Canadian Nobel Laureates to Oppose Alberta Oil-Sands Expansion

Eight Nobel Peace Prize winners, including South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have signed an open letter requesting that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper intervene to block the development of Alberta's oil-sands reserves.

The communiqué follows last month’s letter by several Nobel Peace Prize laureates to United States President Barack Obama asking him to block the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver Alberta's oil-sands output to U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Opponents fear that the Keystone XL pipeline could put the U.S. Midwest’s vast Ogalla aquifer at risk in the event of a leak.

The open letter states, “Just as we called on President Obama to reject the pipeline, we are calling on you to use your power to halt the expansion of the tar sands – and ensure that Canada moves towards a clean energy future. It would be wrong for humanity to choose a path that drives hundreds of thousands of species to extinction. It would be wrong for a rich minority of the world's inhabitants to create a problem like climate change and then refuse to do its fair share to fix it. And it would be wrong for this generation to make this planet uninhabitable when we know that our children and grandchildren will be forced to deal with the consequences,” the Globe and Mail newspaper reported.

By. Joao Peixe, Deputy Editor OilPrice.com