Ten Books to Contextualize the Alberta Tar Sands

Last year, Nature’s Past, the Canadian environmental history podcast, published a special series called, “Histories of Canadian Environmental Issues”. Each episode focused on a different contemporary environmental issue and featured interviews and discussions with historians whose research explains the context and background. Following up on that project, we are publishing six articles with ActiveHistory.ca that provide annotated lists of ten books and articles that contextualize each of the environmental issues from the podcast series.

The eighth and final episode of the series examined the history of the Alberta tar sands, arguably one of the most significant contemporary Canadian environmental issues. This episode featured a panel of speakers from the 2013 American Society for Environmental History who participated on a plenary titled, “The Fossil Fuel Dilemma: Vision, Values, and Technoscience in the Alberta Oil Sands.” We also interviewed Dr. Andrew Weaver, a climatologist from University of Victoria, member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and a Green Party of BC Member of the Legislative Assembly.