The author of a new book on the future of Canada's oil industry says Alberta is destroying itself in its rush to extract every drop of fossil fuel from the oilsands.
William Marsden, a Montreal journalist and author of "Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care)," appeared on CTV's Canada AM on Tuesday.
Read an excerpt from 'Stupid to the Last Drop'
He says Alberta is giving up control of its oil assets to foreign investors and private business, with little effort to ensure its economic or environmental future is protected.
"This is really crazy what's happening in Alberta today. We have a province that is actually destroying itself in the effort to get every last drop of oil and gas out," Marsden says.
"We're shipping it to the United States -- 60 per cent of our production -- at a time when Canada looks, and the whole world looks, like we're beginning to run out of oil. And we will need these reserves in the long-term."
He said experts estimate there are about one trillion barrels of oil in the world today. Those are being used up at a rate of about 30 or 31 billion per year, and rising. At that speed, the reserves will dry up in about 65 years unless additional reserves are discovered, Marsden says.
He predicts the approach of a transition period, where the world will shift towards using new types of fuel as global supplies begin to run out.
To prepare for that, Marsden suggests Canada needs to begin stockpiling fuel in order to guarantee a successful transition through that period. At the moment, however, that isn't happening.
"We've basically given it over to private industry, most of which is foreign, so the vast majority of the profits are going to private industry," Marsden said.
"So we won't even have the kind of treasury that we will need as we enter into this new age to smooth over this transition."
He said Canadians don't seem to realize how dire the situation really is and many believe there is no reason to question the status quo.
"It's almost sort of the politics of our age where we continue to think that it's business as usual," Marsden said.
"I mean, Canadians are looking at Alberta and thinking to themselves, we have vast reserves there, there's no problem. In fact, we don't have vast reserves. We're running out of conventional oil and gas. Within 10 years Canadians could see a fairly serious deficit in gas which is going to affect millions of homes and industries."
In his book, Marsden predicts that maintaining the status quo will not only harm the nation economically, but it will wreak environmental destruction in Alberta, if left unchecked.
The south of the province would become a desert, while the north would become a toxic swamp, and temperatures would climb by up to eight degrees, driven by the combined effects of oil and gas developments and climate change, Marsden predicts.
He also suggests the province's Athabasca River would slow down and virtually dry up, strangling what's left of the province's forests.
All that, Marsden suggests, should provide the motivation needed to take drastic action now to curb the problem before it is irreversible.
Marsden is an investigative journalist with the Montreal Gazette and co-author of two books on biker gangs.
He also co-produced the 2006 educational film "Dead in the Water," about the global consequences of water privatization. The film takes viewers to four different countries to illustrate the impact -- sometimes deadly -- of water privatization.
