Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Revised and Updated Edition (David Suzuki Institute) - Softcover

Nikiforuk, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1553655559 ISBN 13: 9781553655558

Publisher: Greystone Books, 2010

Synopsis

Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning Canadian journalist who has been writing about the oil and gas industry for more than two decades. He is the author of multiple non-fiction books, including Tar Sands, winner of the prestigious Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, Saboteurs, winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction. He was one of the first journalists in North America to document the devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing on rural communities.

Review:

Award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk explores why, while the world is going green, Canada is going black in Tar Sands, which includes a fascinating look at Fort McMurray's black-gold rush town, often lawless and corrupt. —Canadian Bookseller

(2008-09-23)

Investigative journalist and national treasure Andrew Nikiforuk documents the exorbitant economic, social and environmental costs of building Alberta's Tar Sands. —Mainsonneuve

(2008-09-30)

Nikiforuk . . . took pains to ensure his book went beyond preaching to the converted. Tar Sands begins with a bluntly worded 22-point 'declaration of a political emergency' and ends with a 12-step plan to regain 'energy sanity,' which includes action the general reader can take. In between, Nikiforuk writes not only about environmental and political concerns, but takes the reader into the frenzied boom of Fort McMurray and along the so-called 'highway to hell' that leads to it. —Calgary Herald

(2008-11-02)

Nikiforuk believes the Tar Sands should be developed gradually and with far greater environmental sensitivity . . . Nikiforuk paints a picture of the current development as an environmental cesspool. —Regina Leader-Post

(2008-11-17)

Tar Sands provides an excellent guide to all of the environmental repercussions of our oil dependency. The political analysis is also good, sounding a warning about our dangerous energy 'interdependence' with the declining American empire . . . —Quill & Quire

(2008-11-26)

If you want to be scared, you don't need to watch a horror movie or read the latest Stephen King bestseller. Real terror can be found by simply firing up Google Earth . . . [where] you can see what Albertas Tar Sands look like from space. It's not a pretty sight . . . A recent book by celebrated journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands . . . explores what these grey spots on Google Earth mean to Canada's environment and economy. It's an important book, one that every Canadian should read to find out how the worlds largest energy project will affect us. —Georgia Straight

(2008-12-10)

It's an important book, one that every Canadian should read to find out how the world's largest energy project will affect us. —David Suzuki Foundation

(2008-12-12)

The Alberta Tar Sands are a cesspool of pollution. Nikiforuk's elegantly written book delivers all the gory details about toxic lakes, heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and the fiction of reclamation. Tar Sands also reveals how Canada's new status as a petrostate has jeopardized its democracy. His 12 steps to energy sanity should be required reading for every citizen. —Georgia Straight

(2008-12-18)

In his recent book Tar Sands . . . Nikiforuk lands a knockout blow on the kissers of the oil industry, oil-friendly bureaucrats, and petrol-guzzling North Americans. —Sustainablog

(2009-01-07)

Nikiforuk documents a mind-boggling array of government abuses: mismanagement, graft, and general neglect have contributed to the problem. Further, he catalogues the massive environmental destruction necessary to make Tar Sands exploration a viable (read: profitable) enterprise. His book is at its strongest here, examining the total costs of bitumen. —Socialist Worker

(2009-01-14)

About this edition

• Publisher: Greystone Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1553655559
• ISBN 13: 9781553655558
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 280