> The better option is to just leave the tar in the ground. A town not too far from where I grew up had most of it's economy based around a single factory (Her

> The better option is to just leave the tar in the ground. A town not too far from where I grew up had most of it's economy based around a single factory (Hershey Chocolate in Smith's Falls, Ontario). There were lots of other stores and whatnot, but money flowed into the town via the factory paying workers' salaries, then bounced between hands from in shops, services, whatever else. When I was in high school, that factory closed down. The inflow of money stopped. And so did the rest of the economy of the town. Hard to run a flower shop when nobody in town can afford to buy flowers, you know? Stopping mining of tarsands entirely would be a bit like doing that to the entire province of Alberta. The money enters the province via the dirty oil they sell. We should never have gotten into this situation, no doubt, but now that we're here it's politically impossible to stop. And being major exporters, they're also a big reason for the value of the Canadian dollar. Stop exporting all the dirty oil and the exchange rate goes to crap- now all the things we buy from the USA and China are more expensive. What political party wants to be elected on that promise?