EDMONTON – It is 7 a.m. and I am on bus with a group of sleepy students from the University of Alberta on our way up to Fort McMurray, the heart of oil sands extraction in Alberta, a western province of Canada.

Soft conversations drift across the bus. It is still dark outside and many of the students are asleep. It’s a five-hour ride up to Fort McMurray and we have a packed two-day schedule ahead of us. The tour, planned by a student organization at the University of Alberta called the Oil Sands Student Delegation, is fully booked but I’ve managed to get a spot thanks to a late cancellation.

The undergraduate and graduate students on the trip are