Dragonfly In Oil - a study in "humanity"

From the Tar Sands of Canada - this is how we power our way of life, our cars, computers, holidays, homes...

Alberta in Canada once boasted one of the most beautiful wildernesses in the world. But then came the exploitation of the Tar Sands, part of the dirty oil drive which, by the appropriately named process of fracking, has made North America energy independent for the first time. The remains of millennia of decay, the matter of the carbon fuel now extracted and burned to power the world's greatest polluters - the human species - spew into our air and silently, invisibly poison our future. 

But earlier, much earlier in the process of extraction and refining, the spills and detritus of drilling and fracking the oil from the virgin soil have already claimed the most delicate of creatures, in the pursuit of profit and human profligacy happily destroying as mere "collateral damage" the precious, living and vibrant children of nature. Forests have been felled, ground stripped of its topsoil and heated water flushed deep down to force millions of barrels of oil out the ground: coating and trapping the once free and beautiful dragonfly in a shroud of black.

"Let us not, however, flatter ourselves  overmuch on account of our victories over nature. For each such victory, nature takes its revenge on us.”

                  Blake & Engels, quoted in The Rise of the Green Left (Derek Wall)

(with thanks to Calvin "Spiralling" Smith for drawing attention to this)