The historic Paris climate talks of 2015 aspired to keep the world under a two degree celsius rise, but failed to set out how to get there. Each country must create its own road map. Canada doesn’t have one. But Gordon Laxer’s After the Sands outlines a vision to transition Canada to a low-carbon society. Ralph Nader hails it as “a myth-destroying blockbuster book.”

Despite its oil abundance, Canada is woefully unprepared for the next global oil supply crisis. Canada imports 30 percent of its oil, yet—unlike twenty-seven of the other twenty-nine member countries in the International Energy Agency—has no strategic petroleum reserves to meet temporary shortages. Canadians use much more oil per capita than other sparsely populated, northern countries like Norway and Sweden.

After the Sands sets out a bold strategy using deep conservation and a Canada-first perspective. The goal: to ensure that lower-income Canadians get sufficient energy at affordable prices in a carbon-constrained future and prevent the rich from cornering reduced energy supplies.

Canada has all the conventional, non-fracked oil and natural gas needed to transition to a low-carbon future. Remarkable hydro-power gives Canadians a large base of renewable energy, which can be expanded with wind, solar, geothermal and biomass. So what’s the problem? Why do we continue to harm the environment? How do we overcome the power of vested interests and untangle the corporate trade agreements that block Canadians from getting secure and fair access to the country’s own energy resources. Can Canada meet international emissions targets if it does not phase out Alberta Sands oil?

Impeccably researched, After the Sands is critical reading for anyone concerned about rising sea levels, pipeline and tanker spills, climate change chaos and Canada’s future in a carbon restricted world.

Gordon Laxer is a political economist in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. He is the author of Open for Business: The Roots of Foreign Ownership in Canada (Oxford University Press, 1989) and co-editor (with Sandra Halperin) of Global Civil Society and Its Limits (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Professor Laxer is the director and co-founder of Parkland Institute, a non-corporate, Alberta research network.

Gordon Laxer's profile page

• Short-listed, J.W. Dafoe Book Prize