Greenpeace goes underground to give one Albertan their tax money back

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Greenpeace going underground.

Money back:

Greenpeace buried $600 on the grounds of the Alberta legislature.

Our message: if you find it it's yours.

That $600 is the share of every man, woman and child in Alberta for the Stelmach government's pilot projects on carbon capture and storage (CCS).

The Alberta government wants to waste $2 billion of Albertans' money on CCS.

We let Albertans know we'd buried $600---one small slice of the CCS pie---so at least one lucky Albertan had a chance to get their money back.

The average Albertan will find a better way to spend that money than Stelmach's government will.

CCS unproven

CCS is not a slam-dunk solution to the rampant and dirty tar sands greenhouse gas emissions.

CCS is an unproven, costly technology that even the government's own advisors don't put much stock in. Now even some in industry aren't convinced.

Big players not playing

Recently the biggest industry players in the tar sands - including heavyweights Suncor, Syncrude, ConocoPhillips and StatOil Hydro - decided not to bid for CCS funding.

Even they know what Greenpeace has been saying all along: CCS is not a silver-bullet solution to the tar sands. There are simply too many emissions points in the tar sands for CCS to be effective.

It's not a solution - it's just another smokescreen.

So why are Albertans being asked to foot the bill for a pie-in-the sky technology?

The Stelmach government wants to keep churning out the world's dirtiest oil. The government proposes CCS pilot projects as a way to "solve" its emissions problem.

This greenwashing isn't working. People around the world say the rampant tar sands emissions are unacceptable.

President Obama has called oil dirty and dwindling. And U.S. mayors have voted almost unanimously against importing tar sands oil because the carbon footprint is simply too high.

Time to go green

Greenpeace wants the Alberta government to stop now, before we go any further down another wrong road.

Instead of throwing away $2 billion of Albertans' money on CCS, the premier must invest in the clean, renewable energy economy of the future.

"Alberta needs green jobs and a green plan to turn our economy around and put people back to work," said Greenpeace tar sands campaigner Mike Hudema. "We hope that by bringing up how much all of us in Alberta are paying for just this one test scheme, people will demand that the Premier switch course and invest in green energy and green jobs."