The Washington Post is wailing about the environmental ruination of that great ecological wonder, the Canadian tar sands. Canada's Athabasca Basin holds more hydrocarbons (oil) than anyplace else in the world. It has a huge patch of tarry goo, the remains of a once-vast inland lake, spotted amongst 40,000 square miles of jack pine and black spruce growing amid mosquito-rich swamps. The same evergreen-and-swamp vista extends in a broad band for more than 2000 miles, from the Rocky Mountains in the west to the shores of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia on the Atlantic coast. The Athabasca's population density is less...