possible. Given the magazine’s extremely low profile, the publishing of the cartoons was a masterful promotional decision. It thrust Levant and the magazine into the national spotlight and, for a time, produced the results that, I believe, Levant was after.

With regards to press freedoms, should the media have published the cartoons? I agree with Levant that, given the stipulations of The Charter, the press ultimately should be the ones to make that decision. Most Canadian publications chose not to run the cartoons, primarily because of the tensions caused by their initial publication overseas, perhaps to ensure the stability of ratings and subscriptions, or to avoid dealing with the numerous complaints that were sure to arise. In the world of corporate media, those are aspects that are rarely overlooked. Levant, who has written for Sun Media, who did not publish the cartoons, knows that all too well I would imagine. Of course, Levant did use the Calgary Sun as a soapbox to rail against their decision, not to mention promote the fact that his own publication had published the cartoons.

One thing that I found interesting was that in his ‘closing statement’ to the Commission Officer, Levant does not employ the term ‘Church and State’, though he does reference various religions throughout the statement to provide transparency. Instead, he blatantly, and repeatedly, uses the term ‘Mosque and State’, an inclusion that devalues the intelligence of some of his arguments. Sure, the complaint against him was brought by Muslims, but when speaking in a grander sense about universal freedoms one would think such immature jabs would be something deemed counter productive with regards to the appearance of intellectual fortitude.

Were this a matter of cartoons being penned and published by a Danish newspaper about Israelis, some of which stereotyped them as murderers without making any distinction between radical Israeli groups and Israelis in general, I’m sure Levant’s views would have been much different, not to mention the reaction of those that populate the Western Standard’s entirely mind numbing blog. Of course, that wasn’t the case; they were cartoons depicting Muslims in a stereotypical light first published in a European nation replete with immigration tensions – not to mention in a world in which Muslims are largely stereotyped in general, and there is evidence of that in stockpiles since 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ezra Levant claims that he hopes that the Commission decides against him, and that the entire affair escalates so that he might be afforded the opportunity to have this affair seen for what he believes it is – an attack on press liberties. Of course, along the way, Levant will also receive a considerable amount of face time, an aspect in all of this that should certainly not be overlooked.

Obviously, I am never going to disagree that the imposition of restrictions on freedom of speech or the press is anything but troublesome, with a few exceptions of course, those being when privately funded media outlets are used for propaganda purposes by foreign interests. I personally believe that this matter is, in its entirety, ridiculous, and that by becoming a matter before the Commission has only demonstrated the inability of those involved to act in a decent and understanding fashion. Frankly, the entire thing reeks of opportunism and close mindedness on both sides.

Someone emailed me this morning asking me why I hadn’t mentioned what is happening in northern Alberta right now with regards to the exploitation of the oil sands. I thought that, some time ago, I had linked an article by Naomi Klein penned for The Nation entitled Baghdad Burns, Calgary Booms, but perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me and I simply bookmarked it on my del.icio.us page. In any event, Klein’s piece is excellent, so I’ll let her do the talking…

“The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely “tax holidays” and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the government.

This isn’t the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law–that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: As Baghdad burns, destabilizing the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.

Here is how chaos in Iraq unleashed what the Financial Times recently called “north America’s biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush.” Albertans have always known that in the northern part of their province, there are vast deposits of bitumen–black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world.

It is possible to turn Alberta’s crud into crude, but it’s awfully hard. One method is to mine it in vast open pits: First forests are clear-cut, then topsoil scraped away. Next, huge machines dig out the black goop and load it into the largest dump trucks in the world (two stories high, a single wheel costs $100,000). The tar is diluted with water and solvents in giant vats, which spin it around until the oil rises to the top, while the massive tailings are dumped in ponds larger than the region’s natural lakes. Another method is to separate the oil where it is: Large drill-pipes push steam deep underground, which melts the tar, while another pipe sucks it out and transports it through several more stages of refining, much of it powered by natural gas.

Both techniques are costly: between $18 and $23 per barrel, just in expenses. Until quite recently, that made no economic sense. In the mid-1980s, oil sold for $20 a barrel; in 1998-99, it was down to $12 a barrel. The major international players had no intention of paying more to get the oil than they could sell it for, which is why, when global oil reserves were calculated, the tar sands weren’t even factored in. Everyone but a few heavily subsidized Canadian companies knew that the tar was staying put.

Then came the US invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, the price of oil reached $35 a barrel, raising the prospect of making a profit from the tar sands (the industry calls them “oil sands”). That year, the United States Energy Information Administration “discovered” oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta–previously thought to have only 5 billion barrels of oil–was actually sitting on at least 174 billion “economically recoverable” barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the United States.

All this has meant that Iraq’s oil boom has not been delayed; it has been relocated. All the majors, save BP, have rushed to northern Alberta: ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which alone plans to spend $9-$14 billion. In April, Shell paid $8 billion to take full control of its Canadian subsidiary. The town of Fort McMurray, ground zero of the boom, has nowhere to house the tens of thousands of new workers, and one company has built its own airstrip so it can fly in the people it needs.

Seventy-five percent of the oil from the tar sands flows directly to the United States, prompting Brian Hall, an energy consultant with Colorado-based IHS, to call the tar sands “America’s energy security blanket.” There is a certain irony there: The United States invaded Iraq at least in part to secure access to its oil. Now, thanks partly to economic blowback from that disastrous decision, it has found the “security” it was looking for right next door.

It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a free-market response to climate change, setting off an “explosion of innovation in alternatives,” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a “novel thermal recovery process”–embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.

And that’s the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada’s growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the industry plans to more than triple production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141 billion barrels from the tar sand, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta.

Developing the sands is devouring trees and wildlife–the Pembina Institute, the leading authority on the tar sands’ environmental impact, warns that boreal forests covering “an area as large as the State of Florida” risk being leveled. Now it turns out that the main river feeding the industry the massive quantities of water it needs is in jeopardy. Climate scientists say that dropping water levels are the result–fittingly enough–of climate warming.

Contemplating the collective madness in Alberta–a scene even the Financial Times has labeled “some dystopian fantasy”–it strikes me that Canada has ended up with more than Iraq’s displaced oil boom. We have its elusive weapons of mass destruction too. They are out near Fort McMurray, in the jet-black goo beneath the earth’s crust. And with the help of trucks, pipes, steam and gas, these weapons are being detonated.”

If it turns out that I have already posted this - for those of you that do email me about various things, please learn to use the search engine. It’s that little rounded box in the upper right hand corner of the website and it’s fairly easy to use.

While the Iraqi government has issued arrest warrants for the leaders of Iraq’s oil workers union, who have been on strike since the 4th of June demanding “improvements to wages, health and other working and living conditions as well as consultation on the proposed oil law”, things in the Province of Alberta couldn’t be better. In fact, the war in Iraq has, in no small way, led to an enormous amplification of Alberta’s oil wealth.

The Iraqi oil workers union are not unfounded in their concerns. Proposed legislation could result in the privatization of parts of the Iraqi oil industry, something that has obviously always been one of the goals of those nations that currently occupy the country. But given the instability of the country, and an extreme rise in oil prices, one location that was little considered prior to the invasion of Iraq is being transformed into the preeminent location for global oil production. As Naomi Klein points out in a recent article for The Nation, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the subsequent alterations that it has caused the oil market, have done wonders for, of all places, the Province Of Alberta. But not without a price…

“The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history. All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely “tax holidays” and pay a laughable 1 percent in royalties to the government.

This isn’t the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law–that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: As Baghdad burns, destabilizing the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.

Here is how chaos in Iraq unleashed what the Financial Times recently called “north America’s biggest resources boom since the Klondike gold rush.” Albertans have always known that in the northern part of their province, there are vast deposits of bitumen–black, tarlike goo that is mixed with sand, clay, water and oil. There are approximately 2.5 trillion barrels of the stuff, the largest hydrocarbon deposits in the world.

It is possible to turn Alberta’s crud into crude, but it’s awfully hard. One method is to mine it in vast open pits: First forests are clear-cut, then topsoil scraped away. Next, huge machines dig out the black goop and load it into the largest dump trucks in the world (two stories high, a single wheel costs $100,000). The tar is diluted with water and solvents in giant vats, which spin it around until the oil rises to the top, while the massive tailings are dumped in ponds larger than the region’s natural lakes. Another method is to separate the oil where it is: Large drill-pipes push steam deep underground, which melts the tar, while another pipe sucks it out and transports it through several more stages of refining, much of it powered by natural gas.

Both techniques are costly: between $18 and $23 per barrel, just in expenses. Until quite recently, that made no economic sense. In the mid-1980s, oil sold for $20 a barrel; in 1998-99, it was down to $12 a barrel. The major international players had no intention of paying more to get the oil than they could sell it for, which is why, when global oil reserves were calculated, the tar sands weren’t even factored in. Everyone but a few heavily subsidized Canadian companies knew that the tar was staying put.

Then came the US invasion of Iraq. In March 2003, the price of oil reached $35 a barrel, raising the prospect of making a profit from the tar sands (the industry calls them “oil sands”). That year, the United States Energy Information Administration “discovered” oil in the tar sands. It announced that Alberta–previously thought to have only 5 billion barrels of oil–was actually sitting on at least 174 billion “economically recoverable” barrels. The next year, Canada overtook Saudi Arabia as the leading provider of foreign oil to the United States.

All this has meant that Iraq’s oil boom has not been delayed; it has been relocated. All the majors, save BP, have rushed to northern Alberta: ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, which alone plans to spend $9-$14 billion. In April, Shell paid $8 billion to take full control of its Canadian subsidiary. The town of Fort McMurray, ground zero of the boom, has nowhere to house the tens of thousands of new workers, and one company has built its own airstrip so it can fly in the people it needs.

Seventy-five percent of the oil from the tar sands flows directly to the United States, prompting Brian Hall, an energy consultant with Colorado-based IHS, to call the tar sands “America’s energy security blanket.” There is a certain irony there: The United States invaded Iraq at least in part to secure access to its oil. Now, thanks partly to economic blowback from that disastrous decision, it has found the “security” it was looking for right next door.

It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a free-market response to climate change, setting off an “explosion of innovation in alternatives,” as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R&D extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a “novel thermal recovery process”–embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.

And that’s the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat. The process of refining bitumen emits three to four times the greenhouse gases produced by extracting oil from traditional wells, making the tar sands the largest single contributor to Canada’s growth in greenhouse gas emissions. Nonetheless, the industry plans to more than triple production by 2020, with no end in sight. If prices stay high, it will soon become profitable to extract an additional 141 billion barrels from the tar sand, which would place the largest oil reserves in the world in Alberta.

Developing the sands is devouring trees and wildlife–the Pembina Institute, the leading authority on the tar sands’ environmental impact, warns that boreal forests covering “an area as large as the State of Florida” risk being leveled. Now it turns out that the main river feeding the industry the massive quantities of water it needs is in jeopardy. Climate scientists say that dropping water levels are the result–fittingly enough–of climate warming.

Contemplating the collective madness in Alberta - a scene even the Financial Times has labeled “some dystopian fantasy” - it strikes me that Canada has ended up with more than Iraq’s displaced oil boom. We have its elusive weapons of mass destruction too. They are out near Fort McMurray, in the jet-black goo beneath the earth’s crust. And with the help of trucks, pipes, steam and gas, these weapons are being detonated.”

And you wonder why the Government of this country has problems agreeing to realistic evironmental protection initiatives. After all, you can’t squeeze oil out of wild animals and trees.