Two Views of Tar Sands: Dirty and Dirtiest

In an odd quirk of timing, two competing visions of the Canadian tar sands hit the media today.

I was pleased to see the announcement that the Society for Environmental Journalists had chosen Andrew Nikiforuk's "Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent" for this year's Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award. The SEJ site explains:

Andrew Nikiforuk paints an alarming picture in northern Alberta, Canada: International oil companies clear cut huge swaths of boreal forest, rake off the boggy soil, scoop up giant shovelfuls of oil sands with the largest machines on earth and use copious amounts of boiling water to separate tarry bitumen from the sand so it can be turned into petroleum for your car in Kansas. The toxic residue that comes off the sands is stored behind gigantic dikes that leak, and downstream people and fish are sick.

It's a great choice.

Seemingly less of a good choice was the Albertan government's decision to put out a pair of studies today that basically reinforce much of what Nikiforuk's book describes.

Oh sure, in typical Albertan form, there is clumsy greenwashing with the reports attempting to cast the tar sands in a cleaner light by comparing them to the ugliness associated with Nigerian oil operations and the heavy oil from Venezuela. But in the end, despite the posturing and press releases, the reports admit that the tar sands pump out more global warming emissions than even these bottom of the barrel oil sources.

Certainly tar sands supporters will crow about their dirty fuel of choice being "not so dirty" in the media; but it is clear that where Nikiforuk's chilling nonfiction excels, the Canadian government and oil industry are a bit shaky with their storytelling...

UPDATE: Want a flavor of Nikiforuk's bracingly bleak coverage of the Tar Sands? Head over to OnEarth Magazine, NRDC's independent quarterly; his feature story ran in the magazine's Fall 2007 issue.