exacerbate global warming. Being such an 'unconventional' and 'unique' oil (aka: dirty oil), the tar sands emit three to five times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. A recent study by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center revealed that the tar sands project has higher emissions than 97 nations combined.
This is not a sustainable project and the Canadian government is merely turning a blind eye to the consequences its actions. Sadly, the US is the largest consumer of the tar sands oil as 60% of tar sands oil is sent to the US.
The U.S. Department of State is currently going through the permitting process for the latest and largest tar sands pipeline. TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline would move up to 900,000 barrels of tar sands oil daily from Alberta, Canada to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast, traversing 2,000 miles through rivers, farmland and forests from Montana to Texas. Unless we stop it, this pipeline would effectively open the entire U.S. market and international markets to this environmentally damaging and costly high-carbon fuel.
|A cherished home to many indigenous peoples is turning into Big Oil's toxic playground. |
What has this done to the local First Nations communities in Canada? With all boom & bust situations like this, local communities are hit hard with social ills from the sudden influx of miners and workers inundating the area. The tar sands are no different. Alberta has the highest school dropout and divorce rates in Canada. Sadly, Alberta women suffer the highest level of spousal abuse in Canada. Drug use has also risen exponentially since before the project began. It should come as no surprise that the local First Nations who survive on subsistence living are now experiencing overwhelming rates of rare cancers and various illnesses.
The social ills, cultural consequences and environmental impacts are having an irreparable effect on the land and the indigenous way of life. The tar sands project is a living curse that grows larger and larger every day.
This project has changed their entire way of life. And they are fighting back.
You can read the rest of the blog and take action to support the First Nations peoples in their fight against the most destructive project on the planet here.
African-American landowners grow networks and longleaf pines!
by Amadou Diop, NWF's Southern Forest Restoration Manager in Atlanta, GA
On Saturday March 26, 2011, NWF hosted a landowners' workshop and field day in southwest Georgia. "Field days" are a common way to share what farming strategies have been working on the land. A typical gathering place for minority landowners in the deep south is at one of the rural community churches, in this case the St. Paul AME Church in Jakin, GA.
|Amadou Diop (pictured in yellow shirt) speaks with rural landowners about opportunities around integrating longleaf pine restoration into their farming practices. |
African-American landowners still control a significant portion of the land in the southeast (more than in any other part of the US), but most of them have not yet been able to fully benefit from their land-based assets. Minority and other underserved rural landowners typically lack the knowledge to manage their forests and market the products and services that derive from them. This is in part due to their limited access to available public and private resources.
This event was an attempt to address these challenges by informing landowners about opportunities around longleaf pine restoration, available programs and services, and connecting them with the resource providers. For many participants, this was the first time they heard about longleaf pine and the available cost-share programs for restoration through Natural Resources Conservation Service and Farm Service Agency.
The church meeting room was filled with over a hundred landowners from three states. Jakin is at the apex of where southwest GA, southeast AL and the FLA Panhandle come together. It is also just a few miles from the Apalachicola River, one of the most biologically divers