Review: The Tar Sands Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
| Author | Paul Chastko |
| Published date | 01 March 2010 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201006500120 |
| Date | 01 March 2010 |
| Subject Matter | Coming AttractionsReview |
| International Journal | Winter 2009-10 | 267 |
| Reviews |
in 1946 that all necessary steps should be taken to prevent Moscow from
acquiring an atomic bomb. “Since it is a dictatorship in which public
opinion has no free means of expression,” Russell wrote in the Bulletin of
the Atomic Scientists, “[it] can only be dealt with on the governmental level.”
And if Soviet leaders would not listen to reason, then “the only possible way,
in my opinion, is by a mixture of cajolery and threat, making it plain to the
Soviet authorities that refusal will entail disaster, while acceptance will not.”
As we know, no enforcement measures were used to prevent the Soviet
Union from becoming a nuclear power. And as Paul indicates, the existence
of Soviet nuclear power was one good reason why nuclear weapons remained
in their bunkers. Perhaps the future is not that bleak after all.
David Tal/University of Calgary
THE TAR SANDS
Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Andrew Nikiforuk
Vancouver: Greystone and the David Suzuki Foundation, 2008. 214pp, $20
paper
ISBN 978-1-55362-407-0
When it was published in 2008, Andrew Nikiforuk’s latest book, The Tar
Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, co-published by Greystone and
the David Suzuki Foundation, caused a sensation. Hailed in some quarters
as a wakeup call to Canadians and the world about the social, economic,
and political perils of oil sands development, Nikiforuk’s book lambasted
federal and provincial politicians and institutions alike for their perceived
laxity and complicity in creating an environmental, social, economic, and
political disaster. Nikiforuk’s harsher critics, on the other hand, derided The
Tar Sands as little more than environmental agitprop whose preconceived
political and social agenda distorted facts and produced, at best, a misleading
and incomplete picture of the industry.
To be sure, The Tar Sands is not an academic piece, nor does it aspire
to be one. Nikiforuk is animated by the same impulses that drove Ida
Tarbell, the infamous muckracker for McClure’s Magazine, to tackle John D.
Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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