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!
Thank the President for standing up to Big Oil!
President Obama has changed the rules of the game by listening to the American people, rejecting Big Oil’s political bullying and rejecting the destructive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Please send him a message of thanks right away.
More about Dirty Fuels from
NRDC's staff blog
- It's all about the framing: How polls and the media misrepresent the Keystone XL [tar sands][oil] pipeline
- posted by Liz Barratt-Brown, 2/4/12
- First of all, you won’t find tar sands mentioned in any of the polling. And in most polls, ...
- Keystone XL pipeline: Good for Big Oil, bad for the economy
- posted by Laurie Johnson, 2/1/12
- [We’re] probably looking at…from Montana to Houston, I don’t know, [job ...
- Lois Lane--Environmental Superhero!
- posted by Janet Barwick, 1/25/12
- (left to right: Joanie Kresich, Frances Stewart, Margot Kidder, and actress Tantoo Cardinal) On a recent ...
- Red Flags! Keystone XL tar sands pipeline bill would force approval while neglecting to protect our rivers and farms
- posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, 1/25/12
- Yesterday, hundreds of “referees” gathered on Capitol Hill and blew the whistle on the proposed ...
- State of the Union: Nebraska landowner response accuses Republicans of playing political football with the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline
- posted by Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, 1/25/12
- In giving the official Republican response to tonight’s State of the Union address, Indiana Governor ...
