Last Sunday, Dec. 4, the weekly review/opinion section of The New York Times carried a sober and sobering piece by Robert Semple, a Times editorial writer who seldom gets to sign his pieces. He wrote of the climate meetings taking place this week in Durban, South Africa, where no one seems to think much progress will…
Alberta, Canada is the site of an environmental catastrophe. Tar sands mining has created toxic tailings ponds that can be seen from space and plans have been made to strip away forests and peat lands in an area the size of Florida. Tar sands oil is not conventional crude—it requires as much as four times…