the bushmilhousegang and open pit mining

http://www.enn.com/aff.html?id=1109


Bush Administration Ignores Global Warming In Proposal To Open Vast Areas To Open Pit Mining For Low Quality Fossil Fuels


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"The proposal to open huge areas of public land in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming to tar sands and oil shale development would create vast quantities of new greenhouse gas pollution and destroy biologically and recreationally important areas," said Kassie Siegel, Climate, Air and Energy Program Director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "It is scandalous that that the Bush administration is attempting to omit global warming from the list of issues under consideration."

The development of oil shale and tar sands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming was fast-tracked by the Oil Shale, Tar Sands, and Other Strategic Unconventional Fuels Act of 2005 (Section 369(d)(2) of the Energy Policy Act of 2005), which requires the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the agency charged with management of the public lands affected, to complete a draft environmental impact statement within 18 months and a final regulation establishing a leasing program for tar sands and oil shale within six months thereafter. The law does not require that the leasing program include any particular area or amount of land or resources.

Oil production from tar sands and oil shale involves open pit mining over large areas and is one of the most environmentally destructive forms of energy production in existence today. The areas proposed for oil shale development in the Piceance and Washakie Basins in Colorado, the Uintah Basin in Utah, and the Green River and Washakie Basins in Wyoming, and the areas proposed for tar sands development on the Colorado Plateau in Utah are biologically-rich and diverse areas with extraordinary wilderness and recreation value. Endangered, threatened and rare species in the planning area include the bald eagle, the Colorado pike minnow, the boreal toad, and plants including the Dudley Bluffs bladderpod and twinpod and the parachute beardtongue. Numerous wilderness study areas and "Areas of Critical Environmental Concern" also occur in the planning areas.

After open-pit strip mining, extraction of low-quality crude oil from oil shale and tar sands requires extraordinary amounts of energy, heat and water, resulting in further impacts to water quality and supply as well as extra energy use and air pollution. Because of this resource-intensive process, the greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands production are three times that of conventional oil production. Oil shale production, which is still largely experimental, may be even more energy intensive.
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who cares! this will fill their pockets with money, money, money

fuck the environment

They bet big-time on oil from tar sand, but it turns out to be so expensive to extract that they can't make any money selling it. They still import oil because the tar sand stuff is too expensive...they can buy elsewhere much cheaper. They sell their shit on different markets.

All this, btw, according to an NPR story I heard about a week or two ago. I hope I am remember it all correctly.

"Prosperity will mean little if we leave to future generations a world of polluted air, toxic lakes and rivers, and vanished forests." - George W. Bush, April 3, 2000

What a goddamned liar we have for president.