num_pages: 208
description: Winner of the 2009 Rachel Carson Environment Book Award  from the Society of Environmental JournalistsCanada has one third of the worlds oil source; it comes from the bitumen in the oil sands of Alberta. Advancements in technology and frenzied development have created the worlds largest energy project in Fort McMurray where rather than shooting up like a fountain in the deserts of Saudi Arabia the sticky bitumen is extracted from the earth. Providing almost 20 percent of Americas fuel much of this dirty oil is being processed in refineries in the Midwest. This out-of-control megaproject is polluting the air poisoning the water and destroying boreal forest at a rate almost too rapid to be imagined. In this hard-hitting book journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental social and political costs of the tar sands and argues forcefully for change.
language: English
title: Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
publisher: Greystone Books