With Barrack Obama's upcoming decision that will most likely approve the Keystone XL pipeline, the expansion of Canada's man-made toxic hell will speed up.
In the last few weeks, on the heels of massive Chinese investments in the Tar Sands, there's been economic news out of Alberta calling for easier immigration rules for foreign workers into Canada's oil fields. Evidently, the oil companies wish to efficiently and profitably destroy the planet as fast as they can.
There's already armies of workers living in military camps (the same mobile apartments supplied to troops in Afghanistan) and, like an invasion on enemy land, workers are also flown in directly on-site.
Everyone clearly knows there's an end to the exploitation of the sands. In the meantime, it's a race against the clock to get as much profit as quickly as possible. It's a war against health, dignity and life. The costs are the ever-growing permanent destruction of a beautiful and essential area of the planet, and death.
Isn't this land owned by Canadian citizens and lent to the oil companies? Aren't they supposed to give it back 'as it was'? (Please don't talk to me about "reclamation" - or about journalists who have been to reclaimed sites without scratching the surface).
When did it become okay to ignore such death and devastation? In Fort Chipewyan they say they're under "industrial genocide". But no one's listening.
There are so many things to say about the Tar Sands; about how other solutions are possible, but outright ignored. About Canada's self-inflicted ongoing auto-colonialism. About the fact decisions permanently disabling our country are taken in Washington under the guise of "we are a friendly country": this may be a friendly invasion, but an invasion nevertheless. Funny what a pipeline can do. Let's just plug that oil down to Texas. Sad to see the men who stood on hope a few years ago, now stomp on it, or bury it once and for all, for oil.
When the Keystone pipeline gears up, it will accelerate the emptying of the Athabasca River (it's almost exhausted with all the water required to boil the oil out of the sands). With the Athabasca drained, will it provoke the tapping of other important water basins to supply exploitation? Will we have to build a pipeline for that also?
I find important to say that everyone I met in the Tar Sands area is quite a nice person. Many of them admitting to guilt about working in the oil industry, or acknowledging the palpable feeling of a collective culpability like a shared ailment that's best justified by family needs and a sense of replaceability: "one's got to feed their family" and "if I don't do it, someone else will".
Although we all can exert some degree of personal choice, the problem is systemic and it seems beyond human control in this tragic time where economic structures have grown into self-destructive global and political behaviors, where financial disasters only seem to supply excuses that accelerate human and ecological downfall. This construct is a deadly beast hungry for the flesh of our children and grandchildren. It is out of control.
Shrugging one's shoulders is not a very dignified response in front of the conceivable end of the human species. If man had to be named after extinction, they might call us the "shruggers". (They might find another name for woman; I don't think they're really as destructive or careless a species as men.)
I spent a dozen days in the Tar Sands in 2008; probably more than most Canadian media organizations combined that year. They usually fly in for a few hours, get the corporate or government tour, then fly out. Who can blame the journalists wanting to get out of hell? The purgatory of modern media is much cozier.
I don't know if you ever return from a visit to hell. I wish I could.
My thoughts are with all the people in and near this hell. Have no worries, we'll all be joining you soon enough.
