Nerdy anti-energy activists of the world, unite! Thanks to a (crude) new video game created by some outfit calling itself the Polaris Institute, those with an animating passion for defaming secure and affordable energy resources from Canada (and avoiding all contact with girls) now have quite a forum to do it.
The only problem? Instead of engaging in a fact-based discussion on the economic and environmental record of the oil sands, guess what these folks decided to do instead? Create a video game that depicts themselves shooting oil in the faces of those with whom they disagree. The worst part of all? The game, candidly, sucks. Think Oregon Trail from 1984 without the “fording the river” part and getting rid of all those cool hunting sequences.
Anyway, the larger point here is that these groups seem to think that the safe and responsible development of the Canadian oil sands is single-handedly ruining the natural world. Never mind that carbon emissions from the sands account for 0.1 percent – 1/100th — of emissions worldwide. Or that of the 3.2 million square kilometers that constitutes the Boreal Forest in Canada, only 4,802 of them have actually been set aside for shale development – and the vast majority of those have yet to even be touched! And never mind that provincial and federal laws mandate that this land be fully reclaimed.
Nah, never mind all that – silly to let facts and figures get in the way of a video game. But just so you have the economic numbers handy, according to a recent CERI study, energy produced from the oil sands could someday contribute more than $780 billion to Canada’s GDP – all while creating jobs right here in America, and ensuring that American energy consumers continue to have steady access to safe, secure and affordable energy from our most important allies in the world.
The only thing that’s positioning itself to stand in the way of that future? The Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), naturally. And while it may be a policy that basement-dwellers like the Polaris Institute can get behind, for the rest of us, we’d be a lot better off if it never sees the light.
