“The Caterpillar 797B heavy hauler is the world’s biggest truck. It’s taller than a four-storey house, as wide as a tennis court and it removes nearly 35,000 tonnes of oily sand a day from a deep open cast mine in northern Alberta in western Canada.”

John Vidal heads to Canada to ask some tough questions of the oil industry and its intentions in northern Alberta in this Guardian video report. This video is backed up by this report. Some of the photos of the plant and equipment being used are truly stunning - I will certainly be using this when I teach about economies of scale next autumn. The size of the oil sands exploration is astounding and the economic boom hitting this northern wilderness in places such as Fort McMurray beggars belief. But so too are the environmental consequences of this black gold rush

“The downside is ecological devastation and soaring greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that is beginning to alarm Canadians and other western countries trying to reduce the intensity of their carbon economies to counter climate change. Canada, alone, of developed countries, is expecting to increase emissions for 30 years and ignore its commitments to Kyoto.”

Peter Day looked at this issue a couple of years ago and his In Business report is still available on the BBC web site

Image from creative commons licence on Flickr.com