Image: Syncrude Canada

Shred the slopes at Vista Ridge. Zip through the forests and wetlands at Gateway Hill on your bike. Soar over Wood Buffalo on a hang glider – but watch out for those tall trees! Three games, endless fun! Get Syncrude’s Trail Blazer now! Play, learn and explore Wood Buffalo, Alberta with three high-octane games where you play Syncrude Canada’s über-cool mascot, the Wood Bison. Collect as many coins as you can along the way, and you could find yourself at the top of the leaderboard.

I wish I was making this up, but that’s a screenshot and promo from “Trail Blazer,” a new game that Syncrude (one of the the world’s biggest tar sands companies) hopes will brainwash kids into thinking that oil is totally dope, or fresh, or baller, or whatever word people use for “awesome” nowadays.

Look at all those fresh green trees and pristine snow! We must’ve had it wrong all this time — apparently, the tar sands region looks a lot like Aspen, Colorado instead of the mining colony from Avatar. So, just to make sure I wasn’t getting Alberta mixed up with some other place, I double-checked and…oh, wait a sec…here’s a photo of what it really looks like:

Photo: Peter Essick

Photo: Jason Woodhead

Image: Syncrude Canada

If you want to find out what’s really happening to Canada’s wildlife, a slick game is the last place to start. There’s a name for this kind of thing–it’s called “greenwashing” and it basically means pretending to be eco-friendly while doing the exact opposite in real life. This is hardly the first time the industry used pretty graphics to lie to the public (remember Enbridge, Inc’s fake map?) but it’s in the running for “Sleaziest Advertising of 2012.”

Felice Stadler, NWF’s director of energy campaigns, visited Alberta a while ago to tour the tar sands region — I still remember how shaken she was when she came back — and her reaction to seeing the game was bitter:

Believe me, there are no trees after Syncrude has paid a visit to the boreal forest.

But there’s more at stake than trees and wolves. We just re-elected a president who says he’s committed to battling climate change–the most dangerous threat to our planet’s future and the survival of people and wildlife everywhere. Now, he has a chance to prove it by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which would speed up development of the tar sands and light the fuse of the world’s biggest carbon bomb, but so far the White House has sent mixed signals about its intentions. Hurricane Sandy was a harsh reminder of what happens when that carbon bomb explodes, and Americans need President Obama and Congress to draw a line in the sand and say “NO!” to KXL and projects like it.

Make your voice heard! Tell the White House to reject the Keystone XL pipeline and prevent climate catastrophe.

Oiled tar sands duck from blogspot.com

Quick to pinpoint the cause of this tragic event, we hear that meteorological conditions may be to blame. Freezing rain and stormy conditions forced the birds to look for refuge. And sadly, but not surprising, the company’s techniques for shooing away the birds—propane cannons and little stick figures dressed in yellow rain slickers—didn’t seem to do the trick.

No Place to Land

Yes, storm conditions cause wildlife to seek shelter and refuge. But north of Fort McMurray, there is no safe refuge, where the mine operations of the world’s oil giants span an area the size of metro Chicago that lies precisely in the migratory path of dozens of North America’s beloved shore and song birds—warblers, ducks, cranes. Millions could die.

When migrating birds are tired from their long journey, what they find in Fort McMurray are toxic sludge ponds the size of lakes. From the sky they look like just the right place to land. Little do they know what greets them when they land.

Will Syncrude Release Images?

Given that the incident occurred on the massive operations leased by Syncrude, the likelihood of getting images of oiled birds is remote. And while we know images are often what propel demands for change, in this case, we only need to pull from the photo archives of previous bird deaths in the tar sands mines to be reminded of what it looks like. The same company was recently prosecuted and fined C$3 million for negligence that lead to the deaths of 1,600 birds.

Secretary Clinton said last week that we either need to rely on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada to fuel our cars and trucks–dirty oil that contaminates our fisheries, dirty oil that ruins local economies, dirty oil that poisons, drowns, or suffocates thousands of birds.

Oil killed the birds in tar sands country. Not freezing rain.

Speak Up for the Birds!

Speak up for the wildlife that has died and the wildlife that could die because of this destructive and unnecessary process. Email President Obama and the U.S. State Department and urge them to stop plans for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.