EXTREME ENERGY MEANS AN EXTREME PLANET

"The “unconventional” oil that is to liberate the U.S. and its neighbors from the unreliable producers of the Middle East involves substances too hard or viscous to be extracted using standard technology or embedded in forbidding locations that require highly specialized equipment for extraction. Think of it as “tough oil” ... All these processes have at least one thing in common: each pushes the envelope of what is technically possible in extracting oil (or natural gas) from geologically and geographically forbidding environments. They are all, that is, versions of “extreme energy.” To produce them, energy companies will have to drill in extreme temperatures or extreme weather, or use extreme pressures, or operate under extreme danger -- or some combination of all of these ... extreme energy=extreme methods=extreme disasters=extreme opposition."

Ein Artikel von Prof. Michael T. Klare über die Gefahren der Förderung unkonventioneller Ölquellen und die Illusion einer fossilen US-Energy-Independence. Erschienen auf TomDispatch (4. Oktober 2012).