Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (and Doesn't Seem to Care)

This is an exposé of the oil and gas industry in Alberta from its beginning until late 2007. Marsden discusses the environmental damages primarily from the massive oil sands project and from drilling for coal bed methane. One can only presume that Marsden's facts and figures are correct. He provides no list of references or notes at the end, and only names the people with whom he spoke or an occasional reference within the text. Assuming what he relates is even half true; I found this book extremely disturbing. As a resident of British Columbia, we also have a burgeoning oil and gas industry, and may be headed on the same path as Alberta. Also the present Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, is from Alberta, and his federal government shows as little regard for the environment as the Alberta government appears to. This is a very quick and interesting read, all be it very scary. Americans should also find this book worthwhile. Canada is now the largest single foreign supplier of oil to the US. The US is also beginning to exploit its coal bed methane and has large oil shale resources. See how not to do things.

this book is very well written, readable, and thorough. Our politicians and media would do well to take a clue from marsden and stop hiding the wrongs perpetrated on us - the canadian people - by an oil industry devoid of morals or even loyalty to this country; a country whose limited resource has made them (but not us) rich. If norway can put together a $400 billion savings fund for its country simply by maintaining a crown corporation, why the hell did we let our politicians (or at least alberta's "politicians") sell our future prosperity off to an already rich and well subsidized industry? This book raises many questions - its time WE started demanding answers.

Book combines on-the-ground first hand investigation with historical context, a broad overview, pointedly specific and lucid stories of technological and scientific issues, and an interesting yet concise writing style. See, for example, page 218 where author writes, in considering the contamination of water wells by fracturing of coal beds to more readily extract methane: While the EUB [Energy Utilities Board, of Alberta] maintains in public a happy confidence in CBM [coal bed methane], in private the agencys worries about water contamination are rising. Evidence of this can be seen in the EUBs CBM licensing permits, which are public but which almost nobody in the public ever reads. They are now replete with indications of concern over groundwater contamination. The agency began requiring that gas companies install monitoring wells in aquifers close to their CBM drilling to monitor any changes to the groundwatera clear indication of concern over water well contamination. It also began insisting on improved well bore casing protections. And so on. If the public rarely sees these Alberta government licensing permits, that an investigative journalist had the insight and discipline to read them and report on his findings is but one indication that the author is presenting a fact-based case. Polemical would be to deliver a one-sided argument. I think here the evidence is pretty well stacked up on one side of the issue, showing the Alberta, and incidentally also the Canadian Federal government, generally wanting to foster an oil industry irrespective of environmental damage, or harm to the health of First Nations and other communities. An objective observer could well find that the evidence on the other side of the issue that might allow one to argue that side is so weak in considerations other than corporate profit and spin-off jobs that to speak in favour of it, although thereby hewing to what in this case would be an empty criterion of balanced argument, would be in effect unethical. Let the corporations and governments present their own case. Mind you, author Marsden rides in the huge shovels and trucks of the gigantic open pit oil sands deep extraction sites and reports his conversations with the drivers, with other company personnel, and with local officials with even-handed, sometimes empathetic tone. But what is clearly documented in this account is that his judgment has shown an awesome scale of imbalance that effectively precludes occupying the writers and readers time with the corporate and government case, though risking the label of polemic. I dont think Marsden is sufficiently aggressive or argumentative to properly deserve the term. If corporations and large-scale centralized governments cannot conduct business that does not harm the public interest, broad-based public decisions, if allowed, may be to evolve away from those forms of organization. Alberta needs to rethink their economic base as contained within a physical enviro

William Marsden is an author and investigative journalist who bravely took on the Hell's Angels biker gang in a series of books and columns. Now he's after a bigger, richer, and far more deceptive foe... the Canadian oil industry. Marsden goes to the physical and metaphorical heart of Canada's oil country to provide an incisive examination of an environmental catastrophe effected by a manipulative oil industry in denial and aided an impotent and incompetent system of governments. Marsden begins by supplying a great deal of informative historical background of the oil sands project, including a bizarre scheme in the 1950s to extract oil via controlled nuclear explosions. He also provides an inside view of the immense scale oil sands excavations by visiting the projects and talking with the workers. This sets the stage for the critique to come. The two primary targets polemically identified by Marsden (the "stupid" ones of the title) are the oil industry and governments within the province of Alberta. Marsden describes a heavily subsidized industry that flouts the rule of law, uses propaganda and intimidation to achieve its ends, is deliberately deceitful, and remains astonishingly ignorant of the long term effects (environmental, social, and financial) of its activities. He illustrates how time and time again the massive public relations machine of the oil industry obscures facts and keeps citizens in the dark (for example, by stating that the toxic petrochemical-related products suddenly infusing wells and land are naturally occurring). The second side of the problem rests with an impotent and largely incompetent provincial government. This is not a government that serves its citizens; rather, it is a veritable plutocracy under the sway of corporations and addicted to royalties delivered by the ever-increasing prices of crude oil. The politics of ignorance appear to be the central creed of the Alberta government, and there is little or no desire by elected officials to listen to citizens or take their concerns seriously. As such, Marsden takes it upon himself to visit concerned citizens and report their stories, and they are not pretty. He reports of a government bought and paid for by the oil industry and who remain astonishingly oblivious about the effects of the industry on the citizens of Alberta. Marsden concludes that the results the industry and government action/inaction have resulted in boreal forest depletion of a massive scale, a significant and possibly catastrophic depletion of the water table, and destruction of wildlife and rural agriculture. If continued unchecked, the Alberta of the future will be a bleak monument to uncontrolled avarice, and yes, stupidity.