Mayors Stand Up to Big Oil

U.S. Mayors Resolve to Avoid Burning Tar Sands Oil

MIAMI, Florida, June 28, 2008 (ENS) - The U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Miami this week adopted a resolution aimed at avoiding the use of high carbon fuels such as tar sands, liquid coal, and oil shale. The resolution encourages fuel analyses that include emissions from production, not just from burning the fuel.

The resolution calls for the creation of guidelines and purchasing standards to help mayors understand the greenhouse gas emissions of the fuels they purchase through their entire lifecycle from production through consumption.

“We don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on fuels that make global warming worse,” said Mayor Kitty Piercy, of Eugene, Oregon, who submitted the resolution.

Green Groups try to Counter Premier’s Tar Sands PR

Environmental Groups Reach Out to Governors on Truth of Canada’s Dirty Tar
Ad targets global warming emissions, toxic tailings lakes

(Toronto, ON; Washington, DC) One week after U.S. mayors expressed concern about the environmental impacts of the tar sands, U.S. and Canadian organizations are reaching out to Governors to debunk the green tar sands spin coming from Canada at the Western Governors’ Association meeting in Wyoming which starts tomorrow and runs until July 1. The groups are asking Premier Ed Stelmach of Alberta and Premier Brad Wall of Saskatchewan, who will also be at the meeting, for action to clean up the tar sands.

“The meeting is focusing on the themes of global warming and wildlife corridors,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Governors need to know that the tar sands are Canada’s fastest growing source of global warming pollution and that the tar sands toxic tailings ponds are right in the migration corridor of many of North America’s birds.”

Oil disquiet on the Western front

North American media, Andrew Nikiforuk says, take for granted how much oil undermines democracy, powers our food system, feeds our drug-addled medical industry and concentrates our cities like bovine feedlots

ANDREW NIKIFORUK

June 28, 2008

Oil has fantastic powers: Like the genie from One Thousand and One Nights, it can grant impossible political wishes both fair and foul. This is why the U.S. oil baron John D. Rockefeller once, in a moment of reflection, called oil “the Devil’s tears,” and why Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, in a moment of exasperation, wished that Saudi Arabia had discovered water, and why the late Venezuelan writer Jose Ignacio Cabrujas, in a moment of subversion, wrote that oil can create “a culture of miracles” that erases memory.

Canadians, the newly minted inhabitants of “an emerging energy superpower,” now stand at the gas pumps cursing the price of oil and the prospect of shortened summer vacations. Yet they forget that many of our ancestors agonized about the price of slaves only 200 years ago. We too complained bitterly about the cost of feeding indentured labour, and dismissed the ugly rhetoric of abolitionists as offensive.

CTV on Greenpeace Mock Tar Sands Travel Site

http://watch.ctv.ca/news/latest/greenpeace-targets-alberta/#clip63311

Ad mockingly invites U.S. governors to watch Alta. ‘dirty oil’ destroy forests

23 hours ago

EDMONTON — A Washington-based coalition of environmental groups is taking another tongue-in-cheek shot at the Alberta government with a newspaper ad targeting oilsands development.

The ad from the Natural Resources Defence Council features a faux postcard from Premier Ed Stelmach inviting western U.S. governors - who begin meetings Sunday with western premiers in Jackson Hole, Wyo. - to hold their next get-together near the tarsands.

“We can watch as pristine boreal forests and wetlands are destroyed to produce some of the dirtiest oil,” reads the postcard, which sits atop two vacation-style snapshots of an open-pit mine and an oil plant spewing smoke.

“Sunsets over the giant toxic waste lagoons are spectacular - just hope the ducks don’t land as they fly over looking for a place to nest!”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: destruction, environment, global warming, governors, jackson hole, oil sands, premier, stelmach, suncor, tar sands, wyoming | No Comments »