Some Stupid thoughts

Last October, I reviewed Stupid to the Last Drop for the Winnipeg Free Press. I also offered a review to Alternatives Journal, but its books editor said no thanks.
This month, I was invited to post a short review at the Alternatives blog. Here's what I submitted:
Stupid to the Last Drop isn't quite the "powerful polemic" its publisher touts it as. Still, after reading it, you’ll never look at the oil business the same way.
For me, the book was a real eye-opener regarding what environmental atrocities – and that’s not too strong a word – are being committed in Alberta’s northern oil sands projects.
Big Oil robs the mighty Athabasca River daily for a process that requires up to six barrels of water to produce a single barrel of oil. The process uses more water every day than all of Calgary. The Athabasca is polluted to the point where fish caught downstream smell like rubber, and great swaths of boreal forest and wetlands have been cleared to get at the oil sands below ground level.
All this is, of course, done so North Americans have petroleum for automobiles and factories. Oil reserves have peaked, so now companies are (with hefty government subsidies) spending enormous amounts of money and resources to boil the crude out of black sand.
One question I had to ask myself after reading this book is "Should Big Oil's work in the Athabasca region be allowed (never mind encouraged and subisidized) to expand?" For that matter, should it be allowed to continue?