Books about ecological catastrophe can be real downers, but a sense of humour and lively writing make William Marsden’s entry into the suddenly popular category of inconvenient truths well worth a look.

A journalist with two well-received titles under his belt – Angels of Death and The Road to Hell, both about biker gangs ­– Marsden headed out to Alberta to witness firsthand the awesome technological development that is making a desert of much of the province’s landscape – the plunder of the oil sands to meet global demand for petroleum.

Marsden, who is nothing if not engaging, paints a vivid portrait of what sounds like a Mad Max movie. It’s a story full of narrow roads and the largest trucks on the planet, and an itinerant working population that lives in rapidly expanding frontier towns with little funding for the necessary social infrastructure required to sustain livable communities. Marsden’s book is also a strong critique of the toothless environmental regulations that have resulted in massive pollution of groundwater, the creation of enormous toxic tailings, and rising cancer rates among locals.

One of the most interesting sections of Stupid to the Last Drop covers the decades-old plans to use nuclear weapons to ease the flow of oil out of the sands, one of many zany schemes that underscore the book’s theme: that there is nothing Alberta’s political players will not consider in order to fully exploit the province’s natural  resources.

As well-written and well-intentioned as this book is, it ultimately feels both incomplete and, to a certain degree, the biased product of an urban easterner who has no time for country music or moonfaced locals. Unlike many environmental tomes, this one provides no discussion of what can be done to counter the well-documented threat. And while one might conclude that Albertans are stupid in the blind march to short-term gain and long-term ecological disaster, Marsden conveniently fails to challenge the rest of the country’s population, which certainly shows no qualms about using (and profiting from) the spoils of this scheme.