On Friday, almost the entire country is under an Environment Canada air quality warning as wildfires continue to rage across the Prairies.
As world leaders prepare to gather in Alberta in Kananaskis for the G7 summit next week, some activist groups across Canada say they are planning protests. The Group of G7 is consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
But as of Saturday afternoon, there were 59 fires burning in the province, with 23 of them classified as out of control. Since mid-May more than 580,000 hectares have burned in Alberta so far. A wildfire burning in northern Alberta is not only threatening the homes of hundreds of residents in various communities, but also major oil and gas companies with operations in the area.
Security officials at the G7 leaders summit in Kananaskis say plans are in place, including the possibility of evacuations, if wildfires become a serious threat. Kananaskis, located at the foothills and front ranges of the Rocky Mountains. Its western edge borders Banff National Park and the Alberta-B.C. boundary.
More than 30,000 people in the prairies have been forced to leave their homes due to the numerous fires that have broken out in recent days.
According to government data, the fires are caused by campfires of humans. But, several environmental groups are denouncing the oil companies’ practices of extracting tar sands.
In fact, Alberta’s oil companies have been draining the prairies for decades. Despite promises from industry and government to reduce water use in oil sands operations and restore wetlands that have been mined to a depth of more than 200 meters, the delta’s ecosystem of the Athabasca River declined. It will become irreversible if oil companies actually triple their production in Alberta, as they have announced, by 2030.
Extracting oil from the tar sands requires enormous quantities of water. For every barrel of oil produced, at least 2.6 barrels of water must be extracted from the Athabasca River or local groundwater. For so-called “in situ” operations, which use steam to separate the oil from the sand underground and then pump the bitumen to the surface, freshwater consumption is less, but still significant.
The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) forecasts that production of crude bitumen—the thick, sticky oil found in Alberta’s oil sands region—will reach four million barrels per day in 2033, up from 3.4 million barrels per day last year.
If we do the math, that’s more or less 10 million barrels of freshwater water per day being pumped to produce the petrolium.
The quiet killing of the Canadian giantess forests and its various animal species is the urgent reminder for the Canadian population to push the climate change agenda.
During the G7 summit, environmentalists, anti-imperialist coalitions and Indigenous advocates, among many other groups most raise their voices. They must demand that Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime minister, legislate quickly to stop the devastation of the canadian forest even at the risk of displeasing some governments in Western Canada. (Pressenza, Montreal)
