Tar and Feather

Now roughly accounting for 10 percent of the United States’ oil imports, the processes for transforming tar sands into fuel for America’s gas guzzlers makes traditional oil production (even into ANWR) look benign in comparison. Devastating for the local (water, forests), regional (air pollution, bird), and global (GHG emissions) environment, Tar Sands is the wrong answer to North America’s energy challenges.

Stealthily, for most Americans, Canada became the United States’ largest oil source, surpassing Saudi Arabia. The source of that largess: the so-called “difficult oil” of the Alberta Tar Sands. (Now, the “preferred” term of many is Oil Sands, the same sort of people who prefer to talk about Death Taxes, Sound Science, and Clean Skies.)
HuffingtonPost