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Tar sands oil is the dirtiest fuel on Earth. Because producing it consumes so much energy, a gallon of tar sands crude generates 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional crude oil.

The process to generate energy using the Canadian tar sands is particularly dirty, producing one of the most noxious fossil fuels on the planet and leaving a devastated landscape in its wake.

What makes tar sands particularly odious is that the energy you get out in the end, per unit carbon dioxide, is poor. It's equivalent to burning coal in your automobile.

There's no question that tar sands in Canada are probably the largest source of oil available to the U.S. over a long period of time. There's as much oil in the tar sands probably as there is in Saudi Arabia. The problem is, there's a huge capital requirement to develop that.

The extraction of oil, coal and minerals brought, and still brings, a cost to the environment.

The destructiveness of the tar sands is not inevitable. But Canadians and Albertans have become too tolerant of the politicians who compromise the nation's energy security as well as the next generation's future.

I have visited people whose health has been endangered by tar sands oil. I have watched neighbors struggle to recover from Superstorm Sandy. I have seen solar panels and wind turbines become an increasingly familiar part of the landscape.

Much of the U.S. Midwest is already running on bitumen. Do we want to extend this addiction? And at what cost? Or should we set other goals and say one to two million barrels of oil a day from the tar sands is all we really need to make the transition?

Pricey oil makes clear that wealth really is energy in various forms.

Oil is ancient wealth in the ground.