Fort McMurray, Alberta and other energy towns have become focal points for a cluster of intense debates: between renewable and non-renewable energy development, between job creation in the oil fields and cancer clusters in nearby First Nations communities, between the economic boost of a fossil fuel boom and the economic devastation of unchecked climate change. But too often, the towns themselves are left behind in a national and international conversation that rarely touches on the human and social impacts of the boomtown economy. Those impacts, and the community response, are playing out from Alberta, to North Dakota, to Colorado and Ohio.
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