Alberta Oil Sands Pioneer Says Environmental Problems Must be a Priority

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Former Imperial Oil scientist, Clement Bowman is one of the chemical engineers who helped unlock the commercial potential of Canada’s oil sands and he’s now saying that the Canadian government must urgently take the necessary steps to clean up the huge environmental impacts of the oil sandsย projects.

Unless they’re solved, a number of us feel the oil sands have almost hit a wall,โ€ saysย Brown.

The Canadian Oil Sands projects, located mainly in the Northern region of the province of Alberta, have major negative impacts on the environment, including:

  • Oil Sands operations could eventually cover 149,000 square kilometers of pristine forest – that’s an area roughly the size ofย Florida.
  • Each day the oil sands use 600 million cubic feet of natural gas to, in effect, melt the tarry sludge into a usable form – that’s enough natural gas to heat more than 3 million Canadianย homes.
  • Producing a barrel of oil from the tar sands produces three times more greenhouse gas than a barrel of conventionalย oil.
  • Oil sands operations use about the same amount of freshwater in a year that the entire City of Calgary uses (population 1 million) – 90% of this freshwater ends up in toxic tailingย ponds.
  • Toxic tailing ponds already cover more than 50 square kilometers and are considered to be one of largest man-made structures in theย world.

This all coming at the same time that the Alberta Government has launched a $25 million PR offensive to dispel the โ€œmythsโ€ surrounding the environmental impacts the Alberta Oil Sands are having on ourย planet.

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Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a โ€œGreen Heroโ€ by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the โ€œTop 50 Tweetersโ€ on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevinโ€™s research into the โ€œclimate denial industryโ€ and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Kochโ€™s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea partyย networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a โ€œCertified Expertโ€ on theย political and community organizing platformย NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the worldโ€™s best e-Content and innovative ICTย applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.

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