Nov
19

Books: Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the future of a Continent (1 of 3)

2008 at 06:46 PM

by Scott Howlett

Every now and again, if you're open to it and you read enough, you get that great experience of having your eyes pried wide open, your ignorance exposed, your mind spun.  Tar Sands by Andrew Nikiforuk provided such an experience. Tar Sands is likely one-sided, and I must seek out opposing viewpoints.  For now, I'm committed to three posts. For now, I can only point you at Nikiforuk's Declaration of a Political Emergency.  And to quote something so profound, it has not left me since I read it weeks ago: "As Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis wrote, greed is a form of pride, and 'Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.'" - Nikiforuk, p56

Filed under: personal, Books

Comments

# Jim said on Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:26 PM

One-sided, probably. But the other side of the argument is simply: Oil is the economic engine of Alberta (and Canada to an extent), and our lavish lifestyles depend on the extraction of our oil (and degradation of our planet).

Tar sand development is only justified by the economic argument. I haven't heard a valid argument that doesn't simply dumb-down to the simple argument of economy vs. environment.

Thankfully crude oil is sitting around $50 right now which will deter the oil companies from developing (and devastating) even further.

# Boyan's blog said on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 12:50 AM

I wanted to contribute a little to the book discussions we've been having on the imason blogs. Scott

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