Someone I know recently posted a very short video he took of the landscape of some of the Alberta oil fields as he flew over in a small airplane.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve seen a video of this kind, and each time that I do have the same visceral, almost emotional response. Instinctively, like my primal core has suddenly been activated, I know that something\u2019s wrong. I know it in my bones.<\/p>\n The stripped and ruined landscape, stretching endlessly around you, is awesome in the worst sense of the word. It\u2019s a sincere horror, and looking down at it\u00a0you feel like you\u2019re viewing a crime scene where acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil have taken place. It’s like that lofty view, which grants such scope and perspective, completely alters one’s view, orienting it toward the eternal. I know that I\u2019m coming in at a pretty high pitch here, but it\u2019s truly how it makes me feel.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The oil being extracted from the tar sands, as I\u2019m sure you know, is very costly to process, with the emissions created from developing it being 12% greater than conventional oil. It couldn\u2019t be dirtier, and each barrel of oil requires three barrels of water to produce it. The question of whether oil is more valuable than water is a fundamentally ridiculous one, and that this question was even open to rational inquiry will be seen as a tragedy in 50 years.<\/p>\n