…back after a summer hiatus that raged out of control.
The B-List is your monthly media supplement of 7 recommended readings from beyond the Briarpatch.
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1. Canada’s Highway to Hell
The world’s last (and dirtiest) oil boom is under way in the boreal forests of Alberta. It’s destroying a wilderness the size of Florida.
By Andrew Nikiforuk
OnEarth Magazine
Fall 2007
To capture just one barrel of oil from this geologic pudding requires brute force. Great machines mow down trees (and all their supporting creatures such as boreal songbirds and woodland caribou), roll up acres of muskeg, drain entire wetlands, and reroute rivers. Next, for each barrel, workers must scoop up two tons of sand and wash the stuff in hot water. Even then the bitumen requires substantial upgrading to remove engine-clogging impurities. It costs more than 10 times as much to produce a flowing barrel of oil in this way than it does to produce a barrel of Saudi light oil. The entire process is fueled by natural gas, and the energy consumed is awesome: Every 24 hours the industry burns enough natural gas to heat four million American homes in order to produce one million barrels of oil.
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/07fal/alberta1.asp
Also: Check out The Dominion’s special issue on the tar sands here:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/issue/48
2. The Business Press & Me: A case of unrequited love
Finance journalists have attacked my book, but I remain devoted to their papers. After all, they supplied the facts I used.
By Naomi Klein
The Guardian
October 25, 2007
On a recent visit to Calgary, Alberta, I was taken aback to see my book on disaster capitalism selling briskly at the airport. Calgary is ground zero of North America’s oil and gas boom, where business suits and cowboy hats are the de facto uniform. I had a sudden sinking feeling: did Calgary’s business class think The Shock Doctrine was a how-to guide - a manual for making millions from catastrophe? Were they hoping for tips on landing no-bid contracts if the US bombs Iran?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2198483,00.html
Plus:
Read The Tyee’s review of Klein’s best-selling new book, The Shock Doctrine
http://thetyee.ca/Books/2007/09/11/ShockTherapy/
Double-plus:
Watch the short film by Alfonso Cuaron, director of Children of Men, inspired by the book.
http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/short-film
3. Neocons on a Cruise
What Conservatives Say When They Think We Aren’t Listening
By Johann Hari
The Independent
July 18, 2007
I am standing waist-deep in the Pacific Ocean, both chilling and burning, indulging in the polite chit-chat beloved by vacationing Americans. A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. “Is he your only child?” I ask. “Yes,” she says. “Do you have a child back in England?” she asks. No, I say. Her face darkens. “You’d better start,” she says. “The Muslims are breeding. Soon, they’ll have the whole of Europe.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/57001
4. The Environmental Keynesian Alternative
By Susan George
September 11, 2007
The only feasible way out of the ecological crisis is a new, environmental Keynesianism, bringing together government, corporations and citizens. The problem is to convince politicians that ecological transformation and environmental practices can pay off politically.
http://www.globalnetwork4justice.org/story.php?c_id=313
5. Introduction to Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
By Richard Heinberg
MuseLetter #185
September 2007
The subtitle of this book, “Waking Up to the Century of Declines,” reflects my impression that even those of us who have been thinking about resource depletion for many years are still just beginning to awaken to its full implications. And if we are all in various stages of waking up to the problem, we are also waking up from the cultural trance of denial in which we are all embedded.
http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/185
6. Reasons Not to Glow
On Not Jumping Out of The Frying Pan Into The Eternal Fires
By Rebecca Solnit
Orion Magazine
July/August 2007
Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them?
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/316
7. Our Grand Ayatollah
Tom d’Aquino rules Canada’s fate. What does he want?
By Murray Dobbin
TheTyee.ca
September 12, 2007
We have come so far down the road of corporate domination of the public policy process that it is now simply taken for granted by both the Liberal and Conservative governments that Mr. d’Aquino will check out the budget and give it his blessing — or instructions on how that blessing can be achieved. This is not to say that he always gets everything he wants. He just gets everything he wants most of the time. He was particularly annoyed, for example, during the Chretien years because Chretien refused to increase military spending.
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/09/12/Ayatollah/
This month’s B-List compiled by Dave Oswald Mitchell
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