Posted on 08/17/2011 1:13:32 PM PDT by neverdem
Fort McMurray, Alberta—Standing on the edge of the immense and spectacular pit of an oil sands mine for the first time last week, I was surprised by a sense of exhilaration. Later, seven stories up, equipped with earplugs, and clad in bright blue overalls, I marveled at the cascades of black bitumen froth bubbling over the sides of a separation cell like a giant witch’s cauldron. The scale of the enterprise and the sheer ingenuity involved in wresting value and sustenance from the hands of a stingy Mother Nature provoked in me a feeling close to glory.
Yet as I stood at the edge of the mine, I understood that lots of people viewing the same sight would be horrified by it and outraged by my enthusiasm for it. They would, instead, see the pit as a deep wound in the earth, amounting almost to a desecration.
Can I explain myself to those who see mining oil sands as a moral offense? I plead humanism. Modern capitalism and the technology it engenders has lifted a significant proportion of humanity out of our natural state of abject poverty for the first time in history. Even now, depending on the cycles of nature to renew supplies of fuel (in the form of wood and manure) means poverty, disease, and early death for millions.
I, too, am moved by the beauty of nature and awed by its intricate complexities. I have experienced the Zen of the sheer physicality of hiking or snorkeling over the psychedelic reefs of the Maldives. But human technology can be awesomely beautiful as well. So it was for me at the oil sands in Alberta.
So how did I happen to be standing at the edge of the Millennium oil sands mine? I was on a propaganda trip with...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
Of course the Baraqqis are working hard to keep any pipeline that could transport this oil to the US from happening.
Worried about “greenhouse gases”.
What a crock of sh!t.
What is awsomely beautiful is the money spent here is not spent on Saudi Arabia - Venezuela - Iran.
"The enviable condition of the people of the United States is often too much ascribed to the physical advantages of their soil & climate .... But a just estimate of the happiness of our country will never overlook what belongs to the fertile activity of a free people and the benign influence of a responsible government." - James Madison
Just run the pipeline up to the US border and wait until January of 2013.
kewl! Thanks for the info.
Not so much before processing the oil out.
Precisely, let them clean up that hazardous biological mess and return the land to nature, clean and detoxified.
All that oil has been sitting there for years contaminating the ecosystem, am sure glad someone has taken the bull by the horns to clean it up and turn it into something useful!
There is estimated that off of the west coast, as much as 88 Exxon Valdez's worth of oil naturally percolates up from the sea bed and ends up as tar balls on the beaches.
Oh well, who said environmentalists were ever sane.
Environmentalism has become an oxymoronic movement.
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Thanks neverdem.
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