While I most assuredly cannot claim any virtue when it comes to climate-change mitigation (I still fly, probably the greatest environmental sin one can commit), I do understand the gravity of what the world faces; to say I am pessimistic about our future is a massive understatement. That pessimism has been given new impetus by a piece Bill McKibben has written in The Guardian.
Despite having elected a government purporting to take climate-change seriously, it is likely we will approve a new tars sands project that will add countless megatonnes of greenhouse gases to the world's atmosphere:
The Teck mine would be the biggest tar sands mine yet: 113 square miles of petroleum mining, located just 16 miles from the border of Wood Buffalo national park. A federal panel approved the mine despite conceding that it would likely be harmful to the environment and to the land culture of Indigenous people... Canadian authorities ruled that the mine was nonetheless in the “public interest”.To put things into perspective,
Canada, which is 0.5% of the planet’s population, plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget [emphasis added]. Ottawa hides all this behind a series of pledges about “net-zero emissions by 2050” and so on, but they are empty promises.Despite the worldwide evidence that we are witnessing the beginnings of runaway climate-change, we just can't seem to help ourselves.
... the Teck Frontier proposal is predicated on the idea that we’ll still need vast quantities of oil in 2066, when Greta Thunberg is about to hit retirement age. If an alcoholic assured you he was taking his condition very seriously, but also laying in a 40-year store of bourbon, you’d be entitled to doubt his sincerity, or at least to note his confusion.Canada is far from unique in its addiction to, and advocacy for, more fossil-fuel development. What perhaps differentiates us from the world's other bad-actors in this domain is our pious avowals that we are enacting measures that will address the problem
As Bill McKibben points out, nothing could be further from the truth.
A few years ago Andrew Nikiforuk dissected petro-states. He found that, beneath the skin, whether dressed in Bedouin robes or Armani suits, they all function in eerily similar ways. They reveal similar traits - secrecy, dishonesty, suppression of dissent, pretty much whatever it takes to keep the gravy train intact.
ReplyDeleteA chilling example is Canada's disgraceful support for our asbestos industry long after the cancerous stuff was banned at home and across the developed world. If Third World countries were still willing to import it, we were happy to ship it from our shores.
Harper, very reluctantly, shut down asbestos trafficking but only when the public turned on him. For that amoral bastard it was a simple cost/benefit question. The loss of public support exceeded the benefit to the economy and the town of Asbestos.
Trudeau mimics Harper on bitumen. Carbon emissions are bad, just like mesothelioma, but we try not to mention what happens in distant places and we certainly reject any responsibility for it.
Greenhouse gas emissions today kill but it's mainly little brown people in the poorest and most vulnerable countries, out of sight and out of mind. GHGs kill in so many ways that our bitumen trafficking hides in the haze. Because these deaths and all the dislocation, while plainly the result of man-made climate change cannot be specifically linked to bitumen from Canada or coal from Australia or oil from the Persian Gulf, no one is accountable. We're not accountable for the methane being released from the permafrost even though man-made heating has caused the melting. We deny causation.
And so we'll prattle on about Canada becoming carbon neutral by 2050 even as we're falling ever further behind on even meeting Stephen Harper's emissions targets. That's what petro-states do.
All of which is to our everlasting shame as a species, Mound.
DeleteAs someone whho used to live the near world's largest open pit mine -- an asbestos mine -- I can testify that change is painfully difficult. But to simply deny the need for change is the height of folly.
ReplyDeleteWe seem to excel when it comes to folly, Owen.
Delete.. Nobody can or will.. testify and name a foreign country other than the US of A that is buying or committed to buying Alberta's increased dilbit
Deleteproduction, to fill the soon to be twinned Trans Mountain pipeline. The Teck Bigumen mine alone can fulfill all the Trans Mountain additional volume
Natural Gas prices are craterring at the same times
Emissions seemingly have been under reported
and every single subsidy needs examination
There is a pervasive sulfurous smell to this entire business, Sal.
Delete.. I keep asking 'where is the business case' - This re twinning to greatly expand Trans Mountain pipeline (which Canadian taxpayers own) or re the Teck Bitumen Mine whose dilbit output would exceed the expanded capacity of Trans Mountain.. which is apparently 'bleeding money'. Currently, almost all of Alberta's Bitumen - dilbit production is exported to the USA.. not to Asia, where a token amount trickles to. Some Bitumen - dilbit is shipped in varying synthetic mixes or slurries, some for domestic refining and again much into the USA
ReplyDeleteNobody in 'politics' cares to dispute the above paragraph. Instead, the hyperbole & lack of knowledge, the echo chamber et al leap into outraged action.
Nobody wants to admit that Trudeau is ridiculous when claiming 'we need to increase GHG emissions in order to lower emissions'. Nobody want to examine the books for Trans Mountain which must be published quarterly. This is the pipeline that Trudeau and Ms McKenna claimed would return such wealth in response to expansion, that all that wealth would pay for environmental efforts to lower emmissions. Again, where is the business case !! Vague aspirational misdirections re 'getting Alberta's 'oil' or natural gas to new markets in Asia is not a business case. LNG prices are falling lower and lower. Hell, benchmark oil prices are approaching 50 $ a barrel - dilbit will be quoted approx high 20's accordingly.
Australia and Russia are intent on dictating Asian energy prices and imports. Canada is in a petro dreamland controlled by foreign interests.. get used to it. We are exterminating and polluting habitat, species, environments including fresh water, land and air. We are failing at the primary challenge for Canadians.. protecting our piece of Spaceship Earth. If we aren't defending it or enhancing it.. what are we doing ? And why ? And if it really is 'just about the money' .. show us the money and who has it, if not us ? Show us the money !!!!!
All excellent points, Sal. It seems that the media are failing us abysmally on this file. Parenthetically, I read an article yesterday about sustainable investment and how viablecheap renewable energy has become. Here is a pertinent excerpt:
DeleteCarbon-intensive companies are suffering because the alternatives are not just cleaner but cheaper. Renewables are now cheaper than coal in two-thirds of the world’s countries, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. BNP Paribas estimates that oil needs to come down to $10 a barrel to be competitive with electricity-driven transport.
https://www.thestar.com/business/personal_finance/2020/02/05/your-ultimate-guide-to-the-top-sustainable-investment-funds.html