Boreal forest in Canada -- safe from chainsaws for now.Photo: ForestEthicsMy first job in the social change movement was working for Ralph Nader.  I was a lawyer, one of Nader's Raiders.  Not in the '70s when it was cool and people actually knew what that was, but in the '90s, when it was decidedly not cool and my mother was sure I had lost my mind.  I left my high-paying K Street law firm to make less than half as much, traded my fancy office for a dingy cubical with walls made from boxes of books and stacks of old …

Pop quiz: After Saudi Arabia, which country has the most proven oil reserves? Wrong. Not only wrong, but wrong part of the world. Unless you are among the .00001 percent who guessed Canada -- in which case, congratulations! Canada has 179 billion barrels of proven "oil" reserves. I use quotes because it is not normal oil -- i.e., it is not as "good" as regular oil (an extremely low bar, if you ask me). Almost all of it lives in Alberta's tar sands, a sticky, greasy combination of 10 percent bitumen and 90 percent sand, clay, and water that underlay …