Thanks to increasingly extreme forms of oil extraction, Canada’s largest oil-producing provinces underwent exceptional economic growth from 2005 to 2015. Yet oil’s economic miracle obscured its ecological costs. Fossilized traces this development trajectory, assessing how the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador offered extensive support for oil-industry development, and exploring the often downplayed environmental effects of extraction.

Angela Carter investigates overarching institutional trends, such as the restructuring of departments that prioritized extraction over environmental protection, and identifies regulatory inadequacies related to environmental assessment, land-use planning, and emissions controls. Her detailed analysis situates these policy dynamics within the historical and global context of late-stage petro-capitalism and deepening neoliberalization of environmental policy.

Fossilized reveals a country out of step with the transition unfolding in response to the climate crisis. As the global community moves toward decarbonization, Canada’s petro-provinces are instead doubling down on oil – to their ecological and economic peril.

Angela V. Carter's profile page

• Winner, Book Awards, Canadian Political Science Association

Angela V. Carter is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and a fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.

Carter... is optimistic. Instead of offering investments to the oil and gas industry, why not look to support a new, low-carbon economy?

Our Times Magazine

[Fossilized] cast[s] a new and hopeful light on what political scientists sometimes call a super-wicked problem.

Literary Review of Canada