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.