In the next fifteen years, an estimated $379 billion will be invested in Canada’s tar sands, according to a briefing from WWF and the Cooperative. The tar sands are the most environmentally destructive project on earth, and a sign of desperation in maintaining our oil supplies. In a world of climate change, it is utterly irresponsible.
It’s also unnecessary. That amount of money could be spent on public transport or electric cars, reducing the demand for oil. And you’d be reducing emissions and preventing pollution at the same time.
So in no particular order, here are ten better ways to spend $379 billion:
1. Build electric car infrastructure and subsidize electric cars right across the EU, making the oil production irrelevant.
2. Provide primary school education to every child in the entire world for the next thirty years.
3. Fund the Desertec proposal to build provide 15% of Europe’s electricity from solar plants in the Sahara desert, and still have change left over.
4. Give clean water and sanitation to 1.6 billion people.
5. Source 20% of US energy needs through on-shore wind power, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.
6. Meet all the health-related Millennium Development Goals, preventing 4 million child deaths and a million adult deaths HIV, TB, or through childbirth.
7. Build a smart grid across Canada, link all its cities with high speed trains and triple its installed renewable energy.
8. Give every home in the UK a £10,000 upgrade on energy efficiency and insulation.
9. Eliminate HIV/AIDS – which you could actually do four times over with the tar sands funds, if the WHO’s estimates are correct.
10. Fund global conservation efforts for a decade, at E O Wilson’s calculations of $30 billion a year.
Arrrgh, this hurts so much. Why do people do this? Why can’t we do stuff that makes sense and avoid self-destruction? It’s so damn obvious. In comparing, you forget the simple fact, that the companies pull even higher profits out of these poor parts of mother earth… great post, anyway, thanks!