Earth Beat, 20 April 2012. Necessary evils, like the tar sands in Canada. The fact is, we could use the oil, but is it worth the obliteration of a once-pristine forest landscape? Hear from a woman who treats her painful arthritis with yet more pain, and the man who kills rabbits, to save an ecosystem.
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Canadian photographer Garth Lenz’s latest exhibition is called 'The True Cost of Oil'.
In it, he juxtaposes the tar sands area in Northern Alberta – an area which for the past fifty years has been dedicated to extracting oil out of sand – with its neighbouring landscape, the world’s largest boreal forest.
He talks to host Marnie Chesterton about what both landscapes look like, and how the tar sands are a metaphor for our current relationship with fossil fuels. View photos.
Orit Kaddar woke up one morning with horrendous pain.
Doctors diagnosed her with rheumatoid arthritis and she was told it was something she’d just have to get used to.
Orit begged to differ and after doing some research of her own decided on a radical course of action.
The answer to her pain and problems turned out to be a bee's sting. For more information .
Should you wipe out one species to save another? It might sound harsh, but for Australian authorities dealing with a massive rabbit population on a tiny island in the Indian ocean, it’s a no-brainer.
The rodents are causing so much damage to grass on Macquarie Island they’re changing the landscape of the place, and threatening the habitat for other animals. So hunters have been hired to kill every single one. Keith Springer, who is in charge of the project, tells Marnie about his mission to banish the bunnies. View photos.
New Scientist - Rampant rabbits trash World Heritage island.
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The dirtiest job in the world - listen in new player
They rely on what are known as 'dry latrines'.
Unconnected to the sewage system, they must be cleaned out by hand, a task which falls to the country’s manual scavengers. View photos.
It’s usually done by members of the lowest - Dalit - caste and it's dirty work in the truest sense of the word.
We sent our reporter Lakshmi Narayan along to find out more.
In Accra, Ghana, there's a section of the city called Sodom and Gomorrah.
It's where a great deal of waste from other places – including Ghana itself – winds up.
It's a bleak landscape of scrap and slums, with oil-soaked ground and plastic and sewage-clogged rivers.
But for the people who work there, it’s a place for opportunity. View photos.
Imagine using one annoying noise to cancel out another – that's the philosophy behind the so-called Mosquito Device, which emits a peep at such a high frequency that only people under the age of 25 can hear it.
The idea is that the tone's so annoying they’re forced to move somewhere else.
Earth Beat’s Marijke Peters – who’s well over 25 – went on a late night trip to one of Amsterdam’s squares to find out more. View photos.
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I was born and live in Canada: Montreal which is some 4100 km from Fort McMurray the capital of Canada's tar sands. The tar sands are not in a pristine wilderness. The very fact that the sand is full of bitumen means it is contaminated, contaminated with heavy oil. And it is. Should 'we' develop the tar sands: "YES" for several reasons. First is the world is addicted to fossil fuels and will remain addicted for the foreseeable future. Second, if you don't buy oil from Canada who are you going to buy it from? Most of OPEC countries are repressive, totalitarian regimes who subsidize in subverting women's rights. The process for extracting oil from the tar sands is improving, becoming more energy efficient and less polluting. I could go on and on...
Come on. that "ancient boreal forest' you gush about was never a pretty sight. I flew over there for 15 years and worked later as a contract designer on materials handling at suncor and Syncrude. Don't miss the swamps, deadfall trees, beaver ponds and mosquitoes. Now there are too many people earning big wages but at least they are working.
Are we really so desperate for that oil (or is it the profits that are guiding our stupidity?) that we are willing to destroy, not only ancient boreal forests, but also poison waters and thus make life for indigenous people a living hell? Are we this selfish? You bet we are.
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