Monday morning reading

For a Monday morning, there's a surprising amount of interesting Alberta-related news items in today's dailies:

• The Globe and Mail has a really interesting run-down of Imperial Oil's Kearl project , the challenges it faces and the risks it poses to Alberta's environment. The latest news is, that - in light of a federal court ruling, which nulled the decision of a joint federal-Alberta government environmental review panel to approve the Kearl project earlier this month -  the federal fisheries department has also decided to revoke the project's water permit. This means that the land set aside for the project - a strip mine that would cover an area of undisturbed Boreal forest bog the size of 20 000 football fields - cannot begin to be prepped for mining.  The article provides an overview of one of the most controversial oilsands projects in recent memory, so I highly recommend reading it. UPDATE: Imperial Oil plans to appeal the government's decision to revoke their water license.
  

• The Edmonton Journal has an interesting front-page feature on the future of high-speed rail in Alberta. The article highlights potential time-frames and some obstacles to and opportunities for the rail link's construction.  One of the key barriers outlined by the article is securing the land necessary from farmers and rural landowners. As I have argued before, high speed rail provide an important opportunity for Alberta to begin to off-set our embarrassing track-record on greenhouse gas emissions. Stelmach going on the record in support of high-speed rail was one of the few things he's done that I applaud, and his ability to move this project forward could demonstrate that he's able to think beyond the immediate future, something we have yet to see.

• The Calgary Herald has a story revealing that, Stephen Harper (i.e. the man with the climate change plan that puts Alberta's to shame), has continually ignored warnings from the Canadian government's top scientists that Canada faces climate disaster if it continues on its course of blocking international progress on climate change. Sadly, this revelation is so unsurprising, I'm surprised it made the papers at all.

• Finally, this is a bit late, but better late then never. This story provides yet another reason to forget Ralph Klein was premier of this province for 14 years. (Check out his Wikipedia page if you need any others). Klein was awarded the French equivalent of the Order of Canada and these remarks are are the best he could come up with? France shares in some of the embarrassment too. I mean, seriously France, you couldn't think of anyone better to award your highest honor?

Comments

[Kyle]

High Speed Rail will only help GHG emissions if the electricity for it comes from a source other than Alberta's plentiful coal power plants.