A VOYAGE ACROSS AN ANCIENT OCEAN

Goodrich chronicles his bicycle ride from Alberta, Canada, to the northern plains of the U.S., “intent on seeing where carbon comes out of the ground.”

When he was a young man, the author did some roustabout work on oil rigs off the coast of Louisiana, and then he spent years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and as director of the U.N. Global Climate Observing System. Now retired and a long-distance bicyclist hobbyist, he decided to take a 1,100-mile bike trip from the oil sands of Fort McMurray in northern Alberta south to Williston, North Dakota, and the great fracking operation known as Bakken. “I would go on seeking some clues to the nature of this industry,” writes the author, “at once so tightly woven into modern life and so threatening to it.” Goodrich is an amiable writer. This means that while he is not shy about sharing his firm opinions on the reality and dangers of climate change, he was willing to listen to the personal stories of the oil workers. (He was uninterested, however, in hearing from the industry’s public relations flaks). Goodrich spends considerable time exploring the downside of extraction, from the tailing ponds to the brine spills to the many challenges of moving oil through pipelines. He smoothly lays out the histories of the projects and has a keen eye for the politics involved in their stop-and-go construction. He also does a good job explaining the nature of the opposition to the various pipelines—especially two, the Keystone and the Dakota Access—from fears of water contamination to the pollution of the headwaters of the Mississippi River and the harvesting of wild rice to the massive spills that have proven a hallmark of the pipelines. Goodrich concludes with a canny examination of Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting and the gradual re-creation of those very trusts.

A gentlemanly excursion through dirty oil sites that features a caustic, urgent message.