Activists Drape Niagara Falls With Banner To Protest Tar-Sands Oil

[Hissyspit]

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-09-15-activists-drape-niagara-falls-with-banner-to-protest-tar-sands

Activists drape Niagara Falls with banner to protest tar-sands oil

POSTED 12:14 AM ON 15 SEP 2009
BY JOSHUA KAHN RUSSELL



Rainforest Action Network hangs a 70-foot banner in front of Niagara Falls, in protest of Canadian tar sands oil.

There’s a 70-foot banner and activists dangling over the observation tower at Niagara Falls. Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate advocates with the Rainforest Action Network rappelled hundreds of feet above the ground, to offer special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.

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During Harper’s first official trip to meet Obama in the U.S., the two leaders are expected to discuss climate change and energy policy ahead of the upcoming G-20 Summit. Canada supplies 19 percent of U.S. oil imports, more than half of which now come from the tar sands, making the region the largest single source of U.S. oil imports. The expansion of the tar sands will strip mine an area the size of Florida. Complete with skyrocketing rates of cancer (by 400%!) for First Nations communities living downstream, broken treaties, toxic belching lakes so large you can see them from outer space, churning up ancient boreal forest, destroyed air and water quality, the tar sands have been called the most destructive project on Earth.

Tomorrow’s visit to the U.S. by Prime Minister Harper is the latest attempt by Canadian federal and provincial officials to lock in subsidies for 22 new and expanded refinery projects and oil pipelines crisscrossing 28 states, which would transport and process the dirty tar sands oil. Many are concerned that Prime Minister Harper wants to protect the tar sands oil industry from climate regulation, even though it is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada.

“Climate change, one of the biggest security threats of our time, is something Canada and the United States face together. Extracting tar sands oil, which sends three times more climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than conventional oil, puts us all at risk,” said Eriel Deranger a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Rainforest Action Network’s Tar Sands Campaigner in Alberta.

As this oil spills into the U.S., communities living near oil refineries face increased air and water pollution, which contains 11 times more sulfur and nickel and five times more lead than conventional oil.

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[Make7]

1. Nice! ( n/t )

[polly7]

2. And this ...

Published on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 by Reuters
Shell Halts Mining as Activists Protest Oil Sands
CALGARY, Alberta - Royal Dutch Shell Plc has suspended production at its Canadian oil sands mine after environmental activists blockaded a massive dump truck and mining shovel to protest the impact of oil sands development, the company said on Tuesday.

Greenpeace activists place a banner and block a tar sands mining operation at the Shell Albian Sands outside of Fort McMurray, Alberta September 15, 2009. (REUTERS/Colin O'Connor/Greenpeace/Handout)Greenpeace said 25 of its activists locked down the oil sands mining equipment at the Albian Sands Muskeg River mine in northern Alberta on Tuesday morning, a day before Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper meets U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.

http://www.commondreams.org:80/headline/2009/09/15-10

[Oregone]

3. But don't worry. The US is pure and doesn't drill offshore oil

They just buy the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada. Out of sight, out of mind.


But really...don't fool yourself...where do you think that gas in your tank really comes from?