In Canada, and in some parts of the United States, newly minted engineers received an iron ring to wear on the pinky of their working hand. The was, by tradition a replica made of rings made from an iron beam from a Quebec bridge construction site that collapsed killing a number of workmen. The implication was to remind engineers as they progressed in their careers to be ever careful that their works not cause harm. The McGill Law School in Montreal has a motto over the entrance "Audite Alteram Partem", simply asking their aspiring attorneys to listen to the other side and the Hippocratic oath clearly states that all doctors should "Above all cause no additional damage". Those codes of professional ethics are based on experience from life ending mistakes. As we move further into our century and see that we have and are damaging this planet in serious ways, we should remind ourselves that we, the people, need to renew those vows.
As Suncor says, we must educate ourselves about some of the real dangers that we are facing. We must educate ourselves not to defend our positions but to see if maybe the other side has a point. When in doubt abstain and the Tar Sands are an area where legitimate concerns have been expressed and legitimate solutions have been proposed. These range from advanced monitoring systems to reinforced piping, shorter runs and immediate cutoff systems at the least hint of trouble.
I have no illusions that my silly little biodiesel facilities will turn the tide, we build 10 million gallon units at a time, and we are also under constant attack for starving the world. But we try to hear the concerns and offer less damaging solutions. In my world I can offer biodiesel plants that process waste water sludge, rendered animal fats, waste vegetable oils, algae, weeds like camelina, penny cress in Alberta, tobacco plants and even, according to an extensive study that I would gladly share, the vast fields of poppy seeds in Afghanistan. We are trying to push the boundaries of what is possible beyond the simple solutions of other industries.
We have discovered that if you bubble CO2 from power plants through cooling ponds, the pond scum becomes saturated with oils that and can produce biodiesel.
I have no illusions that my silly little biodiesel facilities will turn the tide, we build 10 million gallon units at a time, and we are also under constant attack for starving the world. But we try to hear the concerns and offer less damaging solutions. In my world I can offer biodiesel plants that process waste water sludge, rendered animal fats, waste vegetable oils, algae, weeds like camelina, penny cress in Alberta, tobacco plants and even, according to an extensive study that I would gladly share, the vast fields of poppy seeds in Afghanistan. We are trying to push the boundaries of what is possible beyond the simple solutions of other industries.
We have discovered that if you bubble CO2 from power plants through cooling ponds, the pond scum becomes saturated with oils that and can produce biodiesel.
We have also come up against some vicious vested interests that will do anything to protect their turf. In the US the legislation on biodiesel is complex and changes on an almost daily basis. Funding is promised and then blocked. In Canada vast amounts of promised grants, loan guarantees and support disappear and money flows towards specific areas.
Imagine clean burning port infrastructures with all the cranes, lifters, even the ships that now use bunker fuel, as toxic as the tar sands idling to keep their systems going, imagine the ferries in BC, San Francisco and LA running on 50% biodiesel mix. It becomes a possibility if we could divert some of the billions going into mega projects like the tar sands into millions into a biofuel infrastructure. But that will not happen until we realize that there are people whose sole concern is the dollar they can make.
There are places in the world where economic necessities require building and using older and more polluting technologies, I can accept that. But those places do not include Canada where their strip mining will cover an area as big as Holland, those areas do not include China, one of the richest countries in the world and still installing coal fired electricity generating facilities when they could just as easily install nuclear power plants. In areas, industries and groups where they have the technology, the resources and the will to build systems that do not poison our air, our soil and our minds and yet they persist in doing so for whatever venal reasons, those people, companies and government are committing crimes against humanity. Where a simple law would alter the course of planetary degradation, not passing that law is a dereliction of a sworn duty and should be punished.
I am ashamed to say that my country is the second worst offender in the policy of buy what you cannot legislate. In case after case, the lobbyists are destroying our way of life, our environment, our very ethics. They provide false and misleading information that no science supports, they have dumbed down our debate to the point that a Sarah Palin can run for Vice President of the largest economy in the world. They have started wars and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people for what are basically oil interests. I will add with the tacit approval of other nations like Canada, the UK and others.
Yet, behind those atrocities lie good people who, if confronted with these accusations, will honestly say that they in no way support those goals. That their peculiar industry is not responsible for a Nigerian genocide or a life altering oil spill. In many ways they are right because very seldom can you point at one person and say you did this and you should pay. To me that is the reflection of the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the right to act and be treated like people. BP has the right under numerous laws that used to apply to citizens, not to answer questions about the full extent of their depredations in court, the Koch brothers have the right to lie about their activities.
When supposedly intelligent people like Bachmann are listened to as seriously as Nobel Peace Prize, winners then you realize that there is a serious flaw in our psyche. Idiots who nitpick discussions like the Sandy Hook pundits debating whether the gun used to assassinate those children was an automatic or semi automatic completely miss the point that children should not be used as targets. The issues are no longer semantic discussions over nomenclature; the issues are the survival of the planet. We have seen species destroyed because just a few things were altered. I am not talking about the carrier pigeon here where we deliberately went out and massacred every last one of them, but sea animals, insects, large furry beasts and small rodents gone because we took away their food or raised the temperature of their habitat.
The Calaveras County gold rush is an interesting area, the mines are still there, the Thompson water cannons can still be seen, but the damage to the area is also still visible many years after the gold diggers left. The coal hills of West Virginia, the slag heaps in Wales and around Marcinelle in Belgium are also still there so many years after the first blood sucking tycoons walked away to plunder other areas.
I can imagine that many years from now our grandchildren will shake their heads and say what were they thinking? Much as I do when visiting the battlefields of WWI. Why have we deliberately systematically done exactly the opposite of what could be a life enhancing moment in the history of mankind? We have the technology, we can rebuild this planet in a way that will not ensure our ultimate destruction and yet so many Neanderthals still insist that the ways of the past are still the only ways into the future and all they can offer are idiotic statement that whatever you propose is equally damaging and our need for money and jobs supplants the need for Nigerians to breathe.
So please build that pipeline as economically as possible, we should not in any way impede the path to destruction. I suggest using plastic hoses, they are cheap and will not deteriorate over the years. According to a recent Harris poll conducted by the oil industry 83% of the US population are in favor of this. That almost exactly corresponds to the number of people who supported George Bush's attack on Iraq. Because when dealing with stupidity of such massive scale fed by millions of dollars or PR and the wonderful situation of the Athabasca River so far away from prying eyes and the reality of what is being done, you can get away with almost any crime. It is an absolutely carbon copy of the Niger Delta and Canada is no different than that corrupt and oil sodden country. Companies like Suncor, Esso/Imperial, BP and others will never stand up in court to answer for their crimes against humanity and the world just like Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice are immune from prosecution because whole countries and erudite and educated people stood beside them when the crime was committed.
