Deeper Shade of Green

Conventional drilling of sweet crude oil, such as occurs in Saudi Arabia, is like standing at the bar while a charming barman pours you pints direct from the cask in the cellar. Tar sands are akin to arriving at the pub to find that all the beer is off, but so desperate are you for a drink that you begin to fantasise that in the thirty years this pub has been open for business, the equivalent of 5,000 pints have been spilt on the carpet; so you design a process whereby you boil up the carpet in order to extract the beer again. It is the desperate, futile action of an alcoholic unable to imagine life without the object of his addiction.

- Rob Hopkins, Founder of the Transition Movement