Carol Kleinfeldt: What kind of town do we need to support such industrial ventures?

Comments

[Stephanie]

When I think of the drones that patrol the Iraq and Afghanistan borders, controlled by USAF 'pilots' in Nevada, I do wonder why there have to be people working in the oil sands at all. Perhaps people are cheaper than remote-controlled robots; their parts are more easily replaced.
This does not address the environmental destruction attached to mining, but how the oil sands operate right now even in terms of transportation with a highway of trucks in and out, gigantic tractors, flights from all over Canada to Fort McMurray, all things that consume large amounts of the very substance being mined – all these things support the industry, they condone the industry. The way the industry operates in terms of workplace energy expenditure (ordinary life writ very very large) assumes that oil consumption is a necessity, not a choice.
Instead of chiselling plans on pieces of rock, is our role to simply point out the tautology of the oil extraction industry: it is self-consuming and self-justifying. Must this be acknowledged before thinking can move on?

[LValentine]

Raises questions about corporations and the consumer, capitalism and the community, extraction and retribution. Are there good corporations? How can Corporations be involved in technology development that may also supplant them? When the corporations are defeated, who will pay for the cleanup? How do we claw back what they’ve taken to pay back the aboriginals?

Subterfuge, we love it. Edward Abbey and the monkey wrench gang would simply use dynamite, this nano-approach might be more subtle. Could this be Weibo Ludwig in the most high-tech cybernetic form?

This is a revolutionary approach, challenging all the right targets, we’re intrigued to see more if it's possible with the naked eye.
Liza+Travis

[Zoe]

I like this approach. Spending 9 years at an Alberta post-secondary institution really opened my eyes to how much of our existing research is already geared towards similar questions - which types of grasses will thrive on land irrevocably changed from muskeg to wasteland? Which microbes might be able to clean up the tailings ponds? We are already gearing our work towards co-opting biological agents to clean up our mess. The next logical step is to turn to the world of nanotechnology. Perhaps this is the most provocative response to a man-made disaster.