Oil sands exports and oil spills

If Canada’s west coast becomes the gateway for oil sands exports to Asia, one undeniable risk is oil spills. These could occur along pipelines, as occurred recently in Alberta, or in the event that oil tankers run into difficulties.

With luck, the legitimate concern that oil exporting activities could contaminate the beautiful landscape of British Columbia could help to reduce the chances of B.C. becoming Alberta’s partner in digging up and selling some of the world’s most dangerous fuel.

Given that the Alberta government is dead-set on continuing to expand oil sands exports, it may fall to more responsible jurisdictions around that province to cut off access to markets.

One thought on “Oil sands exports and oil spills

  1. Adrian

    While this link – http://greenpolicyprof.org/wordpress/?p=615 – gives me hope that BC will remain a jurisdictional leader in North America on climate change, it does not cover how the pipeline will be addressed under the Christy Clark government.

    The BC NDP at least is clear in its opposition to the pipeline. However, they have also stood against several measures that would unintentionally been beneficial to the climate, most notably extending the HST to home heating fuels – a federal/provincial government move, which is necessarily unintentionally a good move because nothing the federal Conservatives do is designed intentionally to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    In the end, I still don’t know who will be a better government on climate.

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