A Commentary by Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper
If the United States won’t take the raw crap mined from Canada’s tar sands, China will.
Chinese wade through our out-sourced industrial air pollution. Let them have the tar sands too.
This has been the line from the Tar Sands Government of Stephen Harper for more than a year now as U.S. President Barack Obama stalls a decision on constructing a Keystone pipeline that would ooze some of the world’s filthiest crude through America’s heartland, from Alberta’s tar sands abomination to refineries in Texas.
And let’s just hope, for the sake of North America’s environment, and for a U.S. president who claimed so eloquently in a speech last year to be concerned about climate change, that Obama shows the courage and vision for our collective future to say ‘no’ to the Keystone pipe. If Harper and the climate change deniers in his government then turns around and sells this dirty goo to China, let them – since China has a record of not giving a damn about environmental protection anyway.The dictators running China view any kind of voice for environmental protection with such brutal disdain, that environmentalists in that country have been branded enemies of the state and have gone to jail for speaking out. The result is that over the past number of weeks, for example, the air has been so foiled in China, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, that people in that country are walking around wearing filter masks over their nose.
Yet they reportedly do so with little complaint (for fear of being arrested as enemies of the state), even while international groups like the World Health Organization call the air quality a “crisis” and the U.S. embassy in Beijing ranked the air as “hazardous.” Indeed, a few brave Chinese scientists have reportedly called the air in parts of that country “barely suitable” for life.
Just the same, China’s dictators don’t appear to hardly give a about the air quality and the toll it must be taking on the health of their own people – not unless, of course, they are hosting something international like the Olympics, in which case they briefly shut down polluting industries a few years back to make the air a little more clean.
Who needs another TiananmenSquare Massacre when you’ve got this?
Other than that, a tar sands pact involving China’s government and the Tar Sands government of Stephen Harper, which has equal contempt for environmentalists, seems like a perfect match made in hell.
Bring it on, Mr. Harper. Send your petro-chemical masters’ toxic filth over there while we in North America hopefully move in the direction of a cleaner, more renewable energy future
In the meantime, email Obama’s White House by clicking on http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact for further information on how to get your views to the Obama administration, and urge it t say ‘no’ to the Keystone pipeline and ‘yes’ to a healthier, 21st century energy future for ourselves, and for our children and grandchildren.
(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post. A reminder that we only post comments by individuals who share their first and last name with them.)
Niagara At Large 
The only problem with that point of view, is that the smog there, is already choking people on the West coast, the prevailing winds eventually send their muck and smog here. so we will reap what we have sown. otherwise I would totally agree with your point of view, I was raised in the smog of post war Liverpool and literally thousands of people died daily in the UK as coal was used for electric power production and every house had a coal burning fireplace. my lungs were never the same since.
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