Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

Alberta's tar sands are definitely a controversial issue. It is claimed that they represent the world's second largest oil reserve and are essential for the maintenance of the United States's oil supply. The profit potential for the companies involved in extracting their bitumen is enormous and they also produce lucrative revenues for Alberta's economy. Tough to sincerely criticize an industry that supplies your citizens with job opportunities and disposable incomes but the pollution generated from the tar sands megaproject is a phenomenon worthy of such criticisms. In Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands, Peter Mettler films the tar sands's impact on the Albertan environment from a helicopter, providing shots of open pit mines, tailings ponds, and industrial complexes, while juxtaposing them with surrounding untouched forests. The images speak for themselves and the environment has been devastated on a massive scale, the landscape resembling a bleak, stark, uninhabitable lunar catastrophe. Information presented: the tar sands operation burns enough natural gas to heat 4 million homes daily; the project could industrialize an area the size of England; per day, routine business releases as much carbon dioxide as every car in Canada; to date, no comprehensive assessment of the project's social, economic, and environmental impact has been undertaken; the Athabasca River, part of the world's third largest watershed, flows through. Mettler's accompanying narration near the film's conclusion suggests that there are alternatives to developments such as these which should be considered considering their environmental impact (solar energy for instance). In order to stop these operations and adopt alternative sources as our principle cultural fuel, it will take a massive social movement with local and international groups uniformly focused on transforming global economies from those that are founded on non-renewable resources to those that are nurtured by sustainable growth.