Canada

Tar sands investment and 'oil at any cost' threaten BP's future profitability

Posted by jossc — 3 February 2009 at 3:40pm - Comments

Alberta, Canada - contaminated water from tar sands oil production fills a 2 km wide 'tailings' pool

Alberta, Canada - contaminated water from tar sands oil production fills a 2 km wide 'tailings' pool © Greenpeace

Last month our Emerald Paintbrush award presented to BP highlighted how far the company, which previously styled itself as going 'beyond petroleum', has moved back to its traditional profit source at the expense of its alternative energy division, and most likely its long-term profitability.

Investors may have been patting themselves on the back yesterday as BP posted record profits for 2008, but they should be wary - a quick trawl through the figures reveals major flaws in the company's long term investment strategy. Massive profits during the first half of the year (when oil prices reached over $100 per barrel) were undermined by a collapse in the final quarter, when prices fell back to around $40 per barrel.

'Green' grocer caught red-handed with redlist fish

Posted by jossc — 7 November 2008 at 12:55pm - Comments

Loblaws: caught red-handed selling unsustainable 'red-list' fish

Greenpeace Canada exposed the country's largest grocery store chain's claims to be a 'green' grocer as false this week, after an investigation into how they source their seafood. Loblaws, whose stores account for nearly a third of all groceries sold in Canada, were found to be selling 14 of the 15 species on Greenpeace's 'Redlist' - made up of those species that are most destructively fished or farmed.

To get 'redlisted' a species must be in serious trouble, usually defined as facing a 90% reduction in numbers. Currently top of the Canadian list are Atlantic bluefin tuna, Atlantic cod, sharks, skate, shrimp and orange roughy - all of which are sold by Loblaws.

Smell the sulphur, taste the toxins

Posted by bex — 9 July 2008 at 12:00am - Comments

Canada's Tar Sands project has been suffering from a bit of a PR problem, what with it being one of the most ludicrous and environmentally catastrophic schemes ever to have occurred to humankind and all.

(If you haven't heard of it yet, the plan is to extract crude oil from bituminous sand and clay in Northern Alberta. To produce one barrel of oil, up to four tonnes of rock and soil - plus the pristine boreal forest on top of it - need to be removed and four barrels of surface and ground water need to be used. The process is so energy intensive that tar sands produce up to five times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil.)

At last some action on bottom trawling

Posted by jossc — 9 May 2008 at 4:05pm - Comments

Very few orange roughy and a lot of bycatch, including several seastars, urchins, and numerous unwanted fish, in the net of the New Zealand deep sea trawler Recovery II in international waters in the Tasman Sea.

Bottom trawling, possibly the most destructive fishing method yet devised by man, is to be regulated across the whole North Atlantic ocean. The process, which involves dragging nets weight down by metal girders across the seabed, is notorious for its wastefulness. Besides legitimate target species such as cod, plaice and sole, vast quantities of corals, sponges and other deep sea creatures are destroyed as bycatch. The devastation caused is so great that Greenpeace has been calling for some time for a moritorium (suspension of activity) on bottom trawling. Now it looks as though some progress may be being made.

Solving the oil crisis: "We need something like whales, but infinitely more abundant"

Posted by bex — 15 June 2007 at 3:47pm - Comments

Exxon's PR campaign (which seems to run along the lines of "we may fund climate change deniers and oppose Kyoto but we're quite nice really") suffered a slight setback yesterday, when 300 people from the oil industry apparently believed that Exxon's newest fossil fuel was made out of human flesh - belonging to the victims of climate change.

Enormous reserve protected from chainsaws in Canada

Posted by admin — 7 February 2006 at 9:00am - Comments

A grizzly bear swimming in the waters of Knight Inlet, British Columbia

It's rare that success comes on such a scale so this is one worth celebrating. The provincial government of British Columbia in Canada has announced the protection of 2 million hectares of ancient forest with strict ecological management for the rest.

Kimberly-Clark and Kleenex - wiping away the world's ancient forests

Posted by admin — 1 November 2005 at 9:00am - Comments

This forest has been clearcut to produce Kimberly Clark toilet and tissue paper products even though recycled alternatives exist

Kleenex, one of the most well known brands of tissue products in the world, is helping to destroy the world's remaining ancient forests.

Canadian book publishers set to go ancient forest friendly

Posted by admin — 3 November 2004 at 9:00am - Comments

FSC paper

When the Markets Initiative started, Canada's publishing houses were largely sourcing virgin wood pulp from Canadian forests, with a high percentage from ancient forests. No publishers were consistently printing on recycled paper, no printers stocked ancient forest friendly (recycled/FSC certified) papers, and no such paper was being produced as a standard book sheet.

Kyoto dead... Don't hold your breath!

Posted by bex — 5 January 2004 at 9:00am - Comments
international climate talks 2001

international climate talks 2001

The latest round of international discussions about global warming concluded in Milan, Italy on 12th December. Sadly, the UN Convention on Climate Change (COP9) again failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, prompting critics to write it off for the umpteenth time.

In the past ten years, it has been almost impossible to count the number of times that the Kyoto Protocol has been declared 'dead'.

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