The Yesterday Man

Those with undying affection for, and advocacy of, fossil fuels are indulging in a venal nostalgia for the way things were. They cling to past truths about price differentials that allegedly make green energy too costly. They continue to claim that green energy, if produced during the day via solar panels, cannot meet night-time demand, a problem rapidly being addressed by quickly-evolving storage systems, the very same systems utilized when there is no wind powering wind turbines.

Their arguments, designed to protect assets doomed to become stranded are, to put it succinctly, running out of steam.

Indeed, Toronto Star letter-writer Sheri Kimura, of Toronto, is of the view that the federal government's purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline truly makes Justin Trudeau a yesterday man:

Since the Trudeau government purchased the Trans Mountain pipeline (meaning that we, as taxpayers, funded the purchase), it seems like good business to ensure that the Canadian public is educated about how much the project costs, what the expected profit might be and which markets we are serving. China plans to convert all it’s vehicles to clean energy in this generation, and Volkswagen — the single-largest car manufacturer in the world — is planning on making it’s entire fleet electric by 2025. Seems like a strange move to push a commodity that the largest available markets are phasing out. When Canada has so much money and potential for clean energy, why is anyone in our government, from any party, still pushing an antiquated commodity?

Even if we doubt the economic windfalls of clean energy, we cannot deny the weakening of the carbon-based industry and the decline in demand for oil. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made a terrible business decision on behalf of Canada. Any politician who pursues increased oil development is not making an economically-sound decision — they are simply sentimental about Canada’s oil-rich past and aging identity. We need political leaders with the clarity of mind to embrace (and make profitable) the inevitable change in Canada’s natural resources sector. Only then will our country truly progress, and our country’s identity will finally be free to evolve as well.

A Verbal Tap Dance

Talk, as they say, is cheap. Watch the following clip to see Environment Minister Catherine McKenna further debase its value by her non-answer regarding the now-stalled Trans Mountain pipeline expansion and the threat West Coast oil tanker traffic poses:

A Pattern We Cannot Ignore

As I write this on the morning of Labour Day, it is already 38 degrees Celsius with the humidex in Southern Ontario, another day of oppressive heat and humidity in a long line of them this summer. Scientific consensus points to the ever-increasing effects of climate change as the chief agent responsible for a summer that has seen extreme temperatures worldwide. The key, if there still is one, to mitigating this unfolding disaster, is to wean ourselves as quickly as possible, off of fossil fuels.

And yet ....



.... our government chooses to ignore reality by buying a stranded asset, the Trans Mountain pipeline, whose expansion has been stopped for the time being by a Federal Court of Appeal ruling. The Trudeau Liberals seem stalwart in their intention to soldier on with this project, but perhaps they need to listen to voices outside their own echo chamber for a more realistic assessment of the situation:

Pipeline ruling shockwaves felt across Canada, Aug. 31

Last week, the Federal Court of Appeal told the government what they should have already known about the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion — the National Energy Board vetting process was horribly flawed, and there was inadequate consultation with the Indigenous people who are affected by it.

The proposed pipeline expansion is simply unfathomable. Even without citizen protests, the financial community knows that investment in the oilsands has no future. Bankers are pulling out and current investors are looking simply to recover their existing investments.

Canada has wasted billions in subsidies to oil companies instead of building the infrastructure for a renewable energy industry. Even when the oil industry was viable, Alberta failed to recover the revenues it was entitled to with too low taxes and too low royalties.

Meanwhile, Norway has made its citizens millionaires by nationalizing its oil industry and undertaking development in an environmentally sustainable way. Canada has given its resources away for a song and now has little to show for it. Compounding the mistake by continuing to prop up a failing industry is a crime against future generations.

Canada and its citizens will have to make wrenching adaptations just to survive when the true cost of climate change hits us. I fear for my children and grandchildren.

Our resources should be directed to building renewable energy and transitioning the workers who will be affected. Those currently employed by the fossil fuel industry should not bear the brunt of the transition. They should be supported by all other Canadians through our tax dollars as they are retrained and find new jobs.

I implore the government to end the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project now, for the sake of our future generations.

Patricia E. McGrail, Brampton

About That Odour In The Air

While The Great Pretender and his faux Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna, continue to utter platitudes about climate-change action while visiting formerly Beautiful British Columbia, smoke is not the only pollutant in the air. The unmistakable stench of a steaming pile of bovine excrement is also becoming decidedly pronounced, its source not hard to detect for anyone not blinded by unthinking allegiance to the Liberal Party of Canada.

Letter-writer Mike Ward, of Duncan B.C., believes he has found its source and offers up a solution to the miasma:

B.C. and Alberta are engaged in a carbon trading scheme of sorts, and it is to no one’s advantage.

Alberta sends carbon-rich bitumen to British Columbia, which, when added to the atmosphere, contributes to global warming.

Global warming in turn produces the warmer winters that allow pine beetles to thrive, together with the longer, hotter, drier summers during which B.C.’s disease-stricken forests ignite.

Prevailing winds spread this suffocating carbon smoke throughout both provinces, choking the tourism industry, impacting people’s health, threatening towns and destroying the livelihood of communities dependant on forestry and fishing.

It hurts to think that the new normal for our children may be smoky white summer skies, breathing masks and the eerie light of an orange sun.

Further investment in this perverse carbon trading scheme, such as in the proposed Trans Mountain expansion, defies reason as it can only accelerate global warming and amplify the enormous economic, social and health consequences we are already experiencing.

Clearly, it’s time for change. The cost of our stubborn reliance on fossil fuels has simply become too great a price to pay.

Also, your mendacious self-congratulatory rhetoric notwithstanding, this is no time to take a victory lap, Catherine.

Hothouse Earth

Hot on the heels of the news that Justin's folly will now cost taxpayers at least another $1.9 billion comes widespread acknowledgement that we may indeed be reaching the climate-change point of no return. For specific details about this, check out The Guardian and The Mound's post yesterday. As well, Owen's post is well-worth the read.

Also, you can watch the following newscast to get a greater sense of our peril:



Still, our politicos fiddle while the world burns. This is the inevitable outcome of the plague known as captured governments, of course.

Neoliberal Friends With Benefits

Kinder Morgan couldn't have a better friend than Justin Trudeau:

Texas-based Kinder Morgan made a seven-fold return on the sale of its Trans Mountain pipeline system to Canada's federal government, according to a new report that also warns the federal budget deficit could jump by 36 per cent because of the purchase.

The project has an estimated $7.4 billion price tag, of which Kinder Morgan says it has already spent about $1 billion. But the IEEFA report estimates that the company has only put about $600 million into the project so far. It estimates the company will make a 637-per-cent gain on the $4.5-billion sale.

The federal government is on the hook for about $11.5 billion in costs, including both the purchase and the remaining cost of construction, the report estimates.

"This transaction and the cost of further planning and construction could add a $6.5 billion unplanned expenditure to Canada's budget during (fiscal year) 2019," the report stated. "This would increase Canada's projected deficit of $18.1 billion by 36 per cent. to $24.6 billion."

The magnitude of Liberal ineptitude is stunning:

"There is every indication that the Canadian government has bought the pipeline at a high price and is likely to resell it for far less than it will pay to build it," Tom Sanzillo, the institute's [Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis] director of finance, said in a statement.

"Canada is weakening its finances by taking on unlimited costs to buy an unneeded pipeline with an uncertain future and giving an unusual profit to a U.S. company," he added.

But hey. That's what happens when you elect a neoliberal government. But Justin still has nice hair.

Your Neo-liberal Government At Work

Included in the Trudeau sellout is the following:

- Prepared to indemnify the project from any financial loss;

-Is willing to offer this financial security to any company who wants to build the pipeline, should Kinder Morgan back out;

-and, the financial backing must be fair, and beneficial to Canadians.

"If Kinder Morgan isn’t interested in building the project we think plenty of investors would be interested in taking on this project, especially knowing that the federal government believes it is in the best interest of Canadians and is willing to provide indemnity to make sure that it gets done," Morneau said, noting that he is “confident” an agreement will be made.

If you aren't outraged yet, I suggest you check your vital signs.

Defining The National Interest

As the video included in yesterday's post shows, Justin Trudeau likes to defend the twinning of the Trans Mountain pipeline as in 'the national interest." The term itself is a contentious one, given its nebulous nature. For the Prime Minister, it seems to mean economic growth, moving Alberta's bitumen to port, and bolstering Rachel Notley's climate change initiatives.

As the following letter from a Toronto Star reader indicates, however, there is a more crucial definition that Mr. Trudeau and his fellow bitumen and pipeline enthusiasts are entirely dismissing, one that should take precedence:

PM’s pipeline woes of his own making, Harper, April 11

According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, B.C. Premier John Horgan should compromise because this pipeline is in the national interest. Why is that? He doesn’t say.

I see the national interest as one where all of us move in a planned and purposeful way toward an economy that does not depend on oil and gas. In that world view, giving oil companies breaks on environmental assessments or emissions rules or buying pipelines so they can move their oil is against the national interest. It is the interest of oil companies not to leave stranded assets. The national interest is to move forward into a low-carbon future in Canada and around the world.

Mr. Trudeau speaks out of both sides of his mouth. “Yes,” he says, “we will meet our Paris targets.” Then he approves drilling in Nova Scotia, refuses to sign on to an Arctic heavy-oil treaty and permits Alberta oil to triple production of a very inefficient, high-greenhouse-gas emissions product, and approves a pipeline without ever reviewing its climate impacts or demonstrating that bitumen can be cleaned up.

Meanwhile we have never reduced our emissions targets as a country and are not projected to meet those targets any time soon.

And how can he say he has consulted with First Nations when the B.C. Federation of Indian Chiefs is standing at the Watch Tower, committing civil disobedience, and getting arrested to make their voices heard? Yes, let’s act in the national interest. Let’s all of us move toward a low-carbon future in right relations with our first peoples.

Rev. Frances Deverell, Nanaimo, B.C.

As The Mask Slips Away

My late father-in-law, a man of deep conviction and integrity, was fond of this saying: "Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor."

Although he did not originate the adage, he felt it firmly described the thinking of those who control the levers of power, our governments. And now that his mask is slipping away, it seems an apt description of Justin Trudeau's true sentiments and the policy decisions he is making.

As preliminary evidence, sauce as it were to the great corporate feast, consider his Canadian Infrastructure Bank scheme, about which I wrote last year. While its ostensible purpose is to raise private capital to fund various projects to rebuild our steadily decaying roads, bridges, etc., it can also serve as a neat little package of corporate welfare:

Federal investments doled out through the government’s new infrastructure financing agency may be used to ensure a financial return to private investors if a project fails to generate enough revenues, documents show.

What investors have recently been told — and what the finance minister was told late last year — is that if revenues fall short of estimates, federal investments through the bank would act as a revenue floor to help make a project commercially viable.
Experts say the wording in the documents suggests taxpayers will be asked to take on a bigger slice of the financial risk in a project to help private investors, a charge the government rejects.

All of that perhaps palls, however, now that Kinder Morgan has issued a May 31 ultimatum to the feds, threatening to suspend construction on the Trans Mountain Pipeline twinning project unless the impasse between the B.C. and federal government ends. As a remedy, a strong dose of socialism is now being considered to protect Trans Morgan's nervous shareholders:

Finance Minister Bill Morneau says the federal government will act on the Trans Mountain pipeline project in “short order,” sending the strongest signal yet that it will move to financially backstop the project to reduce the risks for its American-based backer.

[Rachel] Notley has already said her government is open to buying the Trans Mountain pipeline — meant to move Alberta oil to port near Vancouver for shipment overseas — to ensure the expansion goes ahead.

Morneau, who has been in touch with Kinder Morgan officials, said earlier in the day that Ottawa is “considering financial options” to ease those concerns. Speaking later, he wouldn’t provide specifics but said there was a need to “derisk” the project so it can proceed.

Significantly, but not surprisingly, the Finance Minister

framed the issue as an economic one, talking about the need to enhance opportunities and good jobs while saying nothing about the concerns around the environment or rights of Indigenous Peoples raised by the project.

As usual, his boss, Justin Trudeau, continues to speak out of both sides of his mouth, claiming his environmental vision is bound up with an economic one, insisting there is no contradiction between the two.

Mr. Trudeau likes to talk about what Canadians know and understand. I suspect he is speaking of those Canadians who go through life blithely and willfully unaware of the immense peril our world now faces thanks to climate change, not those of us who understand that a drastic reordering of our priorities is crucial if we are to survive what lies ahead.

Don't Let A Culture Of Defeat Hold You Back

That's right, folks. There are untold opportunities to enhance both your gross domestic product and your wallets through the scourge gift of oil spills, as oil pipeline company Kinder Morgan recently explained. But of course, that 'leftie' Rachel Maddow looks a gift horse in the mouth as she continues to spread her dangerous ideas: