Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Tar sands, oil sands or, more technically, bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Tar sands are found mainly in Canada, but also in parts of Utah, Russia, and Venezuela. Mining, processing, transporting, refining and burning of tar sands has massive impacts to ecosystems, air and water quality, indigenous and marginalized communities, the global climate, and requires significant energy to break it down and ship it to the world. The movement of multinational oil companies toward this thick, heavy unconventional and hard to refine crude signals desperation, and with its significant impact on global greenhouse gas levels, presents a major threat to the stability of the world climate. WilderUtopia has partnered with Tar Sands Action Southern California to stop this deadly product from reaching global oil markets and heating the climate beyond tipping points.
The most recent oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast that has decimated wildlife and soiled California beaches with tar over a 350-mile area has been an unmitigated disaster. It illustrates weaknesses in basic safety measures for pipelines and crude by rail, as well as risks associated with industry plans to expand tar sands and other extreme drilling infrastructure on the West Coast.
A short documentary warns about the dangers posed by trains that transport explosive crude oil across North America. These 100-plus car trains carry highly flammable Bakken shale and Alberta tar sands crude oil and have been an increasingly common—and lethal—sight across communities in the United States.
California communities are fighting back against the prospect of a 25-fold increase in the amount of crude-by-rail coming into the state soon. Ed Ruszel didn’t set out to be an environmental activist. Then Valero Energy announced a plan to bring 3 million gallons of tar sands crude—every day—within feet of his family business.
Join SoCal 350, Tar Sands Action SoCal, and WilderUtopia in Pasadena, January 22nd for a fundraiser screening of Above All Else, a documentary on the fight against the Keystone South. Reserve Tickets TODAY! We must sell at least 78 tickets by January 15th to make the event happen! TIX: https://www.tugg.com/events/12825
With the Keystone XL and Line 3 pipelines threatening to inundate the Earth with the dirtiest oil known to humanity, we survey a bird’s-eye view of the post-apocalyptic tar sands oil sacrifice zones in Alberta, Canada, by photographer Alex MacLean.
RESIST: The Unist’oten’s Call to the Land is one of two documentaries on a year-round resistance to exploitative industry, and what it represents in relation to indigenous sovereignty and the environmental, legal, and social issues surrounding pipeline projects in British Columbia.
A surge in rail transport has accounted for hundreds of thousands of gallons of spilled crude oil, more than the previous four decades combined. Ross Hammond from ForestEthics outlines five immediate actions for President Obama on train safety.