Oil Pipeline Persuasive Speech

798 Words2 Pages

“The world is looking at us. You’ve gotta be lowering your greenhouse gas emissions, not increasing.” A quote by Senator Ed Markey. Good morning ladies and gentlemen, honourable judges, chairperson, timekeeper, and of course my fellow opponents. The topic that we are discussing today is “This house believes that expanding oil pipeline infrastructure is an utmost priority for Canada.” As opposition my partner, Siti, and I are opposed to this resolution. Here’s why.
Oil pipelines are treacherous to the environment, dangerous to us and awful to First Nations. People may oppose this for various reasons, but we, myself and my partner, think otherwise. Oil pipelines can do more things than you think. Need proof? We have three phenomenal contentions, …show more content…

Are the pipelines really going to affect the environment? Some people think yes while other people think no. So, what’s the truth? I will clarify that for you right now. YES, it will clearly affect the environment. The GHG (or greenhouse gas) emissions would extensively increase. In 2015, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency has said to “revisit” how much the pipelines would contribute to global warming. Oil sands crude produces 17 percent more emissions than crude oil. Also, tons of water will also be used to make oil from the crude oil. Do we need water to make oil? YES, we do. If you want to make one barrel of oil you need three barrels of water, in order to separate the bitumen from sand, silt and clay. The water is then put into tailing ponds. Tailing ponds are deadly, mainly to wildlife. Many ducks and birds come and land into these ponds thinking that they are regular ponds, but they then die not knowing that it is polluted water. In 2014, 122 birds landed on three northern Alberta tailing ponds. Furthermore, they all died, which is tragic. The list of problems doesn’t end there. The number of spills or contamination of various environments could also increase. If the oil from the pipe were to spill into a nearby lake it could affect the wildlife and plants near the lake. Thousands of plants and animals could die just because of a small oil spill. Once the pipeline is built, the Alberta tar sands will have to grow, which means

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