Paul Michael W.: The largest proven reserves in the world is Alberta.
Speaker 2: Having extracted the less-polluting oil, we're now getting to the really dirty sludge.
David Schindler: I don't think people realize how big the sacrifice zone is going to be.
Rob Renner: This is one of the most highly regulated industries that there is in the world.
Gen. Wald: For those that think we can just wean ourselves from fossil fuel energy today because of environmental issues, it's just totally impossible to do. Our economy would totally collapse.
Dr. Bill: And of course, the U.S., we're the junkie that's buying the drugs that Canada is peddling.
James Cameron: People are saying, that fantasy that you put up on the screen in Avatar…that's my life.
Francois: What you do with your money is your business, but when you begin to spend your money in my territory, then that becomes my business.
Dr. Daniel: The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stone, and the same thing is going to be true of the Petroleum Age.
Narrator: For Chief Allan Adam and generations of people, the land is life. Then one day, the land changed. The world's largest corporations came looking for oil.
Narrator: This Canadian wilderness sits atop what many think is the biggest deposit of oil on the planet, a sea of sand soaked with bitumen…the tar sands. For decades, mining the sands was an unprofitable experiment. Now, in a world running out of conventional oil, this is what's left, and there's a fortune to be made.
Narrator: The tar sands now supply more oil to the United States than any other foreign source…a century of secure energy.
Chief Allan A.: When I entered into politics, I thought we were going to cash in on the economic development in the region and be part of the whole atmosphere, and work on it from there. But then as we got into it, seven, eight, nine people were diagnosed with cancer in the last two years that have been passed on, and that's an alarming number that we have to deal with.
Chief Allan A.: We live by the lake shore of Lake Athabasca, and the river flows down from the Athabasca River. You could put two and two together. It's our turn now to say, enough is enough.
Narrator: As the river feeds the lake, it brings the riches of the land. But 120 kilometers upstream, the river also feeds the tar sands, and carries away a toxic burden.
Jonie: There's my Uncle Raymond. He had died with a brain tumor; and my granny, she died of cancer; and my Auntie Albina, [inaudible 00:04:29]; her too, with cancer; and my Uncle Mapp on this side, up here…him, too, he had died with a brain tumor. So it was brain tumors and cancer they mostly died of.
Jonie: I moved down here nine years ago from Edmonton, Lac La Biche, to come raise my kids down here because I grew up here. This community is supposed to be a good community to raise your family. Both my sisters both got cancer, and I'm just worried my kids will end up getting it or I will end up getting it. My parents…we all cope. Everybody grieves.
Andrew: Arsenic is a very clear-cut carcinogen. It's a cancer maker, and it is associated with bitumen production. The more you process those deposits, the more you're going to bring arsenic and lead and other heavy metals to the surface, and if you're not careful, over time, you will see larger and larger pulses of arsenic and other cancer-makers enter waterways.
Ray: Yeah, when Grandpa came over into this part of the country and he fell in love with the delta…because everything was so plentiful; birds, muskrat…you name it. He was 86 years old when he quit trapping, the old guy. I don't know if I'll ever reach that.
Ray: I know there's quite a few people been having cancer, and I'll always believe it's something to do with the water…and plus, the fish that we eat from Lake Athabasca. It's supposed to be two or three different types of cancer. Young people died from it.
Chief Allan A.: The community relies heavily on traditional foods here. If the water is affected, then the animals are drawn to the water to survive, and it could be within the traditional foods itself.
Larry: Well, I don't think anybody eats fish anymore. We don't, anyway. They're deformed-like, or bent over some, humpback and crooked. Some of them's cheeks are just eaten right off, and so like acid ate them.
Dr. John: I began to notice patients had lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and bile duct cancers. Statistically, I'm not supposed to see more than 1 in 100,000. It is certainly one that can be connected directly with toxins in the environment.
Dr. John: I felt a baseline health study should be undertaken, and that didn't happen. The very first visit by a group of physicians from Health Canada…this physician went into the kitchen, grabbed a mug, filled it with water from the sink, took a swig, put it down, and basically turned and said to her, "There's nothing wrong with the water here in Fort Chip." I thought that was a real shocker, and the community reacted predictably to that. We were very angry that this had happened, and it was a kind of kick in the face, I guess.
David Schindler: Not too long, huh?
Fisherman: Hi! Here we are.
Dr. John: Oh, my God.
Fisherman: We've been catching quite a few of this fish, but the fishermen got frustrated. They just keep on throwing them overboard. We've been finding these fish for a number of years now; deformities on Northern pike, too.
David Schindler: If they're exposed to these chemicals, the studies that have been done indicate that 80, 90 percent of them die before they even hatch, but the ones that do probably end up like that.
Fisherman: It's very scary. In time, I think this lake will be totally destroyed if we don't try to do something about it.
Fisherman: I've been a commercial fisherman for 53 years, in the whole Lake Athabasca. I've never, ever seen deformed fish in my younger days, and I hadn't lost at eight members of my family on cancer. Sometimes when I think about it, I get pretty upset…what they had done to our lake and then our waters, and whatever we have over there to survive on.
Fisherman: It's sad to say this, but it's true. We need help.
Narrator: In the 1970s, David Schindler's research led to banning harmful phosphates in detergent. He was pivotal in the global fight to curb acid rain. Now he's turning his attention to the tar sands.
Narrator: Over the years, Schindler has watched governments turn water monitoring in the Athabasca River over to industry-funded consultants. The Alberta government claims the tar sands leave the Athabasca River unpolluted, but Schindler is not convinced.
David Schindler: These pollutants are emerging pollutants. The first time it was really shown that at low concentrations, they could have long-term impacts, was at the Exxon Valdez. Sea otters and some of the water fowl are still being affected 18 years after the spill.
David Schindler: A lot of these same compounds are in high concentrations in the tar sands. They're toxic at parts per trillion.
David Schindler: We hired Erin Kelly to do this, her specialty [inaudible 00:10:51] mercury, and Jeff Short, who'd worked around the Exxon Valdez for 20 years and had developed some really state-of-the-art techniques for monitoring polycyclic aromatics.
Dr. Erin: We're sampling for metals and PH, and we're looking at different media, including fish water, vegetation. In the winter time, we did snow sampling.
Dr. Erin: I became a part of this project because of the controversy surrounding it and because I think that this river and the people that live on it deserve some good science to answer some questions that a lot of people are asking.
Narrator: Knowing their findings could be controversial, Schindler's researchers are extremely careful in their methods.
David Schindler: We spent months intercalibrating our measurements with those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Our other analyses were all done by certified laboratories because they're the only kind of evidence that will stand up in court. We've covered our bases in a lot of ways that most university research wouldn't.
Francois: (foreign language)
Chief Allan A.: (foreign language)
Francois: Good to see you.
Chief Allan A.: How high the water used to come here?
Francois: Oh, high!
Chief Allan A.: Yeah?
Francois: Up to here. See the shoreline here?
Chief Allan A.: Uh-huh.
Francois: Water's been going down quite a bit, huh?
Chief Allan A.: That's for sure, yep.
Francois: Yep.
Francois: Though we're over 100 mile from McMurray, we are affected, definitely affected. This river here, as we know it…it's not the same anymore, not the same. When I travel on the river, I better bring fresh drinking water.
Francois: You just about nearly have to have a U.N. envoy, somebody from the U.N. monitoring what's happening, like they're monitoring Afghanistan. Who is monitoring the river here? It's our survival. It's the survival of our people. If you kill the river, then where are we going to turn to?
Narrator: In 1899, Francois Paulette's grandfather signed a treaty with the British Crown. As a 22-year-old chief in the 1970s, Paulette went to the Supreme Court to argue Canada had let down its side of the bargain. He won the case. His victory changed Canadian law and launched the era of native land claims.
Narrator: Francois brings Allan Adam to a meeting of the Dene nation, whose chiefs come from settlements stretching to the Arctic Ocean. Like Fort Chipewyan, they're all downstream of the tar sands.
Chief Allan A.: A lot of chiefs have differences when it comes to issues related to the community. The only one common goal that they could relate to…is land and then water, the land that ties the people together, and the water that makes you survive off the land.
Chief Allan A.: 40 years development has been going on in the region, and we feeling the impacts here today. Another 40 years of development in the region, you're going to feel the impacts of it tomorrow.
Chief Allan A.: So you have to start intervening and start raising your voices. But if I am left to fight this battle alone, and without the support of others, it's sadly to say that I have no other option but to make an agreement with the industry and government.
Narrator: Once upon a time, nobody noticed the tar sands. But this is now the biggest construction project in the world; it's hard to miss.
Narrator: An article in National Geographic describes tar sands refineries as "dark Satanic mills." Canadian politicians strike back.
Steven Harper: Carbon emissions from coal-fired electricity in the United States are 40 times the emissions of the oil sands.
Michael I.: Am I proud of this industry? You bet! It's a world leader. We just need to make it better. But I don't take lessons from the National Geographic!
Narrator: In 2008, thousands of migrating ducks land on a lake of toxic waste. The disaster makes headlines around the world. As the label "dirty oil" begins to stick, the industry shoots back with a reminder: the world needs energy, and Canada needs the tar sands.
Don Thompson: Even in the heart of the recession, the oil sands were spinning in the order of 20 billion dollars a year into the Canadian economy. At that level, you will have employment in Canada dependent on oil sands of about 450,000 people. The oil sands are a key to the Canadian economy.
Narrator: Since 9/11, Canada has become the most important supplier of foreign oil to America. It's a market Canada can't afford to lose. With dirty oil under fire, Premier Ed Stelmach shifts into gear and flies to Washington, launching a 25 million dollar PR campaign with a speech in the U.S. Congress.
Narrator: Washington insider Paul Michael Wihbey clears the path to American decision makers.
Paul Michael W.: The largest proven reserves in the world is Alberta, eight times the reserve number that exists in Saudi Arabia.
Paul Michael W.: How are you, sir?
Premier Ed S.: Excellent.
Paul Michael W.: Welcome to Washington.
Premier Ed S.: Well, thank you. Thanks a lot.
Paul Michael W.: It's a pleasure to have you, and we hope to make these two days and a half one of the best experiences of your life.
Premier Ed S.: Oh, yeah, the hospitality's been-
Paul Michael W.: As OPEC declines, Alberta, Western Canada rises. There's an ascendancy in Western Canada that's extraordinary, and American politicians are beginning to recognize that.
Premier Ed S.: There is no greater partnership than the one we have between Alberta and the United States. The pace of oil sands' expansion is positioning Alberta to become one of the world's top oil producers. We've barely scratched the surface of the oil sands' development, and we're just getting started.
Narrator: Premier Ed Stelmach makes the hard sell, but when international media like Al-Jazeera visit the tar sands, they get a softer environmental message.
Steve Chao: So you remember what this place used to be like?
Don Thompson: It used to be a big dirt hill.
Steve Chao: What do we have here?
Don Thompson: That's a happy poplar tree.
Don Thompson: There's no doubt we have an environmental footprint. We strip trees, we strip soil, and we mine the oil sands. But on the other hand, we put the sand back in the mine pits, we put the reclamation material on top, and we create landscapes like this.
Narrator: Not long ago, this was a massive strip mine. Now, the hole is filled in, and buffalo graze on reclaimed land alongside tailings ponds of toxic waste. Noise cannons keep migrating birds from landing. When the oil runs out, industry promises that this is what they'll leave behind: picnic grounds and replanted forests.
Francois: This must sound like you're in Afghanistan or Iraq, huh? And this goes on every day, nonstop. Incredible.
Francois: We're in Treaty A territory, and what that means is that…if they're going to do anything with the land, they need to ask us. We never sold it to them. We never gave it up. We never surrendered it. But people still think that they have the right come in here and do what they want to do.
Jack Woodward: Under Canadian law and British Imperial law, that the Cree people owned that part of Alberta. The most important promise in the treaty is that the Cree Indians would have the right to hunt and fish…except now, if you look at Northern Alberta, particularly Northeastern Alberta, where the tar sands developments are, the developments are so vast…the destruction of the landscape is so extensive…that it's now fair to see the treaty rights themselves can no longer be meaningfully exercised, because the habitat of the animals is being destroyed right before our eyes.
David Schindler: There have been papers sort of come out recently, showing that you can't reclaim the aquifers, that you can't reclaim the wetlands, that the costs of any reasonable reclamation are so high that there would be no money made on the oil sands.
Narrator: And this is only the beginning. New extraction methods are beginning to reach deposits too deep to strip mine. The wilderness affected by industry will dwarf what we see today.
David Schindler: I don't think people realize how big the sacrifice zone is going to be. It's an area slightly bigger than Greece, a third the size of Norway.
Premier Ed S.: The oil sands are a very unique resource. An oil sands development does bring unique environmental challenges. Alberta's oil sands are concentrated near the earth's surface. Contaminants are picked up naturally through waterways and enter the ecosystem. As a province, we monitor water quality carefully, and to date, all of the data shows no long-term effects of water quality from oil sands development.
Andrew: In the mining operation, you're exposing all kinds of stuff to the air and to the wind. You dig the bitumen out of the ground, they've got to take out all of the coke in it, you've got to add a whole bunch of hydrogen, and that's a very energy-intensive process, so you've got lots of air pollution coming from that.
Andrew: A third of the country's nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxides are all coming from oil and gas facilities in Alberta, and then a majority of all that is coming from the Fort McMurray area.
Andrew: For every barrel of bitumen, you create a barrel and a half of toxic waste that goes into a tailings pond. Those tailings ponds are all made of unlined sand, and the majority of them are leaking.
Andrew: The whole stream of production from beginning to end is very industrial, very messy, and has got pollutants associated with each and every stage.
Rob Renner: We have some very large industrial projects here, that to the uninformed eye, appear to be out of control. The fact of the matter is that this is one of the most highly-regulated industries that there is in the world. This is anything but the Wild West.
Narrator: Confused? You'll just have to trust the Minister. He controls the program to monitor water pollution in the tar sands, but the results are confidential. It's paid for by the oil companies, and they own the data. All the public hears is that year after year, water quality in the Athabasca River is unchanged. It's just not a problem.
Milt Fastner: Welcome to the Mouth Zone. I'm your host, Milt Fastner. Today, we're talking about the Alberta oil sands. Here to defend the project is industry spokesman Lance Farmsborough. And from Ecological Sense, Bruce Katz.
Milt Fastner: Now, Lance, it says here that the oil sands are an essential organ in the world's economy. Why do you think Bruce wants to see the world waiting for a transplant, and Canada as a useless meat sack?
Lance F.: Well, Milt, if you were to listen to Bruce's side, you would think that this project is a monster, but far from it! Ladies and gentlemen, oil has become an essential part of our everyday life. It powers our cars, it heats our homes, and allows us to have that comfortable lifestyle we all demand.
Lance F.: Now, let's be honest. We need oil for everything we do. We wouldn't last one second without it. Remember the days when we had to send our hard-earned money to questionable foreign places like Saudi Arabia and Iran? And once we made these deals, they shipped that oil to us in these huge oil tankers that seemed to crash and spill every single week? Well, not anymore, my friends! Canada has been blessed with billions of barrels in our very own backyard. All we have to do is scoop it up, process it a little bit, and it's ready for market.
Lance F.: Once that oil is extracted from the sand, we put it right back, and now it's cleaner than it's ever been. The animals are happy, and the land is perfect. Truly, this is Canada's national treasure.
Milt Fastner: Enlightening, Lance. And bison…mm, bison.
Milt Fastner: Complicated issue; I'm a man for those hairy bison. I think we'll just have to get the point to Lance on this one. Thanks for watching us mouth off on The Mouth Zone.
Speaker 30: I wanted to begin by forcing the two of you to explain the real differences of opinion here.
Narrator: Professor Schindler is worried about the confusion, so he's challenged government scientists to a debate at the University of Alberta.
Dr. Preston M.: We don't disagree that there are impacts. Well, obviously, there are. What we fail to focus on is the relevance of that impact. It can't be none. I mean, the city of Edmonton has a waste water discharge.
David Schindler: Suncor alone burns a million tons of coke a year. That represents a hell of a lot of toxic elements. Almost any toxic element on the periodic table is in coke.
Speaker 30: With all of this competing data, how are ordinary citizens able to digest that?
David Schindler: I think industry likes it that way. As long as there's confusion, there won't be any regulation. I've seen this with phosphates in detergents, with acid rain, with Big Tobacco; we're seeing it as we speak with climate. It's a standard industry tactic. Get all sorts of voices so there's a muddle; it appears that the teeter-totter swings; it doesn't tip one way. And every year that you can get away with lack of regulation is a few billion more bucks in your pocket. After 40 years, I'm pretty sick of seeing this tactic fool people time after time. Maybe we all did just fall off a turnip truck!
Narrator: Schindler's research is the first independent project to study pollution in the water flowing through the tar sands. As the first results come in, Schindler and his team have made an alarming discovery. They're in Fort Chipewyan with the news.
Narrator: Chief Adam and his community were always told that whatever was in their water was natural. Most tar sands operations are near the Athabasca River. As long as the government claims toxins in the water are from natural erosion of bitumen formations along the Athabasca River, industry can't be blamed.
Narrator: But Schindler and his team have found a way to test the natural runoff claim. They sampled in winter. Half the year, the tar sands are covered by snow and ice. What ends up in the snow can only get there from smokestacks and dust from the mines. If Schindler could detect toxins in the snow, they must be from industrial activity.
Narrator: Within a 50 kilometer radius, that's exactly what the researchers found.
Dr. Erin: This is what the pots of snow look like when you melt them when you're close to development. So, when you pour this through, this is the color of the filter. You can see that there's particulate all in the snow water that we're pouring through.
Dr. Erin: We found that there was a substantial amount of particulate that were dropping within 50 kilometers of Suncor and Syncrude operating facilities, and within that 50 kilometer circle, there was 11,400 metric tons of particulate deposited during only four months of snowfall, and 64 percent of that was bitumen.
Dr. Erin: If that was released as a pulse, you could have snow melt runoff that is equivalent to a major oil spill repeated annually.
Dr. Gina: I looked into some of the types of cancers that are particularly elevated in Fort Chipewyan, and it's interesting…a lot of them have been linked to hydrocarbon exposures; in other words, exposures to oil and petroleum products.
Dr. Gina: Leukemia and lymphoma, biliary tract cancer, and surprisingly, a very rare cancer called soft-tissue sarcoma. As a physician, I've practiced medicine for many years…I've actually never seen a case of soft tissue sarcoma. It's a tragic and very…almost always fatal cancer. And it was surprising even two cases in a town this small.
Narrator: Recently, the Alberta government did look at the rate of cancer in Fort Chipewyan. The results confirmed what whistleblower John O'Connor had feared: a significantly higher rate of cancer than expected. The study also turned up rare forms of cancer associated with oil pollution.
Narrator: But then the Alberta government issued a statement reassuring the people of Fort Chipewyan. Apparently, there was no cause for alarm.
Narrator: Dave Tuccaro grew up in Fort Chipewyan. He didn't show up in the Alberta cancer study because he came to Los Angeles to battle his leukemia.
Dave Tuccaro: Survivor rolls over the cancer, so I just started tattooing my body up. Got the angel overlooking, and then this one up here on my neck, and the date I was diagnosed with cancer.
Interviewer: It's very rare for people your age to get leukemia.
Dave Tuccaro: My age to get leukemia, yeah. That's what they were saying. That's what my doctor told me. And I never really thought about it, but after a while, I was thinking, maybe something did cause it and I just didn't know what; I was trying to piece it together.
Dave Tuccaro: I remember going to school there. I remember going fishing. I remember going camping. I remember boating…just anything in the water.
Narrator: Stocking up on winter meat is a way of life for the Dene in these isolated communities. The buffalo wintering grounds are 300 kilometers downriver from Fort Chipewyan, and Francois Paulette worries that even their meat carries poisons from the tar sands.
Chief Allan A.: This is a very unique life that we continue to live, and it's in jeopardy. We have rights to hunt, we have rights to trap, and we have rights to livelihood. What good is all that rights going to be when everything is taken away from us? We will have a treaty with all our rights, with no place to practice it at.
Chief Allan A.: When you start hearing the kids in the community saying that they hate the way the shovel sounds when it hits the sand, because we're burying another community member…you could tell what already is being embedded into the heads of the younger generation, because we were not used to it.
Chief Allan A.: It's a tough challenge to be a elected leader, where you speak out for the people. Any leader should speak out for the people.
Chief Allan A.: Been gone just about three weeks from home already. I think I went home the other day for seven hours, and I was back on a plane again, going back out. Hmm. Sometimes I think it's a losing cause.
Francois: You're a leader. You're in the front line. Maybe if I was [inaudible 00: 35: 57], maybe I would feel that, too. But at the end, I think nature has its way of doing business with these people.
Speaker 35: The United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen has opened with fanfare and a challenge to world leaders to seize the moment.
Prince Charles: As our planet's life support system begins to fail, our children and grandchildren will ask, not what our generation said, but what it did.
Hillary Clinton: The time is at hand for all countries to reach for common ground and take an historic step, and the United States is ready to do our part.
Narrator: World leaders gather in Copenhagen to keep planetary warming below the tipping point of two degrees. To do it, they need a deal to cut carbon emissions globally.
Peter M.: The government is indeed considering weaker emissions targets for Alberta's oil sands.
Terry Milewski: The news that the Cabinet is even talking about weaker emissions rules for oil and gas did not go over well in Copenhagen.
Speaker 40: We think it's unacceptable that one of the richest nation on the face of this planet is not willing to do its fair share.
Narrator: In Kyoto, Canada promised to cut greenhouse gas emissions by six percent. Now, 20 years later, the tar sands are booming and emissions are up 26 percent. If the tar sands were a country, their emissions would equal Switzerland's.
Dr. Bill: If you set out to devise a method to warm the planet, you couldn't come up with a better one than what Canada is doing at the tar sands. You've got to bring in energy to heat this stuff up enough to get it out. Once you've spent all that energy getting it out, then you refine it into gasoline and burn it again. If any significant portion of that tar sands continues to get exploited and burnt, then we'll simply have too much carbon in the atmosphere.
Dr. Tim F.: For every barrel of oil that you get from the tar sands, you release three times as much carbon as you do from a conventional oil well in Texas or Saudi Arabia…so there's a big carbon liability there.
Dr. Tim F.: If the whole world followed Canada down that route, which we could…we've all got oil shales or other carbon-dense forms of hydrocarbons…we would cook the Earth.
George Monbiot: Canada has, in the run up to Copenhagen, done a great deal to sabotage the efforts of the other nations, and it did more damage to any other nation on Earth. And it seems so strange to think, what is the biggest threat to a good global deal at the moment? It's not Saudi Arabia. It's not the U.S. It's not even China. Canada? How could it be Canada?
Speaker 44: 3, 2, 1…the winner is Canada! Canada moves up to worst place, tied with worst place with Ukraine, which has the worst target in the entire world.
Steven Harper: It is important that we have good environmental record and good environmental image. I think often the case is that the oil sands has gotten more criticism than it deserves.
Dr. Andrew W.: It's very clear to me that the current administration believes that the tar sands are the economic engine for Canada's future prosperity. So, we have lost credibility internationally. There's no question that Canada is viewed as a laggard and an obstructionist on the international scene.
Dr. Bill: Copenhagen's a very good example of why you can't treat climate change like all the other political issues that we face. Normally, we move slowly as we address political issues, and that makes sense. In this case, that doesn't work so well, because your opponent is not the Republicans. It's not the Chinese. It's not…your opponent is physics, and physics isn't going to slowly change its mind. And it's making its presence felt. The Arctic is melting, glaciers are melting, drought and flood are spreading relentlessly. The world is shifting in the most profound ways we've ever seen it in human civilization. Political reality is very powerful, but it's trumped by scientific reality.
Francois: Oil is money! Water is life! And water is being destroyed right before our eyes! Address your Parliament. Talk to these industries from this part of the world that are investing in that dirty oil!
Naomi: The tar sands are poisoning the climate and putting the world in danger, but the first people who are paying the price for the tar sands are first nations people in Canada.
Speaker 48: When I say [inaudible 00:41:24]. When I say shut down, you say tar pit. Shut down!
Speaker 49: Tar pit!
Speaker 48: Shut down!
Speaker 49: Tar pit!
Narrator: The talks are gridlocked. Scientists at Copenhagen are appalled.
Dr. Hans J S: We are not on track here in Copenhagen yet. With the emissions reduction pledges on the table, it's heading for a 3.5, up to 3.8 degrees warming globally, which is clearly beyond the red line. All types of major risk will kick in, and this is a very scary picture.
Narrator: Time is running out. 100,000 people gather to keep hope alive. Indigenous delegates from around the world lead the march. But even as they protest on the streets, the battle is being lost behind closed doors.
Desmond Tutu: We want to appeal to the goodness in people. We are actually made for goodness. And that is the thing that inspires people, that it is quite fantastic to have 100,000 people go on the streets. That must make your heart leap!
Narrator: Non-governmental organizations are locked out of the conference center. There is still no agreement on the table. The Conference of Hope produces an empty agreement. For Francoise Paulette, a bitter disappointment.
Dr. Andrew W.: In Copenhagen, there was no agreement. What there was was an accord that countries could choose to take note of if they so desired. We're on target, assuming that people meet their aspirational volunteer Copenhagen targets, for a three degree warming this century…probably more.
Narrator: After the defeat of Copenhagen, Paulette searches for allies beyond Canada's borders. He travels to New York for the annual gathering of indigenous leaders at the U.N. Paulette hopes to forge an alliance with the most influential man in Hollywood. Fellow Canadian James Cameron is at the event to screen his environmental blockbuster Avatar, the biggest box office success in history.
Narrator: As it turns out, Cameron's film is shining a light on Alberta. There are some remarkable parallels.
Todd C.: What was going on in Alberta was hugely informative and building and designing this environment for Jim, and what resonated with people was posing questions in a situation that, in a fantasy film, seems like another world or another situation…another civilization's problem. Without saying directly that mining with the tar sands are bad, they are necessary at this point to continue the way the world is operating, but the world does not have to continue to operate like this forever.
Francois: Francois Paulette, nice to meet you.
James Cameron: Francois, it's a pleasure.
Francois: Just want to give you a gift of an exchange for meeting you…this is a business card holder.
James Cameron: Thank you. Beautiful.
Francois: I've been around for a long time. I've been a chief in the '70s for my tribe. We're in a Treaty 8 area. We're definitely affected and down the river, the Great Slave Lake…there's a beautiful lake…the whole McKenzie Corridor down to the Arctic Ocean is being affected by this, and it's going to destroy our whole culture.
Francois: Avatar, just one aspect of it, but the real work that is happening is taking place…it's in our territory.
James Cameron: Look, I can't go in front of the media and talk about this because I'm not an expert. This is a situation where we should go there, get our feet on the ground and see what's going on; meet with people that are affected; see it with my own eyes; then, I can say I'm involved…that I will be involved.
Francois: Chief Adam? It's Francois. Oh, crazy here! I'm in this big city of New York. Yeah, everything went really well today. We had a very good, interesting meeting with James Cameron. He very strongly says, I'm going to be going up there to your territory, so I think he really wants to see the landscape…the delta, the big river, the buffalo park and buffaloes, and probably the big river and the big rapids, and so on.
Francois: I'm leaving in the morning. I'll be headed up to Yellow Knife. Okay, (foreign language).
Narrator: Francois can't believe his luck. But then, a breaking story in the Gulf of Mexico changes everything.
Narrator: BP's Deepwater spill is a turning point for big oil, a wake up call for the tar sands.
Speaker 53: About five tanker trucks worth of oil is leaking into the Gulf every day. Despite the latest efforts, oil continues to spew into the Gulf. Oil is now expected to reach the shores of Alabama and Florida.
Bobby Jindal: The day that we've been fearing is upon us today.
Anderson Cooper: There's a thick layer of crude oil over this entire part of the wetlands. You can just reach down, and you just coat your glove when you put your hand in it.
Speaker 56: I'm mad as hell, because my children have no future now.
Speaker 57: How do you recover from that?
Speaker 58: You don't. You don't.
Narrator: Not since the wreck of the Exxon Valdez has an oil company faced such global outrage. Oil production everywhere is suddenly in the spotlight.
Speaker 59: With crude oil still oozing across the Gulf, the governments of Canada and Alberta are now promoting the oil sands as a safe, green alternative to offshore drilling.
Premier Ed S.: Believe me, legislators in the U.S. Capitol were interested to hear from us.
Narrator: With the spill still gushing, Stelmach writes an open letter to the American people. "A good neighbor lends you a cup of sugar. A great neighbor supplies you with 1.4 million barrels of oil per day."
David Schindler: An oil spill like the one in the Gulf is a very rare occurrence, and it's a huge disaster when it happens. The oil sands pollutant, I would say, given the stripping of watersheds, is a virtual certainty.
David Schindler: The nearest thing that I could think of that could happen in the oil sands would be a tailings pond dike breaking. That's the concentrated toxins after the water is used 19 or 20 times, as they're always proud to tell us. If one of those breached, we'd forget all about what's happening in the Gulf right now, and the probability of that happening is low, but it's not zero.
Andrew: We know for sure that the oldest tailings dike, filled by Suncor back in 1965, has been leaking continually into the Athabasca River for more than 30 years. The management of this waste has become a huge issue. The ponds keep on growing and growing. They get higher and higher and higher to accommodate more and more waste.
Andrew: We could now fill enough 45 gallon drums to stretch to the moon and back 15 times.
Ronald W.: Throughout history, really, and even going back into pre-history, human beings often make a discovery or an invention that seems to offer wonderful things. But the very things that make them thrive and grow and prosper are the same things that bring them down in the end; that's a classic progress trap.
Ronald W.: I think that's very apparent in modern times. I mean, we have bought into industrial civilization on a big scale. We actually believe that things will always get bigger and better, and everybody will get richer. And that's not only a progress trap, but it's also what is sometimes called an ideological pathology, an idea that is deadly.
Ronald W.: The idea that technology will always solve our problems, whereas in fact what we're doing is inventing new technologies to get out of old messes, which, in turn, create ever more complex and more dangerous messes.
Narrator: One of the most powerful environmental organizations in the U.S. is the Natural Resources Defense Council, a million members strong and supported by celebrities like Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio. Their low-carbon fuel standard passed in California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger bans dirty oil like Canada's.
Arnold S.: Today I'm signing an executive order to establish the world's first carbon standard for transportation fuels.
Ronald H.: Today, California is doing what it does best: reinventing the future and leading the world in protecting the environment.
Narrator: In NRDC's San Francisco office, Roland Hwang is rolling out the low-carbon campaign to states across the U.S., but oil companies are spending millions pushing back.
Ronald H.: The oil industry, as a whole, is probably the largest industry, globally speaking…and quite frankly, extraordinarily powerful. Why California adopted a low-carbon fuel standard is, first and foremost, to meet California's goals to reduce global warming pollution. Without tackling the oil industry, all of our battles to solve global warming will not be successful.
Narrator: Hwang is on a fact-finding mission to Alberta with NRDC board members, who decide how to spend millions in campaign funding.
Ronald H.: How long has this line here been in operation?
Pilot: I believe it's about '96 or '97 when it opened up.
Narrator: American refineries are processing more heavy oil than ever before, and in the future, most of that oil will come from here.
Ronald H.: This is something else.
Tom Roush: It's far worse! The extent of it…it's just overwhelming. It's just amazing, and this is only one, and they're all over the place…so, it's much larger.
Narrator: Back in San Francisco, Roland joins a media campaign targeting Alberta's tourism industry.
Ronald H.: Hey Michael, it's Roland at NRDC. How you doing?
Michael M.: I'm good, Roland. I'll buzz you in.
Narrator: Michael Marx is known as the Cashier, pooling the money from anti-tar sands groups.
Michael M.: So we have our Facebook, we have Twitter, we've got this on YouTube, as well. So let's take a look at this.
Anti-TS video: The tar sands in Northern Alberta, over 42,000 acres of contaminated tailings ponds, toxic lakes large enough to be seen from outer space. The Alberta tar sands are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. Producing a barrel of tar sands oil emits three times more greenhouse gases than producing a barrel of conventional oil. Alberta, Canada…thanks to the tar sands, it's not what it used to be! Thinking of visiting Alberta? Think again.
Ronald H.: That's really creative, yeah. That's really perfect.
Michael M.: Somebody has got to wake up up there, and we're hoping it's the tourism industry.
Ronald H.: Right, right. You're absolutely right. They've got a lot at stake.
Michael M.: They've got a lot at stake, and actually, we're going to create it now so they have much more at stake.
Narrator: Marx has bought billboards in major American cities, but it's a tough sell.
Speaker 67: I have no idea about any oil spill or…tar sand, did you say?
Michael M.: Do you know where Alberta is?
Speaker 68: No. Where is it?
Michael M.: It's in Western Canada.
Speaker 68: Oh, okay.
Speaker 67: Cheap energy is what separates from the Third World. This is obviously an environmental wacko. They're idiots.
Michael M.: We've got hundreds of emails and calls from irate Albertans. One of the things that's happened as a result of this is, suddenly, they're paying much more attention to the tar sands.
Premier Ed S.: We've seen that the truth is often the first casualty in this type of propaganda campaign. We absolutely will fight back through promoting Alberta's story, using accurate information.
Steve Gaudet: This area used to be a mine. The distant hills…it has now been reclaimed to a forest. It's really important to us people hear about the good work that we're doing.
Joy Romero: Oil sands is a relatively new science. We're learning things continuously and improving things every day.
Speaker 71: We use that instead of fresh water to produce our oil, because we don't need to collect any water from the lakes, from the rivers.
Steve Gaudet: Well, there's two squirrels chasing each other for a cone over here. Sorry to interrupt. It's pretty exciting that they're returning. We want to leave restored land that people are proud to see for generations after that.
Gen. Wald: For those that think we can just wean ourselves from fossil fuel energy today because of environmental issues, it's just totally impossible to do. Our economy would totally collapse.
Gen. Wald: We import in the United States 12 million barrels a day out of the 22 million we use. Energy is critical to the security of the West. After terrorism, and then a nuclear or biological weapon getting in the hands of a terrorist, it is probably the number one threat we face today.
Lindsey Graham: Very excited to know that our good friends here in Alberta have an oil supply that can help fuel America for years to come. Full speed ahead when it comes to oil sands development.
Narrator: The U.S. consumes a quarter of the world's oil production, but as supplies dwindle, the fuel filling American gas tanks is getting dirtier. Canada's tar sands are now the number one source of imported oil. But could that be about to change?
Ronald H.: There are emerging technologies, advanced bio-fuels, bio-fuels made from waste…electric vehicles, hydrogen, natural gas…there is no shortage of technology.
Narrator: This is Amyris, a company making low-carbon bio-fuels with genetically modified yeast, an oil refinery like no other.
Dr. Neil: Instead of a yeast that turns sugar into ethanol, we can make a yeast that turns sugar into hydrocarbons, and does so very, very efficiently. Instead of starting from a barrel of oil, we'll start from a barrel of cane juice. The difference between a yeast that produces diesel and a yeast that produces our jet fuel, for example…three enzymes.
Dr. Neil: These are the types of robots we use to industrialize microbiology. This is an example of a way we've become more efficient, right? This is a colony picker.
Dr. Neil: This is a product straight out of fermentation, okay? If I want to optimize that for use in diesel engines, I do a chemical hydrogenation step. This is diesel fuel.
Narrator: Vinod Khosla was Amyris's first big investor. He made his fortune in the telecommunications revolution, which ended the reign of AT&T and other traditional companies.
Vinod Khosla: In five or six years, AT&T went from one of the biggest companies in the United States to almost going bankrupt. And so, that can happen in this business. It's happened before.
Narrator: AT&T missed the tipping point. Khosla didn't. He hopes to make his next billion with Amyris.
Vinod Khosla: My view of the world is very simple: the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity. There is already a national renewable fuel standard in the U.S. At two dollars or three dollars a gallon, that's a almost a hundred billion dollar marketplace. That's a very large marketplace that doesn't exist today that will exist. It's a market opportunity.
Dr. Daniel: The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stone, and the same thing is going to be true of the Petroleum Age.
Dr. Daniel: We are talking about a future where carbon is important. In fact, the future we're moving to…some people might cringe when I say this…but we're going to be tracking every molecule and every electron. We are going to transition to other energy options, and the question is…how fast? In what way? In what form?
Narrator: But Alberta is not planning for that kind of future. Every major oil company on the planet is now building in the tar sands. Production will triple by 2020. The first wave of investment came from companies: BP, Exxon, Shell and Total. Now, it's countries, like China, India, and South Korea, pouring in the cash.
Narrator: Even a country renowned for environmental responsibility is investing. Norway has promised the world it will be carbon-neutral in a generation, but they've got a problem. Norway's economy is built on oil and gas, and with North Sea deposits almost exhausted, state-owned Statoil is hunting the planet in search of new reserves. Now, Statoil is betting its survival on the tar sands.
Narrator: It's Norway's National Day. Oil production has made this one of the richest societies on the planet.
Speaker 75: What do you expect to be happening after the meeting with [inaudible 01:03:30] tomorrow?
Francois: I will try to impress them that their money that you're investing is killing our way of life. These people here? They don't know that. The elected government...
Francois: What do the people like in Norway?
Speaker 75: They like nature.
Francois: They like nature. If they like nature, why are they killing where I live?
Speaker 75: Yes.
Speaker 76: (foreign language)…is Chief Francois Paulette, First Nation representative from the Dene nation in Northern Canada.
Francois: What you do with your money is your business, but when you begin to spend your money in my territory, that disrupts and destroys our way of life, our civilization…then that becomes my business.
Francois: My investors…the water, the air, the medicines, the plants, the four-leggeds…the buffalo…have invested in our civilization for thousands and thousands of years that has sustained our way of life.
Francois: Fundamentally, I think your nation is rich in protecting the environment, and you need to practice that ethical reality where the tar sands are. (foreign language)…thanks for allowing me to speak here. I thank you very much. (foreign language).
Narrator: The motion to withdraw from the tar sands fails. Even Norwegians, famous for their green convictions, are turning a blind eye to the consequences of dirty oil. They know that soon, the world will run out.
Narrator: Geologist David Hughes is a voice in the wilderness. He's a global authority on energy supplies, and he believes that demand has finally outstripped supply. The world will never produce more oil than it does today. We're beginning the long decline, a crisis we now call…peak oil.
David Hughes: Oil is basically fossilized sunshine, and 90 percent of all the oil ever burned has been burned since 1960, and half of it has been burned since 1986. So if you look at 500 million years to create three trillion barrels of recoverable oil, we're burning 14,000 years of fossilized sunshine every day.
David Hughes: If we keep burning it as fast as we can extract it, which is sort of our modus operandi right now, 80 percent of it will be gone by 2050, 98 percent of will be gone by 2100.
Narrator: Hughes has retired to a remote island in Western Canada to prepare for this future. He's getting off the grid.
David Hughes: I have a dug well just back over there, not too far from the pond. It's about 15 feet deep, with a one horsepower pump in it. That pump goes into a two inch pipeline, which is buried all the way up the hill to the house, and the pipeline actually goes through the house and up to a thousand gallon holding tank. So, I can run a 3,000 watt Honda generator for about 50 minutes or so, and that's enough water to last me for a month and a half.
David Hughes: Living on an island here, everything is brought in, including gasoline and diesel fuel, by ferry. And I really like machines; they make my life a lot easier. But water is absolutely vital.
David Hughes: We've globalized the planet. We've hit planetary limits: energy, soil, water. Let-her-rip capitalism is all about infinite growth, and it worked pretty well, because we always had some place to expand, right? But now we've globalized the planet, and there's nowhere else to go. You can be sure when the limits are hit, the sheer political fallout is going to be horrific.
Ronald W.: This idea that the world is infinite and we can do what he want in it because there will always be enough is deeply rooted in our culture. I think it has the traction of a religious idea. I think that idea not only has permeated North American culture, but it's also spread around the world with the spread of industrial hyper-capitalism. When you're talking about a small planet with far too many people, expecting far too much in it, it is a recipe for the collapse of civilization.
Narrator: The journey James Cameron began with Avatar has finally led him to Canada's tar sands. Time, Oprah, AP, and the New York Times are close behind.
Speaker 78: Papa Whiskey Bravo, plus one, north three north of Curl 8 now.
Speaker 78: All of this land underneath us is oil sand, as far as the eye can see, pretty much in every direction.
Speaker 79: What's your message to Canadians…to North Americans, really…coming to Alberta and checking out the oil sands for yourself?
James Cameron: Well, I think it's that we all need to be aware of these things that affect us all. These are the kinds of things that are brought to my attention because they're real Pandoras. People are saying, that fantasy that you put up on the screen in Avatar…that's my life. That's happening to me right now.
James Cameron: Our society goes in and says, well, what can these natural resources do for me? And what I see everywhere that I go is that it's the indigenous people that step up and say, "We speak for nature," because that's their culture.
James Cameron: Bio-luminescence…they're going back to...
Narrator: Indigenous leaders are gathering in Fort Chipewyan from across the country to stand with the community.
Speaker 80: The name of our community with tar sands, and tar sands is a global subject. It is about the protection of our lands, of our waters, of our rights…for future generations to have healthy environment, healthy people…that's what it's about for us.
David Schindler: This is an example that I usually use. This is a snow sample from our winter sapling. That's near the plant. That's oil scum on top of the snow, and that's what natural snow looks like.
James Cameron: Is that an emission from the refinery, or is that just evaporate from the ponds?
David Schindler: We think it's from the refinery because it's like a bullseye toward those upgraders.
Dr. Kevin: Emissions are on a national scale already. This is not a backyard operation, and of course, it gets into the ecosystem.
James Cameron: The industrial responsibility is only going to grow logarithmically because of the size of the resource and the scale at which they plan to develop it.
Narrator: Cameron leaves with an advance copy of Schindler's research on toxins in the Athabasca River.
James Cameron: Okay, great.
David Schindler: Full suite.
James Cameron: I wish I had more time. This all sort of got shoehorned in to what looked like a simple schedule.
James Cameron: How you doing?
Speaker 82: Good. [inaudible 01:12:33]
James Cameron: Oh, I'm not going to take any scripts today. Thanks.
Speaker 82: All right, thank you. Nice to meet you, Mr. Cameron.
James Cameron: Hey, how you doing?
Speaker 83: [inaudible 01:12:37] Do you have a reaction to that?
James Cameron: It's very promising. [inaudible 01:12:44].
James Cameron: The people in Fort Chipewyan are afraid to drink their own water. They're afraid to eat the fish. They're afraid of the river. They're afraid to let their kids swim in the river. The idea of that is appalling to me, and for a community to live in fear like that, we need to look into this, to do the science, and to make sure that the science is transparent, that it's open to the public, that it's not funded by industry, but independent…because we're only at the beginning of it. Only two or three percent of the tar sands deposits are currently being mined, so imagine what that could look like going forward.
James Cameron: You guys are going to be out in the center of a spotlight here that's going to be a world spotlight.
Narrator: Professor Schindler's research is complete. The findings are disturbing. The people of Fort Chipewyan will be the first to hear them. Schindler's team has discovered cancer-causing heavy metals in the entire ecosystem, reaching as far north as Fort Chipewyan itself.
David Schindler: The metals that we're focusing on here are the 13 metals-
Narrator: For the next hour, Schindler presents the results. Tar sands plants are releasing 13 toxic heavy metals into the river, including arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium, and cadmium.
David Schindler: One thing that is really odd is that while industry is denying that anything is going into the river, they have to report their emissions to Environment Canada. They've tripled the output of mercury into the environment between 2001 and 2008. The same thing for lead; lead has gone up fourfold in six years. The same for arsenic; it's gone up threefold in seven years.
David Schindler: We conclude that the oil sands industry is adding substantial amounts of contaminants to the river.
Dr. Gina: The cancer rates in this community are quite a bit higher than would be expected. The rates of leukemias and lymphomas were about three times higher than would be expected. The rates of bile duct cancer were seven times higher than expected. The things that are interesting and worrisome about those particular cancers is that they have already in scientific studies been linked to exposures to petroleum products. I can't say what's causing the cancers here in Fort Chipewyan. There's something…something…causing it. We need to work together to find out what that something is.
Speaker 84: I've got one question here for the four doctors. I know where Suncor's [inaudible 01:16:11] plant is, and your tailing pond is right on top of the bank, and your Athabasca River is right here. Do you believe that there's underground seepage from Suncor's tailing pond into the Athabasca River? Are you sure? You're positive?
David Schindler: Scientists never deal in certainty, but I'd say that probability is 99 percent.
Crystal Ravitz: My name is Crystal Ravitz. I'm 31 years old, and I found out that I might have ovarian cancer…waiting on my ultrasound results. How do you tell your kids that you're sick? How do you explain to them, when they've already lost so many family members to cancer? It's the hardest thing in the world to tell them.
Crystal Ravitz: Something has to be done. I love my home. I love the people around me and I don't want to lose any more people, especially family…especially me for my kids. Thank you.
Speaker 86: Our people have to eat, too. They're working down there. They have to support their families. They have no choice. And I'm kind of stuck because I have a lot of family members down there…but I also don't want to bury them, too.
Speaker 87: I work for the plants. I work for them for five years, so I think we have to all take a hard look at ourselves and say, "Do we want those jobs and keep dying?"
Lionel: Right now, I think there's about 10 or so active mines up and running. I believe there's something like 42 more coming up…42 proposed projects. If the numbers that you guys were showing us today…would that be 42 times in the future? Because I think that the signs are there, the numbers are going up…it's only going to get worse. I don't want to see it go tenfold anymore. I don't want to bury any more friends and family.
Lionel: Earlier on today, I witnessed this whole room stand up all at once. That's strength. That's unity. That's what this town was lacking for the last 40 years. Now, I believe that we have it. Now that we have it, let's use it. Let's do something.
Lionel: I have a two and a half year old son right now. I have one more on the way. I don't want him and my unborn child standing here in my shoes at my age telling the same story again. I want him to tell a totally different story. I want him to say that, "Yeah, we've got industry here, and they're cleaning up the mess that they made."
Narrator: The research is published. The revelations spark a media storm. At first, Alberta's government dismisses the evidence.
Rob Renner: There are compounds in the Athabasca River that are naturally occurring, have been there for thousands of years, and will always be there because of the nature of the geology in that area.
Speaker 89: Okay, but there's a study refuting what you've just said. The study says that humans are causing it. You have nothing to point to that would refute that.
Rob Renner: I don't believe that's what the study said.
David Schindler: It doesn't seem to matter how good a research plan we put together. We're supposed to believe that they have a database out there somewhere that refutes everything that we've shown? Well, we have our data out there for public display. Let's see theirs.
Narrator: Spurred by Schindler's research, Ottawa appoints a high level review panel to examine the quality of water monitoring in the tar sands. This time, the Minister can't push the story away.
Elizabeth D.: The panel was unanimous in its findings. Do we have a world class monitoring system in place? In short, no. We've found that the activities were not always credible because they lacked scientific rigor.
John Baird: For far too long, we have heard concerns about the quality of water downstream of the oil sands. This panel has told us that Canada needs to build a world class environmental monitoring system for the oil sands, and that that need is absolutely urgent. The actions we take will be guided by science and by facts, not by politics and public relations.
Narrator: For Fort Chipewyan's downriver people, good science is a matter of life and death, but their battle isn't over. Monitoring may not be enough.
Lionel: There's about seven or eight active mines right now that are ripping apart Mother Earth right now as we speak, and there's another 26 more coming. So, right now I vow not to let that happen, so people stay…this is a David and Goliath situation. You're going up against these giant companies, these giant corporations. I say, hey, look, once you start thinking of these people as giants, you're going to lose. You're going to fail.
Lionel: If we manage to shut these guys down, which I think will happen, there's going to be about 100 or so years of clean health to do.
Lionel: I foresee Canada apologizing for the death of a race of people, genocide. I foresee the apology of a death of the community of Fort Chipewyan.
George Monbiot: Canada has long enjoyed a reputation of being a peaceful, constructive nation which has played an active role in global treaty making and in creating a community of nations, but there's a huge gulf between that national image and what actually goes on in the country. It strikes me that Canada is suffering from the oil curse, and the oil curse is what happens when a nation comes to rely, to a large extent, upon an important primary resource which can be monopolized by a few people. That's what happens with oil everywhere. And politically, the nation becomes brutalized by that resource and by the politics that surround it.
Protestor: I'm peaceful! Peaceful! I'm peaceful. Where am I going? Where? Where? On the ground? Where can I go?
Protestor 2: You should be ashamed of yourselves! You should have taken this somewhere else, not in our neighborhood! How would you like it for your kids to wake up and come out and see this?
Narrator: It's a world of peak oil. Every year, demand grows by two percent. Global oil reserves are shrinking by seven percent every year. We just can't find enough to replace what we burn.
Hillary Clinton: We're either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dependent on dirty oil from Canada.
Dr. Bill: Of course, the U.S. is equally complicit in the whole thing. We're the junkie that's buying the drugs that Canada is peddling.
Narrator: The tar sands are impossible to ignore. Pressure is mounting to build a huge new pipeline from Alberta to refineries in Texas. It will cement the hold of Canada's dirty oil on the U.S. market for a generation.
Andrew: Ever since we got hooked on oil, we became committed to this idea of exponential growth, because oil permitted it. Oil allowed us to globalize, allowed us to change agriculture…massive population growth, massive concentration of people in cities…that's all been a function of oil.
Speaker 94: It is making us dependent on short term thinking, short term gains, and ignoring the long term downside. We are beggaring the future. We're not only destroying other cultures and other species, but we are beggaring our own descendants by indulging in this oil fuel binge and just burning up the planet's deposit of a liquid hydrocarbon in a matter of 100 years or so.
Andrew: If the development of the tar sands has one good thing about it, it might be that it wakes us up. Business as usual is over. We've run out of time. It is the tipping point. It's telling us that everything about fossil fuel economies have changed…in terms of cost, in terms of scale, and in terms of environmental footprint. Everything has changed.
Andrew: Now, if, as a society, we can respond to that, and say, "You know what? We need to get off this within 30 years," then that would be great. If we don't respond to it, then as a society, we will likely collapse, because you cannot sustain a civilization on a resource as dirty as bitumen.
Francois: There's been this prophecy where vehicles, brand new vehicles, are just abandoned on the highway. Roads everywhere, they're all over the place…just left…people just walking away from them. And there are many prophecies that tells of this era that man has made is going to come to a close.