Reasons to quit: Millions of gallons leaking from oil sands tailings ponds daily

Just in case you needed another reason to cut back on your gasoline consumption, you might consider the pollution catastrophe we are creating in Canada, America's main oil supplier. A new report (PDF) released by Environmental Defense, using industry figures, estimates that tailings ponds created by oil sands projects may be leaking 2,750,000 gallons of contaminated water every day. While that sounds like a lot, the problem may actually be even worse considering the conservative methodology used to reach the conclusion. Titled "11 Million Litres a Day, The Tar Sands Leaking Legacy " and produced by Pembina Corporate Consulting, the report also states that if future projects go ahead as scheduled, this number would increase by five-fold by 2012. That's about 18,041,400 gallons a day. Yikes!

The only bright spot we can see is that, with the fall in oil prices, some oil sands projects are being delayed. Not much of a bright spot considering the damage being done and the lack of any political will to even acknowledge the problem, let alone requiring companies to clean up their "mess". If you're upset by all this then we won't even mention a separate report that estimates the deaths of 160 million birds over the next few decades from this oil extraction process. Ooops! Something to think about the next time you go to fill up your gas tank.

[Source: Environmental Defense via Green Car Congress]