If you have been paying attention to the global debate on climate change, most likely you have come across the tar sands, one of the dirtiest types of crude oil out there.  

Tar sands oil comes from the pristine forests of Canada, surprisingly the largest supplier of foreign oil to the United States. Tar sands is crude oil mixed with sand and rocks meaning it takes much more processing to become a final product like gasoline. Imagine actually squeezing the oil out of rocks and sand and you get a pretty good idea what tar sands is like.

The production and refining process emits 3-5 times more greenhouse gases than conventional oil and uses about twice as much water, a natural resource we can’t waste, as conventional oil drilling. It has been predicted that by 2015 tar sands could emit more greenhouse gases than the nation of Denmark (population 5.4 million).  

Tar sands “oil” is the oil industry’s scheme to scrape the dirtiest, most dangerous waste at the bottom of the barrel.