Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands

This short, hallucinatory documentary by Greenpeace, Canada, takes us on a helicopter flight over the vast area containing the world's second largest oil reserve that is being despoiled, possibly for ever, to separate bitumen from sand. Sixty years ago, we might have been presented by the same powerful images as signs of technological progress. We now remember Tacitus's withering line: "They make a wilderness and call it peace."