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ONCE A GREAT NOTION: The oil sands, climate change, and the future of Canadian energy
Over the last two centuries Canada’s oil sands were first called “an impractical dream”, then “a modern industrial miracle,” and finally “a producer of dirty oil that threatens the planet.”
How did opinions of this great natural resource change so dramatically? What is the truth?
Barr looks back to the oil sands industry’s birth struggles, its explosive growth and its environmental record, then looks ahead to the industry’s future in a time of “net-zero by 2050.” Can the entire industry adapt to the challenge of "de-carbonization"? Can it re-invent itself to become a producer of hydrogen and exciting new zero-emission carbon products?
A western historian who participated in the early years of the industry, Barr provides an inside look at the oil sands industry’s rise to become the world’s fourth largest petroleum producer, its contribution to the employment and education of Indigenous people and its pioneering of a “workplace revolution.” He then wades through the myths and half-truths of the “climate crisis” and weighs the future of Canada’s fossil fuels energy industry.
The development of the oil sands was “once a great notion”. Can it be again?
How did opinions of this great natural resource change so dramatically? What is the truth?
Barr looks back to the oil sands industry’s birth struggles, its explosive growth and its environmental record, then looks ahead to the industry’s future in a time of “net-zero by 2050.” Can the entire industry adapt to the challenge of "de-carbonization"? Can it re-invent itself to become a producer of hydrogen and exciting new zero-emission carbon products?
A western historian who participated in the early years of the industry, Barr provides an inside look at the oil sands industry’s rise to become the world’s fourth largest petroleum producer, its contribution to the employment and education of Indigenous people and its pioneering of a “workplace revolution.” He then wades through the myths and half-truths of the “climate crisis” and weighs the future of Canada’s fossil fuels energy industry.
The development of the oil sands was “once a great notion”. Can it be again?
426 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 1, 2022
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About the author
John J. Barr
5 booksJohn Barr paralleled his 40 year career in journalism, politics and business consulting by writing as a regional historian.
His publications included "The Unfinished Revolt: Essays on Western Independence" (1971) (ed.), "Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of Social Credit in Alberta" (1975), along with contributions to several Western histories including "The Making of the Modern West" (1984) and "Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century" (2004).
His business writing included a memoir of corporate crisis management, "Trainwrecks", (2015) and an upcoming history of the birth of the oilsands, "Five Years That Shook The World."
In 2011 Barr began his work as a novelist with his first novel, a Canadian detective story entitled "Geronimo's Cadillac" (Amazon Kindle books).
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