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350 or bust: First Nations & Tar Sands: “Our Backs Are To The Wall”
Posted June 6, 2013 by Christine
From the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance: * More links: Indigenous Environmental Network Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance NoKXL Tar Sands Action
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Accidental Deliberations: On meaningless spin
Posted June 1, 2013 by Greg Fingas
Far too many people who should know better have tried to find some significance in the B.C. government’s submission to the Harper Cons’ Northern Gateway rubber-stamping process. So in case anybody needs a refresher course, here’s why we shouldn’t see it as an important development.
To start with, B.C.’s announcement doesn’t represent a “decision” in any meaningful sense of the word. After all, the B.C. Lib government signed an equivalency agreement (PDF) three years ago in which they agreed to let Stephen Harper decide any environmental questions related to the Northern Gateway pipeline – meaning that (Read more…)
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Down and Out in Harperconia
Posted May 29, 2013 by matttbastard
Sweet tit-humping Christ I’m tired. Tired of the chronic lack of accountability in Ottawa. Of a parliamentary press corps that been for far too long too prissy and timid to rightly ferret and call out endless examples Conservative corruption with tenacious vigour (see also: libel chill). Tired of national apathy and cynicism understandably bred by […]
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The Harper Government lacks a strategic vision for Canada’s oil industry
Posted May 10, 2013 by CuriosityCat
 |
| 400 parts per million … |
Those Albertans who have voted for Harper’s Conservatives in election after election must be starting to wonder whether Stephen Harper and his Cabinet are the best choice for their main industry: oil.
They should start to worry, because the Harper Tories are displaying yet again their incompetence when it comes to the really important issues facing Canada. They are fine for scurrying around, giving out little slices of taxpayers’ money to selected micromarkets, but when it comes to the really important things, they are sadly wanting.
The Meltdown Debacle
Take the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.
Remember how Harper and his Cabinet were whistling past the graveyard, blissfully unaware of the massive threat to our civilization’s financial underpinnings posed by the bank meltdown, until the opposition parties forced them to pay attention by signing the Coalition Accord.
Now Harper and his Cabinet have once more shown their inability to understand the really critical drivers of our economy, and to play a strategic role in protecting it, and advancing it with carefully selected government actions.
Simpson’s Take on Harper’s Ineptitude
As Jeffrey Simpson puts it in today’s Globe & Mail, Harper blew it:
The biggest proponents of bitumen oil – the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, the Harper Conservatives and the oil industry itself – have, in some respects, been the authors of these troubles. They could have acted differently and possibly made things easier. But a different course of action would have required a different strategic understanding…
The two governments insisted that critics were ill-informed when they said bitumen is dirtier than conventional oil. They swallowed the canard that bitumen oil is somehow “ethical” because Canada has better standards than Iran and Venezuela – standing ethics on its head by defining our practices against the worst, rather than the notional idea of the best.These self-comforting but delusional starting points led to trouble. Instead of analyzing how to deal with criticism constructively, the governments decided it was to be denounced…Instead, the governments, presumably with the industry’s blessing, acted as if salesmanship rather than statesmanship would suffice. As such, they have contributed to this sea of troubles.
When the nation needed statesmen, Harper played to his major strength, and gave it salesmen.
And salesmen just don’t have the calibre to fix the problem facing Canada’s dirty tar sands.
Two fold attack on Canada’s energy industry
Our major export industry is under attack from two directions: those who want to use it as an example and stop or reduce the use of fossil fuels, and those who believe that the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels pose an imminent danger to our earth and must be reduced.
Mark Jaccard from Simon Fraser is in the second camp, and is off to Europe to persuade the European Union to stick to their guns and penalize Canada’s tar sand oil as unduly noxious:
One of Canada’s top environmental economists has a stark warning for the country’s oil sands producers: Find ways to dramatically cut carbon emissions or risk becoming the buggy-whip producers of the 21st century.Simon Fraser economist Mark Jaccard has worked with governments in British Columbia, California and even Ottawa to fashion climate policies.But on Thursday, he said the federal government and the oil industry are embarked on a high-risk path that could leave billions of dollars in stranded assets, including pipelines like TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL…
Governments around the world will eventually move to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, he said, meaning lower demand for gasoline in transportation and lower prices for crude, as well as more pressure for producers to virtually eliminate the release of carbon dioxide from their production methods. That will create survival issues for high-cost producers like those in the oil sands.“It really depends on your ability to innovate,” he said.His comments come at a sensitive time for the government on the energy file. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is heading to New York next week to press the case for approval of Keystone, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has been touring European capitals this week, making the argument in favour of developing the resource, one of the largest crude oil reserves in the world.Dr. Jaccard joined a dozen scientists and researchers Thursday in releasing a letter to Mr. Oliver, arguing that Ottawa’s support for oil sands expansion and the pipelines needed to carry the crude to market is inconsistent with the stated goal of the Harper government and other G20 countries to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. The economist is travelling to Europe on Friday with former NASA scientist James Hansen to rebut the arguments that Mr. Oliver made during his week-long tour.
Voters in Alberta should pay attention to the passages above that I have underlined. They spell out an existential threat to the very heart of Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s heavy oil industry.
The Measurements of Evil
The spat right now between Harper’s government and the EU revolves around a simple question: Is the heavy oil from Canada’s tar sands worse than the oil that can be obtained from other sources, because the whole process of manufacture (from well to wheel, as it is put) and refinement results in more greenhouse gas emissions.
There are several ways to calculate the all-in greenhouse gas emissions of refined crude from tar sands and shale deposits, depending on what you include in the calculation.
Here’s a diagram of the Congressional Research Service’s from well to wheel factors:
 |
| From Well to Wheel |
Canada’s asleep-at-the-switch Harper government is arguing that the calculation should be made for all processes involved, including transportation. Our heavy oil comes out a bit better if we do that, as this article in the Globe & Mail spells out:
Transportation is a hot point in the carbon debate because oil sands supporters want Alberta’s production compared to other oil after transportation is taken into account. Shipping oil by tanker, for example, jacks up emissions. Oil used in France may have originated in Africa. Oil burned in Colorado may have been extracted in Venezuela. Oil sands proponents argue the emissions tied to shipping crude to refineries and then to consumers must be considered when comparing emissions.Pipeline companies also use the argument when lobbying for support of their proposals and Alberta’s oil sands. Trans- Canada, citing the U.S. Department of State, notes the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline will offset as many as 200 ocean tankers a year. This equates to lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 19 million tonnes. Using trains to move oil, TransCanada notes, produces three times as much greenhouse gas as pipelines.
The Failure of the Harper Government
This strategic challenge facing our oil industry is not new, and was easily predictable given events over the past decade or more.
However, Canada’s lack of preparedness for this major threat is directly the result of the Harper government’s inability – or wilful blindness – to manage our country’s economy properly.
We as voters expect our federal government to be looking out for our country, by keeping their heads up, and preparing for challenges. Yet the Harper government seems genetically incapable of doing any really significant long range planning.
I believe part of the reason for this blind spot in the Harper government arises from the fact that as a political party – and now as a government – the Harper Conservatives have adopted lock, stock and barrel the Tea Party DNA and the Tea Party worldview.
Harper and his Cabinet ministers do not seem to believe that our federal government has a significant role to play in protecting our economy.
Witness the inability to act duting the financial meltdown. And witness also their dangerous reduction of the revenues of the federal government (through the reduction in the sales tax rate, and other tax reductions). Instead of properly managing the country during good times so that it better placed to weather bad times, Harper and his Cabinet seem to lack the ability to think beyond the next few months.
Steps an Efficient Canadian Government could have taken
Could Harper have done something different to foresee the attack on our oil industry, and to prevent or reduce it?
Simpson gives some examples in his article of steps the Harper government could have taken, but did not.
The pressure on fossil fuels due to their spewing noxious greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere is not a surprise. It has been building for a long time, is scientifically based, and will not go away, for the simple reason that our earth is indeed in peril.
If Harper and his party were not wedded to a policy of inaction (and reduction of the federal government), Canada could have played a major role in organizing worldwide acceptance of the threat posed by global warming.
We could have lead the charge, along with the EU, to verify the scientific findings of increasing carbon dioxide (now close to 400 parts per million), and to encourage states and citizens of all states, to take meaningful steps to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel energy and switch to other less harmful energy sources. I deal with the problem posed by the 400 parts per million in our book about global warming, Obelisk Seven.
We could have lead the charge, along with the EU, to verify the scientific findings of increasing carbon dioxide (now close to 400 parts per million), and to encourage states and citizens of all states, to take meaningful steps to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel energy and switch to other less harmful energy sources. I deal with the problem posed by the 400 parts per million in our book about global warming, Obelisk Seven.
But the Harper government does not believe in a proactive government, so we did none of these things.
We could have thought through the strategic implications of the GHG emissions from our oil sands, and planned to deal with the easily foreseen problems that we now face, if our government believed that it was their role to be proactive rather than simply reactive.
As a country, we could have had a vigorous debate over the role of our tar sands, and the importance of our oil industry to the country as a whole. We could have adopted policies which internally gave the various stakeholders a more meaningful role in and stake in that industry (including a fair sharing of the profits from exporting up to 3 million tons of bitumen oil for other nations to refine and use as fuel).
And we could have lead the world in massive, significant and effective steps to reduce GHG emissions through energy reduction methods in all spheres, both private and public.
We could also have lead in the proper measurement of the GHG emissions of various energy sources, and in the world adopting a common set of measurements so that as citizens of the world we could discuss from a shared base the price we pay for our alternative energy sources.
This would have allowed a Canadian government that focused on strategic issues (and not just petty politicking), to have adopted a measurement system that measured emissions from the well to the wheel, with scientifically verifiable means adopted to moniter emissions.
Instead we have Harper and his Cabinet acting as salesmen, selling what many view as snake oil, and demonizing those who oppose them.
What a mess!
Let’s fix things up come the 2015 election, starting with a new government to replace the tired, myopic and inept Harper government.
comments
The Harper Government lacks a strategic vision for Canada’s oil industry
Posted May 10, 2013 by CuriosityCat
|
| 400 parts per million … |
Those Albertans who have voted for Harper’s Conservatives in election after election must be starting to wonder whether Stephen Harper and his Cabinet are the best choice for their main industry: oil.
They should start to worry, because the Harper Tories are displaying yet again their incompetence when it comes to the really important issues facing Canada. They are fine for scurrying around, giving out little slices of taxpayers’ money to selected micromarkets, but when it comes to the really important things, they are sadly wanting.
The Meltdown Debacle
Take the financial meltdown of 2007-2008.
Remember how Harper and his Cabinet were whistling past the graveyard, blissfully unaware of the massive threat to our civilization’s financial underpinnings posed by the bank meltdown, until the opposition parties forced them to pay attention by signing the Coalition Accord.
Now Harper and his Cabinet have once more shown their inability to understand the really critical drivers of our economy, and to play a strategic role in protecting it, and advancing it with carefully selected government actions.
Simpson’s Take on Harper’s Ineptitude
As Jeffrey Simpson puts it in today’s Globe & Mail, Harper blew it:
The biggest proponents of bitumen oil – the Alberta Progressive Conservatives, the Harper Conservatives and the oil industry itself – have, in some respects, been the authors of these troubles. They could have acted differently and possibly made things easier. But a different course of action would have required a different strategic understanding…
The two governments insisted that critics were ill-informed when they said bitumen is dirtier than conventional oil. They swallowed the canard that bitumen oil is somehow “ethical” because Canada has better standards than Iran and Venezuela – standing ethics on its head by defining our practices against the worst, rather than the notional idea of the best.These self-comforting but delusional starting points led to trouble. Instead of analyzing how to deal with criticism constructively, the governments decided it was to be denounced…Instead, the governments, presumably with the industry’s blessing, acted as if salesmanship rather than statesmanship would suffice. As such, they have contributed to this sea of troubles.
When the nation needed statesmen, Harper played to his major strength, and gave it salesmen.
And salesmen just don’t have the calibre to fix the problem facing Canada’s dirty tar sands.
Two fold attack on Canada’s energy industry
Our major export industry is under attack from two directions: those who want to use it as an example and stop or reduce the use of fossil fuels, and those who believe that the greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels pose an imminent danger to our earth and must be reduced.
Mark Jaccard from Simon Fraser is in the second camp, and is off to Europe to persuade the European Union to stick to their guns and penalize Canada’s tar sand oil as unduly noxious:
One of Canada’s top environmental economists has a stark warning for the country’s oil sands producers: Find ways to dramatically cut carbon emissions or risk becoming the buggy-whip producers of the 21st century.Simon Fraser economist Mark Jaccard has worked with governments in British Columbia, California and even Ottawa to fashion climate policies.But on Thursday, he said the federal government and the oil industry are embarked on a high-risk path that could leave billions of dollars in stranded assets, including pipelines like TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL…
Governments around the world will eventually move to reduce emissions from fossil fuels, he said, meaning lower demand for gasoline in transportation and lower prices for crude, as well as more pressure for producers to virtually eliminate the release of carbon dioxide from their production methods. That will create survival issues for high-cost producers like those in the oil sands.“It really depends on your ability to innovate,” he said.His comments come at a sensitive time for the government on the energy file. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is heading to New York next week to press the case for approval of Keystone, and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver has been touring European capitals this week, making the argument in favour of developing the resource, one of the largest crude oil reserves in the world.Dr. Jaccard joined a dozen scientists and researchers Thursday in releasing a letter to Mr. Oliver, arguing that Ottawa’s support for oil sands expansion and the pipelines needed to carry the crude to market is inconsistent with the stated goal of the Harper government and other G20 countries to prevent temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. The economist is travelling to Europe on Friday with former NASA scientist James Hansen to rebut the arguments that Mr. Oliver made during his week-long tour.
Voters in Alberta should pay attention to the passages above that I have underlined. They spell out an existential threat to the very heart of Alberta’s and Saskatchewan’s heavy oil industry.
The Measurements of Evil
The spat right now between Harper’s government and the EU revolves around a simple question: Is the heavy oil from Canada’s tar sands worse than the oil that can be obtained from other sources, because the whole process of manufacture (from well to wheel, as it is put) and refinement results in more greenhouse gas emissions.
There are several ways to calculate the all-in greenhouse gas emissions of refined crude from tar sands and shale deposits, depending on what you include in the calculation.
Here’s a diagram of the Congressional Research Service’s from well to wheel factors:
|
| From Well to Wheel |
Canada’s asleep-at-the-switch Harper government is arguing that the calculation should be made for all processes involved, including transportation. Our heavy oil comes out a bit better if we do that, as this article in the Globe & Mail spells out:
Transportation is a hot point in the carbon debate because oil sands supporters want Alberta’s production compared to other oil after transportation is taken into account. Shipping oil by tanker, for example, jacks up emissions. Oil used in France may have originated in Africa. Oil burned in Colorado may have been extracted in Venezuela. Oil sands proponents argue the emissions tied to shipping crude to refineries and then to consumers must be considered when comparing emissions.Pipeline companies also use the argument when lobbying for support of their proposals and Alberta’s oil sands. Trans- Canada, citing the U.S. Department of State, notes the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline will offset as many as 200 ocean tankers a year. This equates to lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 19 million tonnes. Using trains to move oil, TransCanada notes, produces three times as much greenhouse gas as pipelines.
The Failure of the Harper Government
This strategic challenge facing our oil industry is not new, and was easily predictable given events over the past decade or more.
However, Canada’s lack of preparedness for this major threat is directly the result of the Harper government’s inability – or wilful blindness – to manage our country’s economy properly.
We as voters expect our federal government to be looking out for our country, by keeping their heads up, and preparing for challenges. Yet the Harper government seems genetically incapable of doing any really significant long range planning.
I believe part of the reason for this blind spot in the Harper government arises from the fact that as a political party – and now as a government – the Harper Conservatives have adopted lock, stock and barrel the Tea Party DNA and the Tea Party worldview.
Harper and his Cabinet ministers do not seem to believe that our federal government has a significant role to play in protecting our economy.
Witness the inability to act duting the financial meltdown. And witness also their dangerous reduction of the revenues of the federal government (through the reduction in the sales tax rate, and other tax reductions). Instead of properly managing the country during good times so that it better placed to weather bad times, Harper and his Cabinet seem to lack the ability to think beyond the next few months.
Steps an Efficient Canadian Government could have taken
Could Harper have done something different to foresee the attack on our oil industry, and to prevent or reduce it?
Simpson gives some examples in his article of steps the Harper government could have taken, but did not.
The pressure on fossil fuels due to their spewing noxious greenhouse gases into our common atmosphere is not a surprise. It has been building for a long time, is scientifically based, and will not go away, for the simple reason that our earth is indeed in peril.
If Harper and his party were not wedded to a policy of inaction (and reduction of the federal government), Canada could have played a major role in organizing worldwide acceptance of the threat posed by global warming.
We could have lead the charge, along with the EU, to verify the scientific findings of increasing carbon dioxide (now close to 400 parts per million), and to encourage states and citizens of all states, to take meaningful steps to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel energy and switch to other less harmful energy sources. I deal with the problem posed by the 400 parts per million in our book about global warming, Obelisk Seven.
We could have lead the charge, along with the EU, to verify the scientific findings of increasing carbon dioxide (now close to 400 parts per million), and to encourage states and citizens of all states, to take meaningful steps to reduce our consumption of fossil fuel energy and switch to other less harmful energy sources. I deal with the problem posed by the 400 parts per million in our book about global warming, Obelisk Seven.
But the Harper government does not believe in a proactive government, so we did none of these things.
We could have thought through the strategic implications of the GHG emissions from our oil sands, and planned to deal with the easily foreseen problems that we now face, if our government believed that it was their role to be proactive rather than simply reactive.
As a country, we could have had a vigorous debate over the role of our tar sands, and the importance of our oil industry to the country as a whole. We could have adopted policies which internally gave the various stakeholders a more meaningful role in and stake in that industry (including a fair sharing of the profits from exporting up to 3 million tons of bitumen oil for other nations to refine and use as fuel).
And we could have lead the world in massive, significant and effective steps to reduce GHG emissions through energy reduction methods in all spheres, both private and public.
We could also have lead in the proper measurement of the GHG emissions of various energy sources, and in the world adopting a common set of measurements so that as citizens of the world we could discuss from a shared base the price we pay for our alternative energy sources.
This would have allowed a Canadian government that focused on strategic issues (and not just petty politicking), to have adopted a measurement system that measured emissions from the well to the wheel, with scientifically verifiable means adopted to moniter emissions.
Instead we have Harper and his Cabinet acting as salesmen, selling what many view as snake oil, and demonizing those who oppose them.
What a mess!
Let’s fix things up come the 2015 election, starting with a new government to replace the tired, myopic and inept Harper government.
comments
On measured responses
Posted May 6, 2013 by Greg Fingas
Shorter Enbridge, responding to the revelation that a tidy 94% of its Canadian pumping stations are missing required backup generators and/or shut-off buttons:So the question is whether we’ll take steps to comply with environmental laws if nobody’s bot…
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Accidental Deliberations: On measured responses
Posted May 6, 2013 by Greg Fingas
Shorter Enbridge, responding to the revelation that a tidy 94% of its Canadian pumping stations are missing required backup generators and/or shut-off buttons: So the question is whether we’ll take steps to comply with environmental laws if nobody’s bothering to enforce them? Let’s consider that for a moment.
In summary, the answer is “not generally”.
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Cowichan Conversations: Corporate Canada Is Safe With Justin Trudeau
Posted May 6, 2013 by Richard Hughes
Richard Hughes-Political Blogger
The state our Canada’s democracy is grim at all levels. Our PM Steve Harper is an overbearing, top down dictator.
He has managed to BS too many Canadians that he is a wonderful manager of the economy. He is not.
Under Harper our sovereignty is being sold down the river to the Chinese and whoever else can prop up his now failing government. The trade deals passed and others still on the table are of benefit to corporate investors and the detriment of the rest of us.
Prime Minister Steve Harper trailing Trudeau in the polls
I (Read more…)
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The Canadian Progressive: 30 groups demand removal of Alberta Energy Regulator chair Gerry Protti
Posted May 5, 2013 by Obert Madondo
By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: Over 30 environmental, landowner, labour, rights and First Nation groups have written to Alberta Premier Alison Redford demanding the immediate removal of Gerry Protti, the new chair of the Alberta Energy Regulator. The groups argue that Protti “is not an appropriate choice to head the Alberta government’s Provincial energy regulator.” [...]
The post 30 groups demand removal of Alberta Energy Regulator chair Gerry Protti appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
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Need for retiring carbon as simple as 1 2 3
Posted May 2, 2013 by Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
I saw two films recently that unexpectedly fit together: “Jurassic Park 3D” and “Do the Math”.
Do the Math, by 350.org, boils the climate crisis down to three simple numbers: 2 degrees, the amount of warming that we must not exceed, and so far the only global consensus position that even the Harper government has supported. 565 gigatons, how much more fossil carbon that lets us burn; more and we heat the planet beyond supporting human prosperity. 2,795 gigatons, the total fossil fuel reserves currently identified and tagged for extraction. This means 80% of known reserves of coal, oil and gas must remain in the ground, unburned, if we are to continue to flourish.
As author Bill McKibben says: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! That means not building any new infrastructure for extracting, distributing, or refining fossil fuels. Even the very conservative International Energy Agency agrees.
Yet instead we see editorialists, lobbyists, and most politicians pushing new pipelines and tar sands expansion, fracking, and other enhanced extraction. Ignoring the contradiction, they defend new high-cost fossil infrastructure because the alternative would require new high-cost renewable infrastructure. Wouldn’t it make more fiscal sense to spend our money on infrastructure with a permanent, renewable supply than on energy we know will run out? And how crazy is it to expand an industry whose own success in extracting resources must eventually put itself out of business?
Some wrongly think being Green means I’m left-wing, and note that I sometimes criticize political parties with Conservative in their name, ignoring that I also call out Liberals and New Democrats. I’m actually deeply conservative: I believe we should be able to live on the same planet our grandparents did, and our grandchildren deserve the same, too. As fast as they can, fossil fuel companies are transforming the basic chemistry of our atmosphere, changing temperature, precipitation, sea levels, weather and climate such that our children will literally live on a different planet than the one we were born to. What could be more radical than the uncontrolled world-changing actions of Big Oil/Coal/Gas?
Another deeply conservative belief of mine: responsibility for our own waste. Generally individuals and businesses must pay to dispose of their garbage. Only fossil fuels are allowed to break the rules by dumping carbon pollution into our air, our very life-support system, for free (and profit).
Jurassic Park had a simple message: just because we can do something (for a profit), doesn’t mean we should. Re-introducing extinct dinosaurs from 65 million years ago to the modern world was clearly a bad idea. Releasing carbon sequestered millions of years ago into today’s biosphere is a similarly bad idea, no matter how much money some pocket.
So what to do, how can we be energy wise and not fossil fools? Read next week for a couple of powerful solutions to get us off fossil fuels quickly while maintaining our prosperity.
Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title “Films offer clear environmental message“.
Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
comments
Need for retiring carbon as simple as 1 2 3
Posted May 2, 2013 by Erich Jacoby-Hawkins
I saw two films recently that unexpectedly fit together: “Jurassic Park 3D” and “Do the Math”.
Do the Math, by 350.org, boils the climate crisis down to three simple numbers: 2 degrees, the amount of warming that we must not exceed, and so far the only global consensus position that even the Harper government has supported. 565 gigatons, how much more fossil carbon that lets us burn; more and we heat the planet beyond supporting human prosperity. 2,795 gigatons, the total fossil fuel reserves currently identified and tagged for extraction. This means 80% of known reserves of coal, oil and gas must remain in the ground, unburned, if we are to continue to flourish.
As author Bill McKibben says: when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging! That means not building any new infrastructure for extracting, distributing, or refining fossil fuels. Even the very conservative International Energy Agency agrees.
Yet instead we see editorialists, lobbyists, and most politicians pushing new pipelines and tar sands expansion, fracking, and other enhanced extraction. Ignoring the contradiction, they defend new high-cost fossil infrastructure because the alternative would require new high-cost renewable infrastructure. Wouldn’t it make more fiscal sense to spend our money on infrastructure with a permanent, renewable supply than on energy we know will run out? And how crazy is it to expand an industry whose own success in extracting resources must eventually put itself out of business?
Some wrongly think being Green means I’m left-wing, and note that I sometimes criticize political parties with Conservative in their name, ignoring that I also call out Liberals and New Democrats. I’m actually deeply conservative: I believe we should be able to live on the same planet our grandparents did, and our grandchildren deserve the same, too. As fast as they can, fossil fuel companies are transforming the basic chemistry of our atmosphere, changing temperature, precipitation, sea levels, weather and climate such that our children will literally live on a different planet than the one we were born to. What could be more radical than the uncontrolled world-changing actions of Big Oil/Coal/Gas?
Another deeply conservative belief of mine: responsibility for our own waste. Generally individuals and businesses must pay to dispose of their garbage. Only fossil fuels are allowed to break the rules by dumping carbon pollution into our air, our very life-support system, for free (and profit).
Jurassic Park had a simple message: just because we can do something (for a profit), doesn’t mean we should. Re-introducing extinct dinosaurs from 65 million years ago to the modern world was clearly a bad idea. Releasing carbon sequestered millions of years ago into today’s biosphere is a similarly bad idea, no matter how much money some pocket.
So what to do, how can we be energy wise and not fossil fools? Read next week for a couple of powerful solutions to get us off fossil fuels quickly while maintaining our prosperity.
Published as my Root Issues column in the Barrie Examiner under the title “Films offer clear environmental message“.
Erich Jacoby-Hawkins is a director of Living Green and the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation.
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Shocker
Posted May 1, 2013 by Greg Fingas
Nobody could have foreseen that the much-ballyhooed Backbench Spring would give way to the Toadying Summer Olympics. But sure enough, the first question from a Con MP nominally challenging his party’s whip looks like a gold medalist in the Party Boot-L…
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Accidental Deliberations: Shocker
Posted May 1, 2013 by Greg Fingas
Nobody could have foreseen that the much-ballyhooed Backbench Spring would give way to the Toadying Summer Olympics. But sure enough, the first question from a Con MP nominally challenging his party’s whip looks like a gold medalist in the Party Boot-Licking and Tar Sands Shilling biathlon.
As best, it looks like we may be able to draw some amusement seeing the Cons’ backbenchers compete for the right to ask future variations on “Mr. Prime Minister, your government has the momentum of a runaway freight train loaded with Uncle Cappy’s Magic Non-Polluting Petroleum-Derivative Elixir, which will never spill and we shouldn’t (Read more…)
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Joe Oliver deems climate change fears ‘exaggerated’
Posted April 30, 2013 by Behind The Numbers
Federal Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver stopped by Montréal on April 11 to promote the tar sands and closed the door to any strict greenhouse gas ceiling. He claimed that, according to scientists, our fears regarding climate change are “exaggerated.” He refused to retract his statement the following week before the federal natural resources committee.
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Joe Oliver deems climate change fears ‘exaggerated’
Posted April 30, 2013 by Behind The Numbers
Federal Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver stopped by Montréal on April 11 to promote the tar sands and closed the door to any strict greenhouse gas ceiling. He claimed that, according to scientists, our fears regarding climate change are “exaggerated.” He refused to retract his statement the following week before the federal natural resources committee.
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The Canadian Progressive: EPA Trashes State Department’s Positive Evaluation Of Keystone XL
Posted April 29, 2013 by Obert Madondo
By: Obert Madondo | The Canadian Progressive: The powerful U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) seems to be taking its mandate seriously. At least as far as the State Department’s recent evaluation of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is concerned. In an official letter issued last Monday, the EPA trashed the State Department’s draft report, the Draft [...]
The post EPA Trashes State Department’s Positive Evaluation Of Keystone XL appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
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Canadian officials should be ashamed for attacking scientists
Posted April 28, 2013 by Elizabeth May
Earlier this week, our Minister for Natural Resources, the Hon. Joe Oliver, went to Washington on what the Canadian media mistakenly insists on calling a “charm offensive.” It really cannot be described as having anything to do with “charm” when…
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Left Over: Rightwing Knuckledraggers Unite!!!!
Posted April 27, 2013 by cityprole
Climate Change Scientist Calls Conservatives ‘Neanderthal’
CBC | Posted: 04/27/2013 8:03 am EDT | Updated: 04/27/2013 9:46 am EDT
This message is only marginally redundant..and the Conjobs could care less, or their supporters..after all the tar sands are newer than the dinosaur and plant remains that make up their bulk…what’s that, according to these rightwing whackjobs? 6,000 years, or something, right? And there’s no such thing as Neanderthals, it’s a progressive plot!!!! Personally, I feel insulted that the Cons are called Neanderthals…according to the latest info, they were just as creative and intelligent as us…and 4% of our present-day genetic material (Read more…)
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The Canadian Progressive: Public comments prove Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is all risk, no reward
Posted April 26, 2013 by Guest Blog
By: 350.org | Press Release: WASHINGTON – April 23, 2013 – Opponents of Keystone XL have submitted more than one million comments urging President Obama, Secretary Kerry and the State Department following the publication of the latest deficient environmental review urging that the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline be rejected. Across [...]
The post Public comments prove Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is all risk, no reward appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
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Pipelines to the east? The changing direction of the pipeline debate
Posted April 26, 2013 by Elizabeth May
As the pro-bitumen export crowd notices the gathering storm clouds over their Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan options, and, further south, sees long shadows falling over the Keystone XL pipeline to refineries on the shores of the Texas Gulf c…
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