Helping the rainforest from total destruction/The Oil Sands project

Hi. It's finally feeling a bit like spring here in Montreal! HUZZAH!
This week, however, is forecast to be back below freezing. God damn it. Yesterday I posted a video about one project in Borneo. My good buddy Liam showed it to me after checking out this blog, so thank you, Liam! Cheers, bro.
This video covers a whole scenario. The rainforest is in serious trouble, because of deforestation. The deforestation is part of people consuming and destroying natural resources to try and survive. These people in these countries are very poor, and are trying to improve their lives, their country, and their economy. But to do that, they cut down the rain forest. And the fact is that all rich countries got rich by exploiting their natural resources, as well as colonizing poorer southern countries a couple centuries ago and depleting their natural resources for raw materials as well as slave labour. And today, these countries are used for the same reason. They either can't support themselves, and they need to borrow money, which comes from the IMF. Or else they don't need to borrow money and so a military coup is backed by, usually, the US, who set up a tyrannical dictator who's there to play ball with the IMF and the investors and the Structural Adjustment policies. These things effectively enslave countries through a mechanism of debt. This is now known as Neo-Colonialism.
Part of this whole scheme is the myth that Structural Adjustment leads to economic development. This is part of a very set doctrine of what economic development is and how it's achieved. And the doctrine takes no account of environmental costs. Cutting down a forest therefor is seen as a good thing. Around the world, the environment is being destroyed in order to make money. The problem with that, of course, is that we need healthy natural ecosystems to survive.
Willie Smits, in his lecture, describes how educating the local people as well as directly involving them is key to solving these problems. The rainforest is in a bad way. People around the world are cutting it down relentlessly. There was an article about a year ago in Time magazine called "The Clean Energy Scam". The article is about the problems with using biofuels. I found it last semester as source material for my paper on biofuels and rising food prices. But the introduction to the article showcases the destruction of rainforest, plain, and wetlands in Brazil. It gives you a good idea of what's going on. And you really do need to take the people at work in this into account. When it comes to either cutting down a tree, or feeding your children, the people will cut down the tree. In order to help the environment, we must also help the people. We must help them gain sustainability, we must help integrate them into the environment, we must enlist their aid in environmental projects, we must educate them and offer them stewardship over the biodiversity around them, and either help them become economically independent or, even better, become self-sufficient and self-sustaining.
That's what Willie Smits managed to do!
Unlike that positive story, another friend of mine, Andrea, posted a Youtube video on Facebook on the Alberta Oil Sands. Andrea has a Bachelor of Environmental Science, and has done lots of cool field work. I learned all the details about the Oil Sands last semester in Canadian Environmental Issues. Here's some basic details: