Atmosphere & Energy

EDMONTON — Wayne Groot says his potato farm in Sturgeon County is now surrounded by about 4,000 hectares of prime agricultural land owned by energy companies.

It's not the vision Groot's family had when they purchased the property three decades ago and moved from their previous Edmonton-area farm.

"My dad bought a farm out here 30 years ago ... thinking we could live out here for two or three generations," Groot said Saturday to a busload of environmental activists and other visitors touring the area northeast of Edmonton known as Alberta's Industrial Heartland.

"There are basically no houses left in this whole block, because we're one of the few families who didn't sell."

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The Sierra Club of Canada believes a relief well should have been drilled simultaneously with the well that is gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

British Petroleum says it could be August before the gushing oil well in the Gulf of Mexico can be successfully capped.

"It should have been part of the plan all along, we really should be drilling relief wells in these situations, especially as we start to talk about Canada's arctic and Canada's offshore. We're going to have to require them to simultaneously drill so that they can't be drilling a well, without a relief well. This would mean it would take a couple of days or weeks to fix instead of a couple of months as a result of an accident like this."  according to John Bennet with Sierra Club of Canada.

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Government estimates say that between 68 million litres and 150 million litres have been dumped into the Gulf.

 

From June 25 to 27, the G8 / G20 Summit will take place in Toronto and Huntsville ON. As leaders from the world’s most powerful nations converge for the meeting, groups around the world are pressing for important changes in environmental and economic policy.

Canada is on schedule for developing new emissions standards for heavy trucks, although the draft regulations will not be ready until later this year, the environment minister said Friday.

Canada and the United States both unveiled plans on Friday to set efficiency targets for heavy-duty vehicles ranging from large-sized pickup trucks to tractor trailers used in long-distance hauling.

The federal government expects to release draft regulations this fall that will spell out the requirements for heavy-duty vehicles and engines, starting between the 2014 and 2018 model years, Environment Minister Jim Prentice told reporters.

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Environmentalists have accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government of lagging behind other countries in developing programs to fight climate change. ... Read more »