Canadas tar sands contain more than enough carbon, with the carbon outputs from coal and other fuels over the next several years, to push atmospheric CO2 back to levels that last occurred in the Pliocene era when the sea level was at least 50 feet higher than now. However, while tar sands are a particularly dirty, toxic and inefficient way to get oil, if we keep using fossil fuels at these levels from whatever source it will eventually amount to the same thing. Therefore keeping the Keystone XL Pipeline from being built is a necessary but not sufficient step. It is necessary to avoid giving the energy companies more motive to despoil the boreal forests and stripmine tar sands. As things are now, the price of tar sands crude is declining because of less access to markets: we should keep it that way. However, if we use more and more fossil fuels from whatever source, we will push the atmospheric CO2 back to Pliocene era levels regardless of where the fossil fuels come from. So the big picture is that we have to reduce fossil fuel consumption period. nytimes/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=1&
Posted on: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 15:09:13 +0000
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