Tanker Bans and Tasty Tar Sands

As discussions on the fate of the climate stutter into their second day in Cancún, an unconventional delegation met in Ottawa today to demand stronger protection of the marine environment. The group of First Nations, fishermen, tourism operators, and environmental advocates called on the federal government to ban oil tankers from Canada's Pacific North Coast. The delegation was brought together by shared concerns over Enbridge Inc's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would see 500,000 barrels per day of toxic bitumen flowing from Alberta's Tar Sands through Kitimat and onto Asia-bound oil tankers (click here for a map of the proposed tanker route).


Last week an internal audit revealed that the Canadian Coast Guard, an agency that would play a key role in responding to oil spills in Canad's Pacific waters, is ill equipped to deal with such disasters. The audit concluded that the Coast Guard lacks a national training strategy and relies on aging equipment (a reference to the fleet, perhaps?).
In not-entirely unrelated news, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers recently pulled advertisements that described Albert's Tar Sands as being "essentially like yogurt." The decision to pull the ads followed  a complaint to Advertising Standards Canada by the Sierra Club, who apparently thought the comparison was misleading.