A number of duck deaths have recurred at Alberta "tailings ponds." It has been suggested that this is the cost of doing business, and that many more ducks die each year in, say, traffic accidents, like 9/11.
The alternative view is that these ducks are The Ghost of Christmas Future, the gift that keeps on giving, and that - insignificant on their own - the ducks are a warning that the Alberta tar sands operation has natural consequences, one of which is a gigantic structural failure of the "tailings ponds" that were a sketchy idea to begin with, and that the Hungarian toxic sludge disaster would be visited on the Canadian Arctic.
We are not speaking of a few ducks here or there.
