A tax loophole exempting tar sands pipeline operators from paying an eight-cent tax per barrel of oil they transport in the U.S. is costing the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund millions of dollars every year. With expected increases in tar sands oil production over the next five years, this loophole may have deprived U.S. citizens of $400-million dollars worth of critical oil-spill protection funds come 2017. Regardless of how many barrels of tar sands oil will be traversing U.S. soil, none should be exempt from spill liability taxes. If anything, corrosive diluted bitumen should be taxed more for the inherent dangers it presents.

Pathogens only make up a fraction of the diversity of germs on Earth and a number of environmental germs have been examined for their financial and environmental benefit. For the most part, these germs are unknown and kept away from the science spotlight.

As Saturday marked the 23rd anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, have we learned anything from the disaster? The answer appears to be a resounding "no," given the support to expand Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline and the dramatic escalation in oil tanker traffic that will accompany it.

Earlier this year, energy giant Kinder Morgan submitted an application to the National Energy Board to increase the capacity of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline. The implications of this expansion are enormous and the populace will be asked to bear the risks with virtually no public engagement.

Attaching a dollar value to the damage that spilled oil does to marine and terrestrial ecosystems is an extremely difficult task. The true costs dramatically exceeded the estimates.