Deep in the Boreal Forest of Canada, Big Oil is on a mission to expand the world's biggest and most destructive industrial project: oil extraction in the tar sands. The Boreal Forest, the "Amazon of the North," is one of world's last large, mostly untouched ecosystems, with hundreds of unique species of birds and mammals depending on it. Many indigenous communities, called First Nations in Canada, also live in and near the forest, where they maintain their cultures. But Big Oil couldn’t care less. Its cohort of giant corporations is planning to strip mine and drill a Florida-sized region of the Boreal in order to extract tar sands oil, lying several feet underground.
Tar sands is an unconventional source of oil and the world's dirtiest fuel. Getting petroleum out of tar sands requires huge inputs of natural gas and water. Producing oil from tar sands emits three times more global warming pollution than producing conventional oil. Also, to make each barrel of oil, companies drain more than 100 gallons of fresh water from the mighty Athabasca River and dump the polluted water into giant toxic ponds, where it will fester for decades, leaching into local groundwater.
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