Hey Ed, Put Up or Shut Up!

If Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach wants to protect his supposed, Tar Sands bonanza, he knows just how to do it. In fact, he keeps telling us he wants to do it. The problem is, we've been waiting for years for any sign that Special Ed or his predecessors will or even can do it.

The "It" is carbon sequestration. Alberta produces the dirtiest oil on the planet but whenever anyone points that out, Ed tells us what his employers, Big Oil, have been prattling on about for years - the answer is to take all that carbon output and sink it deep underground where it can do no harm to man or any other lifeform.

Ed's even put up two billion petrobucks to fund a sequestration initiative, or so he says. He wants you to take his word for all of this. Just don't ask Ed or Big Oil to lift the veil so that we can see the awesome results of their efforts. That would be rude, wouldn't it?

The Alberta Tories are possibly even more indentured to Big Oil than the gang of squatters that currently occupy the White House. If it wasn't for this windfall of unearned, subterranean treasure, the province might actually have to live off the labours of its own people. In today's Alberta that must seem a thoroughly scary prospect indeed.

But TWO BILLION DOLLARS for carbon sequestration, that's pretty impressive, rien? Hardly. The Americans recently scrapped their own sequestration trial after many years and countless bags of treasury doubloons because they couldn't make it work. In fact, the technology has been or is being attempted elsewhere but... that's where these alchemist's tails always end, "but."

The science and technology is much too complex for the likes of you and me to really comprehend which explains why the Eds of this world use such childlike language when they speak to us of these things. But you don't really need to understand coal seam geology to sort your way through this anymore than you need to know what makes the canary fall of its perch and die in the mine.

Here's the dead parrot for carbon sequestration claims. In fact you've got a flock of dead parrots, all of them lying at your feet.

The ever popular Norwegian Blue. If Special Ed really believed that the miracle of carbon sequestration was in his hands, why would he bridle at the first suggestion of capping carbon emissions?

The Reunion Ring-Neck. Taking Ed at his word, why are his projections for Alberta's carbon emissions so high as to render futile Our Furious Leader Harpo's "50 by 2050" commitment completely unobtainable?

The African Grey. If this vaunted carbon sequestration technology that Big Oil has been hailing for so many years existed, where the hell is it? They've been promising this FOR YEARS but never allowing us so much as a peek at anything resembling a practical, carbon sequestration system.

My favourite, the Bismark's Hanging Parrot. Ignoring the Blue and the Grey (and that pesky Ring-Neck) altogether, why are the Petro-Morlocks so stubborn about timelines for their eco-salvation technology? Could it be they don't want us to know that, even if they could turn lead into gold, it would take two decades, possibly more to refine and deploy the technology?

The Scaly-headed Pionus. If Big Oil and its legislative henchmen can perfect carbon sequestration, why are they doing so precious little about the other environmental ills associated with the Tar Sands? Why are those oily tailing ponds now visible from space? How about Fort Chipewyan downriver and its strange cancer rates? How about the other aspects of land, air and water pollution? What about the inordinate strain on the region's fresh water and natural gas resources?

You see, everywhere you look it's the same thing - dead parrots. That's got to tell you something.