Magazine writer Andrew Nikiforuk wins prestigious award for tar sands book

Andrew Nikiforuk, an award winning Alberta magazine journalist and non-fiction book writer has been awarded the 8th annual Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the U.S.-based Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ). (The award is named after the author of the groundbreaking environmental book Silent Spring, published in 1962 and widely credited with launching the environmental movement.)

Nikiforuk was honoured for his book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent (Greystone Books) and thereby becomes the first Canadian to win the $10,000 (U.S.) award. The book has previously won the 2009 City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize.

[Thanks to Quill & Quire for alerting us to this award.]

From the SEJ website:

Andrew Nikiforuk paints an alarming picture in northern Alberta, Canada: International oil companies clear cut huge swaths of boreal forest, rake off the boggy soil, scoop up giant shovelfuls of oil sands with the largest machines on earth and use copious amounts of boiling water to separate tarry bitumen from the sand so it can be turned into petroleum for your car in Kansas. The toxic residue that comes off the sands is stored behind gigantic dikes that leak, and downstream people and fish are sick.

You can find a link to read an excerpt from Tar Sands at Nikiforuk's website.

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