I was arrested for protesting Canada's pipeline - and the battle is far from over | Elizabeth May

There is nothing logical about the Kinder Morgan pipeline - especially not the decision to gut environmental laws for itThe twists and turns in the saga of the Kinder Morgan pipeline just took a turn for the seriously weird today, but the path has never been clear.The Alberta oil sands lie under thousands of square kilometers of boreal forest, wetland and muskeg. Bitumen is a viscous substance found in small concentrations amid the rock and soil. It is either mined out from huge open pits, or pumped out through in situ production, injecting hot water deep into the ground to loosen it. Either way, the resulting product is highly polluting, very expensive to produce and of low value. Bitumen is a solid. To be refined, bitumen must undergo costly upgrading. Bitumen, being both low value and expensive to produce, would never have been developed without government subsidies, with the lowest royalty rates in the world at 1% and massive federal subsidies of several billion/year. Continue reading...