This month while Barbara takes some time off, Locus Focus presents a retrospective of some of her radio documentaries. On this episode of Locus Focus we present FIGHTING GOLIATH, produced and broadcast in 2014.
The Canadian Tar Sands is the largest industrial project on earth. These deposits of a sand-embedded solid form of low-grade oil cover an area the size of Florida. Everything about the this project in the northeast corner of Alberta is enormous: sprawling open pit mines collectively the size of a large metropolitan area; mining equipment the height of a three story building; toxic tailings ponds that can be seen from outer space. But people far from Alberta are also starting to feel the effects of the tar sands’ massive footprint that includes inputs and outputs stretching across Canada, through the heartland of the United States, down the Pacific coast and across the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest. FIGHTING GOLIATH looks at the frenetic exploitation of the Canadian tar sands and its rippling effects across the continent.
- KBOO