Two large retail outfits in the US have declared they will not buy oil products from Canada's oil sands.  Easy for them to say.  Harder to implement.  As Whole Foods' spokesperson said, "the company will continue to use fuels derived from Alberta tar sands (sic) in the Rocky Mountain region because as of now there is no alternative source."

Nevertheless, these new position statements from consumer-oriented retailers indicate that a broad swath of the environmental movement is gaining ground over governments in Canada and Alberta, not to mention the oil companies themselves.  ForestEthics, for example, is taking credit for the retailers' move – I'm guessing they feel they're on the winning side and so have branched out beyond what their organization's name would otherwise suggest to be their mandate. 

Perhaps that's why Environment Minister Prentice was uncharacteristically critical of the oil patch last week.  Speaking at various functions on campus in his home town of Calgary, he pointed his finger at oil companies, saying "we need to up our game."  True enough.  But in the next breath he declared that the "challenge has … only just begun .…"   Whew!  Maybe he didn't recognize just what a slippery slope his government's been on for the past two years.  Or maybe he did, and simply hoped he'd be shuffled out of the environmental portfolio by now.  Whatever, I take it as an encouraging sign that he's finally coming to grips with it.  Hope springs eternal, as they say ….

A slightly jaded view from Cowtown....we are living under a very tired and very old PC government. They have been in power for 39 years (yes, almost four decades) and even the three leadership changes we have seen over that time have done little to re-energize them. Klein decimated the bureacracy so that any bright person hunkered down and towed the party line in order to qualify for a nice pension. Ed is not doing much better. And as energy policy resides with the provincial government, we are in trouble. New blood, new policies, new thinking is desperately needed in this province. Or we will be tarred and feathered by the environmental PR machines that are a-coming.

Oil sands will be the energy equivalent of 'blood diamonds': there will be a Hollywood movie and a boycott to follow. 

That is, unless we 'up our game' on the enviro front, and let's hope that we do.  There are no more excuses left. 

I just don't get how the AB gov or the oil companies did not see this coming...  They could have put actions in place (a 'middle path') a couple of years ago to prevent this kind of 'tar slinging' at the oil sands.  Not to mention that it would be the ethical thing to do. 

Surely we can make money, supply energy and keep the planet healthy too?  There must be a way.

I'm old enough to remember when people said it was 'impossible' to make the oil sands profitable.  So making them profitable and green (or at least, greener) is only a challenge: one we can meet.