Non-Fiction Pick of the Week: Tar Sands

Tar Sands: dirty oil and the future of a continent by Andrew Nikiforuk, Revised and updated in 2010

Andrew Nikiforuk reveals the true costs of America's oil addiction and suggests that the Alberta Tar Sands may well be one of the worst environmental tragedies. For the better part of their history, the Alberta tar sands have been out of sight and out of mind for most Canadians. Government operates as an absentee landlord. Governor General’s Award-winning author covers the fallout in detail, from the massive destruction of the natural environment – turning a good chunk of northern Alberta, including the world’s third-largest watershed, into a toxic wasteland. What he exposes most of all, however, is the mind-boggling short-sightedness and stupidity of the entire enterprise.
Overall, Tar Sands provides an excellent guide to all of the environmental repercussions of our oil dependency. Nikiforuk concludes with “Twelve Steps to Energy Sanity,” an oil-addiction recovery program. We can’t avert a disaster that is already under way, but we might be able to prevent things from getting horribly worse.