Writing about melting glaciers, educational shams, peak oil, the destruction of the boreal forest and the Alberta tar sands, Andrew Nikiforuk has earned an enviable reputation as an honest, stylish and provocative Canadian journalist. His work has appeared in numerous major magazines and in both national newspapers.
In 1990 the Toronto Star awarded him an Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy to study AIDS and the failure of public health policy. In the late 1990s, he investigated the social and ecological impacts of intensive livestock industries and the legacy of northern uranium mining for the Calgary Herald. He later wrote important public policy position papers on water diversion in the Great Lakes (2004) and water, energy and North American integration (2007) for the Program on Water Issues at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre.
Andrew Nikiforuk has won seven National Magazine Awards, and his investigative writing has been honoured by the Association of Canadian Journalists. His dramatic book, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig’s War Against Big Oil, won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction in 2002. In 2009, he became the first Canadian to win the prestigious Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the U.S.-based Society of Environmental Journalists for his study of the oil sands in Northern Alberta, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent.
In 2010, he was named the first writer in residence at The Tyee, a leading Western online newspaper. His hope, he said, was “to start more conversations about energy in general, as well as fossil fuels and how they've changed our thinking and our culture. I want to look at the whole concept of energy slaves. Slavery ended just as the age of petroleum began. One barrel of oil does the same amount of work as one human slave working for eight years for a family.
“When people become dependent on slaves or for that matter energy slaves in the form of petroleum, all social relations change. During the nineteenth century slave societies were known for their moral carelessness, brutality and indolence. In a strange sort of way, cheap oil has given us the same sort of frailties and vulnerabilities once associated with slave owners. Nineteenth-century slave holders didn't have much insight about the moral consequences of their dependency on slave labour. Nor do we."
You can find the rest of this arresting conversation here: http://thetyee.ca/News/2010/07/15/Nikiforuk/
Andrew Nikiforuk writes a biweekly environmental column for the Alberta CBC, and a monthly
column on energy issues for Canadian Business. He also edits a newsletter on oil and gas issues, The Land Advocate (www.landadvocate.org) for western Canadian landowners. He and his wife live with their three sons in Calgary, Alberta.
Click Here to View or Hear the Andrew Nikiforuk Interview
Books by Andrew Nikiforuk
Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, 2008
Pumped: Everyone's Guide to the Oil Patch (with David Finch), 2007
Pandemonium: Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease and Other Biological Plagues of the 21st Century, 2006
Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwig's War Against Big Oil, 2002
Fourth Horseman: A Short History of Epidemics, Plagues, Famines & Other Scourges, 1991
School's Out: The Catastrophe in Public Education and What We can Do About It, 1993
Column by Silver Donald Cameron about Andrew Nikiforuk
The Long Dark Shadow of the Tar Sands, March 15, 2009
Links about Andrew Nikiforuk
http://www.andrewnikiforuk.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Nikiforuk
http://thetyee.ca/
