AUTHOR DRILLS FOR NUANCE IN OILSANDS STUDY
Rather than simply denounce fossil fuel industry, book provides context, history
The Patch: The People, Pipelines and Politics of the Oil Sands Chris Turner | Simon & Schuster $34.99, 340 pages
With global warming records broken regularly, 2017 is on track to be yet another year of recordsetting heat. And amid disturbing signs of human-caused climate change like ferocious storms, rising oceans, disintegrating ice shelves, bleached coral reefs and unusually fierce wildfires, many Canadians are worried about the Alberta oilsands.
Some are concerned that by allowing the unrestricted exploitation of the 165.4 billion barrels of thick bitumen (the tar in oilsands) believed to lie under the Athabasca, Cold Lake and Peace River areas of northern Alberta, and by allowing new pipelines to take the heavy oil to tidewater, Canada is complicit in creating a climate change catastrophe.
Other Canadians say someone will continue to supply the world’s addiction to fossil fuel energy and it might as well be a jurisdiction like Canada that imposes some serious environmental controls on resource extraction. Leaving bitumen in the ground, they argue, makes no environmental, economic or political sense. Often enough, these two camps seem to be shouting past each other.
Chris Turner, a Calgary-based author and one-time Green party candidate, has produced a book that tries heroically to provide some context, calm and nuance for this overheated debate.
While many readers might prefer a more adamant text, demanding most of the remaining fossil fuels around the world, including the oilsands, remain in the ground and we immediately launch a robust crisis-response program to re-tool the world economy for non-fossil fuels and renewable resources, this book is a lucid and fair presentation of history, context and science surrounding the oilsands controversy.
Ideally, we should all read Turner’s book and several others reflecting a more activist bent this year. (Two candidates for supplementary reading are Ross Gelbspan’s classic The Heat is On and Kevin Taft’s more recent Oil’s Deep State.)
The future of humanity may well be determined by our decisions about fossil fuels, including our contentious oilsands, over the next few decades. We have to get this one right, and thoughtful books like The Patch may well help us do so. This is required reading for all engaged citizens.