Pumping more oil while the house burns down: how long will the fantasy last?
Fossil fuels still hugely contribute to provincial coffers and the federal treasury, but too so would green energy alternatives if given a chance to flourish instead of being undermined by the Alberta government.
Last summer’s forest fires in Alberta. With a few exceptions, our politicians are divided into two camps: the stout defenders of the oil and gas industry regardless of damage to the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions cause; or, those rhetorically committed to addressing climate change, but, maybe next decade, or in 2050. Photograph courtesy of Cpl. Marc-André Leclerc, DND Canada
OPINION | BY SUSAN RILEY | July 29, 2024
CHELSEA, QUE.—You really wonder what it’s going to take to shake us from our willful blindness.
Our forests and communities burn at accelerating rates. One day downtown Toronto is awash in flood water; the next, iconic Jasper National Park is aflame. Winter is gradually retreating. Summers are becoming unbearable in some cities, especially for the elderly and those without air conditioning. Each new year brings once-in-a-lifetime climate emergencies. A recent Sunday was the hottest ever recorded globally—until the record was smashed the next day.
Yet we allow our fossil-fuel industry to continue polluting—to actually increase production—to make promises it has shown it has no intention of keeping, while we wait for some imagined technology that will keep the oil (and profits) flowing and emissions magically shrinking.
Our politicians, with a few laudable exceptions, are divided into two camps: they are either stout defenders of the oil and gas industry no matter what damage the sector’s greenhouse gas emissions cause, or they are rhetorically committed to addressing climate change, but maybe next decade. Or maybe 2050. Maybe when there are no trees left, and smoke season lasts six months.
There is no need to re-litigate tired arguments about the carbon tax, or engage in hand-wringing over the costs of climate adaptation. There is, instead, an increasingly desperate need for a mass movement away from fossil dependency towards the clean, green future that—so far—is mostly glimpsed on billboards.
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But what will it take to move us from lethargy—or dread—to action?
Just recently, for instance, in a blinding irony, a handful of major oilsands producers had to evacuate non-essential workers from mine sites in the Fort McMurray, Alta., area because of encroaching wildfires—fires, it hardly needs be said, made increasingly savage as emissions from these very sites multiply and accelerate the climate crisis.
But if the immense fire that partly destroyed the city of Fort McMurray in 2016—a world-renowned event thanks to John Vaillant’s brilliant reporting in his award-winning book, Fire Weather—if that didn’t slow the pace of oil production, what will it take? Does the Alberta government care, for instance, that the scenic Rocky Mountain town of Jasper had to be evacuated last week as wildfires encroached? Does no other sector of that province’s economy—tourism, ranching, farming—count for anything in the face of the immense power of the oil industry?
Apparently not. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith declared herself “frightened and stressed” by the Jasper blaze, but she and many others are still living the dream: a booming oil and gas sector, big paycheques and bigger cars, and, well, if climate change is a problem, Canada is a tiny part of it. You would think it would be harder, every year, to ignore the inferno burning on the doorstep of the Edmonton provincial legislature, but denial is the easier and more lucrative course.
The federal government, meanwhile, looks on fretfully, tries to “work with the industry,” continues to offer loan guarantees—the latest worth $19-billion—to the Trans Mountain Pipeline, which, now that it is finally finished, will triple the amount of crude oil transported from Alberta to Vancouver harbour, and on to other places to be refined.
It bought the pipeline, of course, to win favour in Alberta, watched costs balloon to $34-billion, chipped in a $17-billion loan guarantee when construction got complicated, quietly tossed in that extra $19-billion a few weeks ago and—as NDP MP Charlie Angus says—is now “trying to cut some kind of backroom deal to create a front company” to take the embarrassing asset off its hands.
Even more cynically, it is primed to unload at least some of the pipeline on Indigenous groups, having set aside $5-billion in budget 2024 in loan guarantees for bands interested in investing in “natural resource” projects. Let them deal with the financial risk, the political heat, and—if the oil era ends expeditiously—a costly white elephant.
In Angus’ words, federal investment in the TMX “drives a stake through the heart” of the Liberal promise to limit emissions. There is supposed to be an emissions cap coming this fall, explicitly for the oilsands, the largest single source of national emissions. The draft plan calls for a 2030 emissions cap of 35 to 38 per cent below 2019 levels.
The timeline does not sound very urgent. It leaves openings for new governments, new excuses. Even so, this cautious goal is stoutly opposed by the oil industry, which is notionally committed to zero emissions by 2050, but is too busy counting money to attend to details at the moment. In fact, the industry has quite explicitly mothballed some of its face-saving climate initiatives as the profits roll in, and it re-focuses on its “legacy” resource.
It still advances carbon capture and storage, but more as a fig leaf than a real emissions control plan, given the technology’s limited and spotty record in actually capturing carbon. CCS is, in fact, most useful to the oil patch as an argument for increased production. And, of course, the industry wants federal and provincial taxpayers to foot most of the bill for a proposed $16.5-billion carbon capture pipeline north of Edmonton, a pipeline that—given the dubious effectiveness of the technology and the huge expense—will probably never be built.
And here is another absurdity: even if oil firms do reduce emissions from their energy-intensive operations in northern Alberta, all that increased Canadian production, gushing to the coast, is destined to be burned by consumers around the world—thereby contributing more greenhouse pollution to the global total.
One small victory for truth in a world of euphemism and spin comes in the form of recent amendments to the federal competitions act, which makes oil companies and others liable for up to $10-million fines for misleading environmental claims. It didn’t take long for Pathways Alliance, the primary oil sands lobby, and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers to scrub their websites to remove unprovable claims.
Such as: “The path to net-zero begins with carbon capture and storage.” No, CCS encourages increased production and—by extension—emissions. Or, “Canadian LNG (liquified natural gas) exports will reduce global emissions.” No, “natural” gas is still a powerful fossil fuel.
In this world of illusions, the most powerful is the notion that thousands of jobs will disappear overnight if Alberta’s oil producers are forced to cut production. In fact, since before the pandemic, they themselves have been cutting jobs and automating to increase profits. Fossil fuels still contribute significantly to provincial coffers and the federal treasury, but so would green energy alternatives if given a chance to flourish (instead of being undermined by the Alberta government).
What could have been a gradual transition, however, will land like a hammer blow on Alberta’s economy when the world turns its back on this country’s most lucrative export. It is a commonplace, but it bears repeating: countries that flourish the post-oil world will be those that faced reality early, and invested in green power and conservation.
So, not us.
In fact, the long-awaited federal “sustainable jobs” act—hog-tied by Conservative opposition in the House—only became law last month and is deeply bureaucratic, stunningly obvious, and way too late. Community committees, action plans, skill upgrades, early retirements, matching displaced oil workers with new jobs in notional new enterprises—the kind of things governments are spectacularly bad at.
Even massive and forward-looking federal investments in new electric car and battery plants may run aground because governments have been so slow to follow through with a national network of charging stations. Big automakers are pausing the EV revolution as drivers balk at higher EV prices, and the inadequate charging network. The reborn Ford plant in Oakville, Ont., will now start producing Super Duty gas-powered trucks in 2026 instead of the promised EV utility cars.
And, while governments have promised for decades to reduce, or eliminate, public funding for the fossil fuel sector, the loan guarantees continue to flow. Enbridge just scored $200-million to $300-million financial backing to expand its oil and gas network. Coastal Gaslink, which is building a pipeline across northern B.C. to carry fracked gas to the coast, recently won another $200-million federal backstop.
Not that the Liberal government, approaching its 10th year in office, isn’t on the case. A federal plan to phase out fossil fuel funding is coming this fall, they say. (Or, perhaps, a plan to establish a schedule?). The long-promised oilsands emissions cap—after more “consultation”, perhaps?—is also to appear this fall, only a couple of decades behind schedule. So is a new national building code that would, at some future date, outlaw oil furnaces in new construction. (No word on “natural” gas for cooking and heating, which has already been curtailed in several jurisdictions.)
Aside from being too little, too late, what these worthy initiatives amount to is a panicky response to a problem the same government is fuelling. The heavily subsided TMX pipeline is tripling oil exports and increasing oilsands production—by 17 per cent between now and 2030, according to some estimates— just as critics predicted. Ongoing fossil fuel subsidies keep the pretence of a technological solution alive.
It is up to all of us, as individuals, to do what we can afford, what is practical, to live zero-emission lives. But, as important, we need to focus—fiercely—on who we are electing to public office, at every level, and how sincere they are about fixing the crisis in which we are living.
They need to feel the heat, the same way the 25,000 people evacuated from a fiery hell in the magnificent Rocky Mountains did last week, and, as future victims will in the many weeks to come.
Susan Riley is a regular contributor to The Hill Times.