Continuing to sound like a hog at the trough, Ralph Klein has told the Pembina institute to "keep their noses out of anyone's business, especially businesses that want to take risks" for calling for a moratorium on oilsands development until a plan to protect the Alberta's boreal forest a is developed. Unfortunately for Ralphie, when business's "risk taking" involves massive environmental harm, it is everyone's business.
Here are 9 reasons why Ralph Klein should look beyond his own nose before lashing out at anyone daring to suggest that his policies on oilsands development could use some improvement.
1. 141,000 square kilometres or 21 per cent of Alberta is up for grabs by the oilsands industry
2. Oilsands companies use 20 billion litres of groundwater a year to get the bitumen out of the ground and process it. They are licensed to use 75 billion litres a year.
3. For perspective, the total authorized water diversions for from the Athabasca River alone stands at 359 million litres - twice the volume used by Calgary in an single year.
4. Water used for oil sands becomes polluted and cannot be returned to the river system.
5. Royalties to Albertans for a barrel of oilsands oil has dropped from $2.90 per barrel in 1997 to just $1.70 per barrel in 2005. While the market value of oil has tripled, the value realized by tax payers has dropped by 39 per cent.
6. 84 per cent of Albertans support a public review of the royalty structure.
7. 91 per cent of Albertans believe protecting the environment is important, even if this means oilsands development unfolds more slowly.
8. Global warming. In addition to the impact of the oil itself, for every barrel recovered, enough gas is burned to heat a home for four days.
9. He sounds like a progressively bigger jackass every time he opens his mouth.
Are people getting value from the oilsands? Definitely, but who are those people? The extent to which that value goes to American owned oil companies and Albertans are stuck with the environment damage is the measure of Klein's failure. So far, Albertan's are not looking too good in that equation.