Black Bonanza. Canada's Oil Sands and the Race to Secure North America's Energy Future

What if Canada 's so-called environmental nightmare was really an engineering triumph and the key to a stable and sustainable future? For years, Canadians have been hearing nothing but bad news out of the Athabasca Oil Sands. From 20th Century economists decrying it as a perpetual money-loser in the face of more easily-extracted foreign oil to green groups around the world declaring it the world's worst industrial enterprise, sometimes it seems as though no good could ever come from this so-called dirty resource. But what if developing Canada's Oil Sands was the key to bridging the gap between current petroleum-based economies and the alternative energies that aren't read…