An Insensitive Comparison, and a Confession
A while ago I talked about my new Bodum Travel Press, which I was a big fan of.
As some of you may know, I have a job with a certain… privilege… to access certain floors of certain buildings owned by a certain well known organization. I won’t get specific.
However, this organization that I am affiliated with also comes down on the pro-Tarsands side of the coin, whereas I’m more of the… “maybe-guys-instead-of-destroying-the-planet-we-should-use-our-money-to-figure-out-how-to-use-alternative-and-cleaner-energy-solutions” type of guy.
I don’t have a problem with oil, per se, as the majority of things (in North America especially) are created from petroleum products… like Cool Whip, for example. But the Tarsands are really problematic for me as they’re trying to greenwash the fuck out of the whole project, even including big names from organizations like Greenpeace to do spots on television arguing that after the “Oilsands” (note the terminology) project is completed the area will be turned into a nature preserve.
Sound familiar?
Anyway, comparisons to literature aside, that’s not the comparison I’m trying to make. While I agree with Moore that Nuclear Power can be sustainable (and should be adopted for places still using coal and oil power… like the entirety of southern Ontario) and that hydroelectricity, forestry, and aquaculture can be sustainable, the sad fact is that the interests funding such industries are usually out to make a quick buck and Gee Tee Eff Oh while other organizations clean up in their wake.
The problem with the tarsands is not that we’re getting oil out of the ground. The problem is the process by which we have to extract the oil, and ship out what we get (something called Bitumen) to primarily the USA to refine into synthetic crude, which is then later refined into gasoline or whatever else we happen to need it for.
In order to extract the bitumen, we have to leave the waste product somewhere, and the result is a thick, gross, black discharge that is not only bad for the environment, but is just generally bad-news waste product.
Ladies and gentlemen, my coffee cup has a similar problem.
At the end of my coffee—or the oil that I need to power the motor in my brain in the morning—I need to dispose of the coarse grinds before I can fill ‘er up again. So naturally, taking a page from the oil sands, I dump out the thick, gross, black discharge of coffee grinds into a nearby sink at work, usually fitted with an inappropriate screen over the sink so that most of my grinds go down the drain, sure, but the coarser chunks are trapped in the sink for some poor worker to extract later on and (I assume) dispose of appropriately.
Anyway, I’m not sorry for doing it, and I’ll continue doing it as long as I bloody well please, because after all, that’s how Conservative politics work.