Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent

In these end days of peak oil, the Canadian province of Alberta is on a mission to replace Saudi Arabia as the world's major source of petroleum. The once pristine boreal forests of Northern Alberta are being transformed into gigantic pit mines as energy companies rush to extract some of the last of the earth's petroleum reserves. The quest to extract and refine these thick, dirty tar sands that lie beneath what was once a wilderness of wetlands and salmon-rich rivers, threatens the ecology and economy of North America.

On this episode of Locus Focus, host Barbara Bernstein talks with author Andrew Nikiforuk, a journalist based in Calgary, Alberta, whose award-winning book TAR SANDS: DIRTY OIL AND THE FUTURE OF A CONTINENT, exposes this disaster in the making.

Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning author and investigative journalist. Over the past two decades, he has written about energy, economics and the West for a variety of Canadian publications including Maclean’s, Canadian Business, the Globe and Mail, and Reader’s Digest. He has won seven National Magazine Awards since 1989 and top honours for investigative writing from the Association of Canadian Journalists. He won the Governor-General’s award for his 2002 non-fiction book, Saboteurs. In 2006, his book, Pandemonium examined the impact of global trade on disease exchanges and received widespread national acclaim. His latest book, the Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, examines the continental impact of the world’s largest energy project and is the winner of the SEJ Rachel Carson Environment Book Award.
 
Andrew Nikiforuk lives in Calgary with his wife and three sons.