Expensive Oil

Higher oil prices was supposed to lead to the development of cleaner technology, right. Well, why would the oil industry suddenly develop morals?

Naomi Klein's got the story.

It has become fashionable to predict that high oil prices will spark a
free-market response to climate change, setting off an "explosion of
innovation in alternatives," as New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently. Alberta puts the lie to that claim. High prices have indeed led to an R extravaganza, but it is squarely focused on figuring out how to get the dirtiest possible oil out of the hardest-to-reach places. Shell, for instance, is working on a "novel thermal recovery process"--embedding large electric heaters in the deposits and literally cooking the earth.

And that's the Alberta tar sands for you: The industry already contributing to climate change more than any other is frantically turning up the heat.