Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent

Andrew Nikiforuk has done us all a great favour in writing this impassioned book about the Alberta Tar Sands and the social, environmental and political devestation they are causing. Mr. Stephen Harper has revealed himself as the Dick Cheney of Canada, a scheming figure, intellectually in debt to the carbon fuels industry, with great personal integrity and a passionate contempt for democracy, especially parlimentry democracy. Mr. Nikiforuk begins his book with XXII propositions (I will not repeat them all here) which are a strong call to action for anyone concerned with the environment, Canadian society and politics and the people of the Athabasca. He follows this with a detailed history of the tar sands development and its impacts. Bitumen is a very dirty and inefficent fuel and that we are turning to it as an alternative shows how far we have gone down the road of carbon degredation. Nikiforuk points out that integrating the North American energy market around fossil fuels will effectively remove what ever political independence Canada has (a long time goal of the Harper Conservatives) and will reconstitute Canada as a client energy slave of the US. It will make it impossible for Canada to meet any international agreements on carbon reduction (another goal of the Harper Conservatives) and lock Canada into a path of declining international relevance as the world moves into a post-carbon economy and a devestated landscape. After reading this book I went over to Google Maps and cruised around the Fort McMurray and the enviromental disaster in the making is already clearly visible. This book reinforces how important it is to stop Harper and his carbon fueled political machine. At the very least, the tar sands projects should be forced to carry the full cost of all of their externalities - carbon footprint, land restoration, impact on wildlife, social impact ... If these costs were fully factored in it is doubtful that there would be much development in the tar sands. Instead, the federal and Alberta governments are selling out the Canadian tax payer for short term gain, though most of the gain will go to a very few Canadians and Americans. The rest of the world will suffer from carbon emmissions and the loss of a wonderful river and wilderness. I suspect that our grand children will ask us in horror and disbelief why we thought that burning complex and beautiful hydrocarbons was a good way to create energy when we had so many other options available.