Tar sands “development” comes with an enormous environmental and human cost. But tar sands opponents—fighting a powerful international industry—are likened to terrorists; government environmental scientists are muzzled; and public hearings are concealed and rushed.

Yet, despite the formidable political and economic power behind the tar sands, many opponents are actively building international networks of resistance, challenging pipeline plans while resisting threats to Indigenous sovereignty and democratic participation.

Featuring contributions from Winona LaDuke, Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Harsha Walia, Jeremy Brecher, Crystal Lameman, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Yves Engler, Cherri Foytlin, Macdonald Stainsby, Yudith Nieto, Greg Albo, Brian Tokar, Jesse Cardinal, Rex Weyler, Jess Worth, and many more.

The editors’ proceeds from this book will be donated to frontline grassroots environmental justice groups and campaigns.

 

Stephen D’Arcy is an associate professor of philosophy at Huron University College, Western University. A long-time social activist and protest organizer, he teaches and writes about democratic theory and practical ethics.

 

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Toban Black is a community organizer and an associate editor for Upping the Anti.

 

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Tony Weis is a professor of Geography at Western University and author of The Global Food Economy.

 

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Joshua Kahn Russell is the US Actions Coordinator for 350.org, a trainer with the Ruckus Society, and a co-editor of Organizing Cools the Planet.

 

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When we invited journalist and activist Naomi Klein to campus in the fall of 2004, five years after the international success of her bestselling first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, she was a literary star. She had recently returned from a trip to Iraq for Harper's Magazine, which would form the foundation of her next book, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. We expected she would draw a crowd, so we moved the lecture into the 400-seat St. Thomas University chapel and set up an overflow room downstairs in the cafeteria. When Klein arrived and discovered the overflow room was full, she insisted on stopping there first to address them in person for a few minutes. She said she is always running late; the people in the overflow room were her people. A version of the talk she gave that evening was published in Harper's.

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Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book on climate change for a general audience. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated fifteen thousand rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time magazine called him “the planet's best green journalist,” and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was “probably the country's most important environmentalist.”

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