Ethical Oil

Canada's "no. 1 defender of freedom of speech" and the bestselling author of Shakedown makes the timely and provocative case that when it comes to oil, ethics matter just as much as the economy and the environment. In 2009, Ezra Levant's bestselling book Shakedown revealed the corruption of Canada's human rights commissions and was declared the "most important public affairs book of the year." In Ethical Oil, Levant turns his attention to another hot-button topic: the ethical cost of our addiction to oil. While many North Americans may be aware of the financial and environmental price we pay for a gallon of gas or a barrel of oil, Levant argues that it is time we consider ethical factors as well. With his trademark candor, Levant asks hard-hitting questions: With the oil sands at our disposal, is it ethically responsible to import our oil from the Sudan, Russia, and Mexico? How should we weigh carbon emissions with human rights violations in Saudi Arabia? And assuming that we can't live without oil, can the development of energy be made more environmentally sustainable? In Ethical Oil, Levant exposes the hypocrisy of the West's dealings with the reprehensible regimes from which we purchase the oil that sustains our lifestyles, and offers solutions to this dilemma. Readers at all points on the political spectrum will want to read this timely and provocative new book, which is sure to spark debate.

“A robustly researched and smoothly written overview of the many challenges confronting our devotion to fossil fuels” from the author of Tar Sands (Quill & Quire). Ancient civilizations relied on shackled human muscle. It took the energy of slaves to plant crops, clothe emperors, and build cities. Nineteenth-century slaveholders viewed critics as hostilely as oil companies and governments now regard environmentalists. Yet the abolition movement had an invisible ally: coal and oil. As the world’s most versatile workers, fossil fuels replenished slavery’s ranks with combustion engines and other labor-saving tools. Since then, cheap oil has transformed politics, economics, science, agriculture, and even our concept of happiness. Many North Americans today live as extravagantly as Caribbean plantation owners. We feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion. In this provocative book, Andrew Nikiforuk, winner of the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award, argues that what we need is a radical emancipation movement that ends our master-and-slave approach to energy. We must learn to use energy on a moral, just, and truly human scale. Published in Partnership with the David Suzuki Institute “In his cautionary tale about the evils of oil . . . Nikiforuk makes his case for impending doom if we don’t mend our energy-spending ways.” —The Star “In this cogently argued book, Andrew Nikiforuk deploys a powerful metaphor. Oil dependency, he writes, is a modern form of slavery—and it’s time for a global abolition movement.” —Taras Grescoe, author of Shanghai Grand “A startling critique that should rouse us from our pipe dream of endless plenty.” —Ronald Wright, author of On Fiji Islands

Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation explores how conservationists decide whether, and how, to undertake rehabilitation and reintroduction (R&R) when rescuing orphaned orangutans. The author demonstrates that exploring ethical dilemmas is crucial for understanding ongoing disagreements about how to help endangered wildlife in an era of anthropogenic extinction. Although R&R might appear an uncontroversial activity, there is considerable debate about how, and why, it ought to be practised. Drawing on in-depth qualitative research with orangutan conservation practitioners, this book examines how ethical trade-offs shape debates about R&R. For example, what if the orphan fails to learn how to be an orangutan again, after years in the company of humans? What if she is sent into the forest only to slowly starve? Would she have been better off in a cage? Could the huge cost of sending a rescued ape back to the wild be better spent on stopping deforestation in the first place? Or do we have a moral obligation to rescue the orphan regardless of cost? This book demonstrates that deconstructing ethical positions is crucial for understanding ongoing disagreements about how to help our endangered great ape kin and other wildlife. Ethical Debates in Orangutan Conservation is essential reading for those interested in conservation and animal welfare, animal studies, primatology, geography, environmental philosophy, and anthropology.

It's not about Dirty Oil or Ethical Oil. It's about the Future of Oil Unless we are able to increase the global oil supply, we face a bleak future of depleting reserves and ever-rising energy prices. Since conventional oil reserves are dwindling, we have no alternative but to increasingly rely on unconventional oil, and for political, economic, and environmental reasons, the Canadian oil sands of-fer the very best unconventional oil we can get. Never before has a book offered an insider's view of this controversial industry. The Future of Oil objectively considers economic necessity and the nature of current technological limitations to arrive at a series of connec-ted and inescapable conclusions. The transition to an age of cleaner energy production is necessary and in-evitable, but we cannot yet live without oil. Oil must have a future, or we do not have one, and the oil sands of Canada are the centrepiece of that future. The Future of Oil is a clear, concise, yet complete guide to the Canadian oil sands industry. It does not sugar-coat the hard facts and cuts through the "Dirty Oil" and "Ethical Oil" debate by objectively presenting the argu-ments of oil sands critics and proponents alike. Most of all, The Future of Oil offers, for the first time, an invalu-able insider's view of a crucial energy debate that will be with us for some time to come.

Tar Sands critically examines the frenzied development in the Canadian tar sands and the far-reaching implications for all of North America. Bitumen, the sticky stuff that ancients used to glue the Tower of Babel together, is the world’s most expensive hydrocarbon. This difficult-to-find resource has made Canada the number-one supplier of oil to the United States, and every major oil company now owns a lease in the Alberta tar sands. The region has become a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, Muslim extremists, and a huge population of homeless individuals. In this award-winning book, a Canadian bestseller, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands, arguing forcefully for change. This updated edition includes new chapters on the most energy-inefficient tar sands projects (the steam plants), as well as new material on the controversial carbon cemeteries and nuclear proposals to accelerate bitumen production.

The Alberta oil/tar sands are a place of superlatives, of awesome beauty and equally awesome destruction. They are a kaleidoscope of contrasts, colours and patterns keeping time with the seemingly unstoppable movement of machinery, smoke and effluent set in an immense boreal landscape with its own immutable patterns, cadence and cycles. Beautiful Destruction is a large-format, high-quality photography book that uses over 100 stunning, full-colour aerial photographs to transcend the polarities that dominate public discourse of the largest industrial project in North America: the Alberta oil/tar sands. With short essays by renowned personalities Bill McKibben, Charles Wilkinson, Duff Connacher, Elizabeth May, Eric Reguly, Ezra Levant, Jennifer Grant, Rick George, Gil McGowan, Allan Adam, Megan Leslie and Francis Scarpaleggia from both sides of the oil/tar sands debate discussing the artistic, industrial and environmental perceptions of northern Alberta's petroleum-based mega-project, Beautiful Destruction is one of the most ambitious, provocative and unique photography projects to be published in years.

This book examines mass communication and civic participation in the age of oil, analyzing the rhetorical and discursive ways that governments and corporations shape public opinion and public policy and activists attempt to reframe public debates to resist corporate framing. In the twenty-first century, oil has become a subject of civic deliberation. Environmental concerns have intensified, questions of indigenous rights have arisen, and private and public investment in energy companies has become open to deliberation. International contributors use local events as a starting point to explore larger issues associated with oil-dependent societies and cultures. This interdisciplinary collection synthesizes work in the energy humanities, rhetorical studies and environmental studies to analyze the global discourse of oil from the start of the twentieth century into the era of transnational corporations of the 21st century. This book will be a vital text for scholars in communication studies, the energy humanities and in environmental studies. Case studies are framed accessibly, and the theoretical lenses are accessible across disciplines, making it ideal for a post-graduate and advanced undergraduate audience in these fields.

In the 150 years since the birth of the petroleum industry oil has saturated our culture, fueling our cars and wars, our economy and policies. But just as thoroughly, culture saturates oil. So what exactly is “oil culture”? This book pursues an answer through petrocapitalism’s history in literature, film, fine art, wartime propaganda, and museum displays. Investigating cultural discourses that have taken shape around oil, these essays compose the first sustained attempt to understand how petroleum has suffused the Western imagination. The contributors to this volume examine the oil culture nexus, beginning with the whale oil culture it replaced and analyzing literature and films such as Giant, Sundown, Bernardo Bertolucci’s La Via del Petrolio, and Ben Okri’s “What the Tapster Saw”; corporate art, museum installations, and contemporary photography; and in apocalyptic visions of environmental disaster and science fiction. By considering oil as both a natural resource and a trope, the authors show how oil’s dominance is part of culture rather than an economic or physical necessity. Oil Culture sees beyond oil capitalism to alternative modes of energy production and consumption. Contributors: Georgiana Banita, U of Bamberg; Frederick Buell, Queens College; Gerry Canavan, Marquette U; Melanie Doherty, Wesleyan College; Sarah Frohardt-Lane, Ripon College, Matthew T. Huber, Syracuse U; Dolly Jørgensen, Umeå U; Stephanie LeMenager, U of Oregon; Hanna Musiol, Northeastern U; Chad H. Parker, U of Louisiana at Lafayette; Ruth Salvaggio, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Heidi Scott, Florida International U; Imre Szeman, U of Alberta; Michael Watts, U of California, Berkeley; Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University; Sheena Wilson, U of Alberta; Rochelle Raineri Zuck, U of Minnesota Duluth; Catherine Zuromskis, U of New Mexico.