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The Despoiling of Alberta

Posted by: Michael Dudley

28 September 2005 - 2:00pm

Famous for its oil wealth and the "prosperity cheques" being handed out to every resident, the Canadian Province of Alberta is actually a classic example of rapacious growth, dangerously poor planning and poor performance on social development indicators.

"The Alberta Genuine Progress Indicator, just published by the Pembina Institute (a non-profit energy watchdog), says if that everyone spent their natural capital [as liberally as Alberta], 'five planets would be needed to meet global consumption demands.'

"The province has systemically looted one landscape after another. Forty years ago, Alberta's boreal forest was a wilderness; today, provincial records show that 90 per cent has been seriously fragmented by roads, well sites, seismic lines, pipelines and power lines, and looks like an industrial park. What isn't being drilled is being logged.

"In Drayton Valley, southwest of Edmonton, the government allows companies to build highly toxic sour-gas wells so close to people's homes that many Albertans live in what's known as 'emergency response zones' (in the event of a leak or accident, they would die or suffer permanent brain damage if not evacuated in time). There are as many as 52 such zones; to be located inside one devalues a home by an average of $6,000. But property devaluation is par for the course in Alberta."

Full Story: If Ralph's a friend, who needs enemies?
Source: The Globe and Mail, September 28, 2005
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