If someone were to ask me what the Tar Sands were prior to the class readings, I would have told them that I have no idea what they were. Unbeknownst to me, the Canadian Tar Sands are a 54,000 square mile area of what used to be lush Alberta Forrest, but is now the home of some of the dirtiest oil mining operations in the world. These lo mines are largely contributing to greenhouse gas emissions as well as the world’s climate change. Reading the articles and viewing the pictures on the Tar Sands were shocking to say the least. What was more shocking, however, was the fact that I, nor anyone I asked, knew anything about the Tar Sands or even knew what they were. 

Looking through the facts sheet there were a few facts that really stood out to me. One of the most heartbreaking out of them was fact #3, “In April, 2008 a flock of migrating ducks landed on a tar sands toxic lake and died.”. The fact that a flock of ducks simply landed on top of what used to probably be their home and died upon getting sucked into the toxic sludge is totally tragic. I couldn’t help but feel some sort of disappointment towards the people who are responsible for these Tar Sands mining operations, the oil moguls, the Canadian government, and all of the people who have just stood by and watched.

This is a common theme I have noticed with climate change is the issue of who’s not doing enough, and more importantly where the responsibilities for protecting our climate should be distributed and divided. Where is the line drawn? When has someone done “enough” for the climate? And, when does someone need to do more to save our climate? Far too often, people (including myself) do not do as much as they really should to take care of the big globe we all call home. Too often with climate change, the “I’m not going to change my ways because I’m just one person and I won’t make a difference” logic is presented. Or, alternatively, many people present the logic that enough is probably already being done and therefore they don’t need to do anything different or act on an issue themselves because “someone else is probably taking care of it”. Unfortunately, that’s not always true; sometimes the bad guys win. Whether the bad guys are the people in charge of the Tar Sands in Canada who are responsible for mass deforestation, killing countless animals, and largely contributing to global warming, or anyone else who you may see as the “climate change bad guys”. Maybe the bad guys in someone else’s mind are the people responsible for the BP oil spill, or maybe the people lobbying for the KXL Pipeline. Whoever it may be, the point is that we cannot let the “bad guys” win. All people must unite against this common evil, whoever or whatever that evil may be. Although the Tar Sands are not even in our country, I myself still feel some sort of moral obligation to do something, even if that something is just telling other people what the Tar Sands are and what they can do to put a stop to them. I’m all for it because although I do not live in Canada, I live on this planet and when it comes down to it, there are no borders here on this big blue globe, just people living in different places with different beliefs with much more in common than they think.