The 'Inconvenient Truth' About Canada's Oil Industry

In 2003, it became economically feasible to extract oil from Canada's large expanses of tarry sand. By 2004, the oil sands had achieved their projected 20-year production level, and now Canada has the second largest oil reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia. Economic and political fallout aside, the new sprawling oil fields have done irreversible damage to the local ecosystem, traditional economies of native populations, and unexpectedly degraded natural resources.

"The digging -- into an area the size of Maryland and Virginia combined -- has proliferated at gold-rush speed, spurred by high oil prices, new technology and an unquenched U.S. thirst for the fuel. The expansion has presented ecological problems that experts thought they would have decades to resolve."