Stop Dirty Fuels:
Tar Sands
Stop Dirty Fuels : Tar Sands : Liquid Coal : Oil Shale
In Canada, the oil industry is transforming one of the world's last remaining intact ecosystems into America's gas tank.
Alberta's boreal forest and wetlands are home to a diverse range of animals, including lynx, caribou and grizzly bears, and serve as critical breeding grounds for many North American songbirds and waterfowl. Oil companies are scraping up hundreds of thousands of acres of this wildlife haven to mine tar sands -- silty deposits that contain small amounts of crude bitumen.
Extracting tar sands, and turning bitumen into crude oil, uses vast amounts of energy and water, and causes significant air and water pollution, and three times the global warming pollution of conventional crude production. The rush to strip-mine and drill tar sands in the boreal will destroy and fragment millions of acres of this wild forest for low-grade petroleum fuel.
Keystone XL
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TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would be the third new dedicated tar sands pipeline, and would lock the United States into a dependence on hard-to-extract oil and generate a massive expansion of the destructive tar sands oil operations in Canada in coming decades.
Tar sands developments are already wreaking havoc on both people and wildlife in the region. For aboriginal peoples, the mining reduces local water supplies and increases exposure to toxic substances. Expanding tar sands operations also heightens the risk for NRDC's Peace-Athabasca Delta BioGem -- just downstream from these developments.
In addition to the extraction impacts, the proposed pipeline would stretch 2000 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas, threatening to contaminate freshwater supplies in America's agricultural heartland and increase refinery emissions in already-polluted communities of the U.S. Gulf Coast.
At a time when we must embrace a clean energy future, tar sands take us far in the wrong direction. The United States should instead implement a comprehensive oil savings plan and reduce oil consumption by increasing fuel efficiency standards, hybrid cars, renewable energy, environmentally sustainable biofuels, and smart growth to meet our transportation needs.
Read our fact sheet and say no to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Take Action Now!
Tell Congress to Let the Keystone XL Pipeline Die
President Obama has stood his ground and killed a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, but Republican leaders in Congress are trying to force its approval by attaching it to unrelated legislation. Tell your senators and representative to stop holding our government hostage to the interests of Big Oil!
More about Dirty Fuels from
NRDC's staff blog
- Keystone XL Will Unleash Tar Sands Expansion Causing Widespread Impacts
- posted by Danielle Droitsch, 6/27/13
- As President Obama recently set a high profile marker to review the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline ...
- Keystone XL tar sands pipeline fails Presidential climate test
- posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, 6/25/13
- In an historic speech, President Obama released a plan for America to tackle the climate change that ...
- Nobel Laureates: Reject the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline and "Be on the Right Side of History"
- posted by Danielle Droitsch, 6/18/13
- Recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize are calling for the rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. ...
- Goldman Sachs report finds that Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is linchpin for tar sands production
- posted by Anthony Swift, 6/10/13
- In a report released last week, Goldman Sachs painted a clear picture outlining why Keystone XL is a ...
- B.C. Government Rejects Tar Sands Pipeline - Raising Safety Questions
- posted by Danielle Droitsch, 6/3/13
- One of the most significant arguments in favor of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was shattered by ...
