Beautiful World?

Photos by Aly Ostrowski

Music is Don't Panic by Coldplay

The flight from Fort Chipewyan to Fort McMurray highlighted the contrast between the beauty of the not quite unspoiled Athabasca Delta and the devastation of the Alberta tar sands extraction operations.

We need to slow down the irresponsible expansion of development which threatens the water supply, poisons the people who live and work in the watershed, destroys habitat, and damages the sovereignty of Canada and its First Nations.

The Sierra Youth Coalition asks that:
1. we legislate that no new approvals be given to tar sands development until regional plans are democratically created by the communities involved in order them to have a say in the nature of their economic growth and how the ecological and socio-economic impacts will be dealt with.
2. Aboriginal communities be respected and their treaty rights be honoured and upheld.
3. Canada reassess its national energy policy, calling into questions its energy-exporting obligations under the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
4. environmental justice, the right to a healthy and productive environment, be enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• grassroots
• outreach
• nonprofit
• Canada
• Alberta
• tar sands
• iPhoto
• global warming
• environmental justice
• Coldplay
• Chris Martin

[CanadianLeopardC2]

If you don't like what they are doing around Fort Mac, stop flying the plane used to take the pictures, don't use your car either and, in the winter, don't turn on the heat. They all use power from there, and as of right now, we don't have any reasonable power sources

[katakanadian]

We have to move past our current failings and onto a better future.Campaign for and invest in better power sources. Stop demanding perfection and recognize what can be good enough.

[blambo35]

how about you turn the heat all the way off?? freeze to death you hippie, and what the fuck do u think trains run off? hemp power?? haha

[katakanadian]

Very childish. You are displaying your ignorance.

BTW, a good train system is electrified which makes it immediately more efficient and it has the potential to run on renewably generated electricity instead of being chained to fossil fuels.

[blambo35]

and where do you figure we get this power? damn up every river?? isint that an environmental desaster? or are you one of those dreamers that think wind power and solar power can take over? have you been to the wind farms in southern alberta? there are a tone a mills but they dont produce much power in the long run. Off track, the power for this train is from a damn (bad) or frome COAL!! go sip on another latte

[katakanadian]

Again, you display your ignorance. Improved efficiency can reduce our energy demands by more than 25% without 'sacrificing' anything. That is cheaper than paying for wasted energy and can be done almost immediately. Geothermal energy has tremendous potential to supply a large part of baseload energy. There are many other techniques and technologies which can contribute to a virtually carbon-free electric

grid.

I won't waste anymore time on you since you are so determined to remain stupid.

[want391]

@katakanadian one can not argue with ignorance

[kangphil]

It's videos like this we need to see more of, in order to raise awareness about this destructive project.

[universalradio]

I lived in Labrador when the Churchill Falls Power project was being built. The devastation there was incredible - and the beautiful Churchill Falls, higher than Niagara, and spectacular -- have been permanently shut off to a trickle. How does that affect the huge Churchill River? This concern over tarsands is rather hypocritical, considering the damage that hydro projects do, with no attention at all. James Bay, anyone?

[universalradio]

Our entire society is chained to fossil fuels. Stop that all of a sudden, and you'll have a major depression to deal with. No hospitals, for instance. No ambulances, no food trucked in.

Are you eating local food only? do you have a garden? Do you eat meat? Beef farming has one of the biggest, if not the biggest 'carbon footprints' known. Do you eat chicken? Do you know how many horses are slaughtered in Canada to be shipped to Europe as food? Thousands a day. Guess how much fuel they use.

[universalradio]

He's right. But - it will come to be that way; it's just not there yet. We will find other ways, they will figure out how to clean up the tarsands - people have no idea how huge our system has become, and how dependent on oil it is, and steel, and how many jobs are tied up in it as well. You can't just stop everything at once.

[universalradio]

Do you suggest just scrapping the tar sands? This is just the beginning - it's extremely important for North America to become energy self-sufficient - otherwise, we're going to still be in the ME, still getting oil from Saudi. We truck our food in, and fly it in from all over the world. What do you suggest as an alternative? It cannot be done right away - and it will be improved. Just trashing the whole thing is stupidity, your thinking is limited. Think about solutions.

[CanadianLeopardC2]

I think that's a great idea, but that's all Pie-In-The-Sky right now.  The Problem being is that, that kind of technology is so expensive, it's an unreasonable option.

Our carbon footprint is already small as it is. We, all of mankind, account for 1% of all carbon generated. The rest of it is all made by nature.

There are guidlines to the way they mine too. It's not as though they don't take into consideration of water supply, or enviro impact. It's not even much different to a city.