A New Generation of Dirty Fossil Fuels Muddies the Water
North America is at an energy crossroads. As the days of cheap, free-flowing oil draw to a close, and the specter of climate change looms, "alternative" fuels have become the latest buzzword. But the search for new sources of energy could take a damaging turn, and put some of the continent's last wild places at risk -- while doing nothing to solve global warming. The environmental costs of extracting these dirty fuels would be alarmingly high, and financial support of what are likely to be technologies with a brief shelf-life would be risky for investors and a burden on taxpayers.
Promoters of so-called "unconventional" fuels are making a desperate bid to mine the last vestiges of polluting fossil fuels out of the ground, a process that would mean exploiting wilderness areas from the American Southwest to the Canadian North. A June 2007 report by NRDC, Western Resource Advocates and the Pembina Institute addresses the risks of going down this path. In Driving It Home: Choosing the Right Path for Fueling North America's Transportation Future, the authors clarify the tradeoffs and highlight some of the many wild places at risk of being turned into mines and drill sites to fuel America's gas tanks.
Wild Landscapes at Risk
For example, tar sands In Alberta's boreal forest contain crude bitumen from which oil can be produced. Industry is already ripping up millions of acres of dense green boreal forest to extract tar sands, creating open pit mines, road networks and pipelines.
In the Green River Basin of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, industry is eyeing beds of oil shale, a sedimentary rock that can be transformed into liquid petroleum by superheating. Mining oil shale would suck much-needed water out of the land, hurt wildlife and create air pollution that could cause asthma and emphysema. And liquid coal development from Appalachia to the Midwest and West -- which is being touted by the coal industry as a clean-fuel solution despite the fact that coal is the highest-carbon fossil fuel in existence -- could devastate the scenic beauty of natural areas across the country and bring additional water and air pollution.
The environmental costs of extracting these dirty fuels would be alarmingly high, and financial support of what are likely to be technologies with a brief shelf-life would be risky for investors and a burden on taxpayers. At this important crossroads, says the report, the smart choice is to throw our technological weight behind the rapid development of clean, efficient alternative fuels for our cars and trucks.
Photo: David Dodge, The Pembina Institute, www.oilsandswatch.org