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Co-op joins Indians to to fight tar sands oil threat
Extracting unconventional oil in the Canadian wilderness is destroying wildlife and threatening their way of life, say the local Cree Indians with the help of the Co-op.
The Beaver Lake Cree Nation has launched a legal challenge in Canada over "tar sands" extraction, backed by the UK's Co-operative Financial Services.
The financial services group is providing 50,000 to the Beaver Lake Cree to explain how tar sands production is damaging their lives.
The Cree say licences to extract tar sands contravene a treaty dating back more than a century which gives them the constitutional right to hunt, fish and gather plants from the land in the province of Alberta.
The Co-op fears that in addition to the ecological damage in Canada, extraction and production of tar sands produces between three and eight times more carbon dioxide than conventional oil.
The group, which joined forces with conservation charity WWF last year to fight tar sands, says British oil companies are helping to make attempts to avoid climate change almost impossible.
The extraction of the oil could lead to the release of 980bn tonnes of CO2, pushing levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere well past the point where it would lead to dangerous climate change.
Extracting tar sands also involves clearing forests in Canada, which store huge amounts of CO2, kills wildlife through toxic lakes, and is causing health problems.
Tar or oil sands, found in large quantities across Canada, are made up of oil trapped in a mixture of water, sand and clay.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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