Someone asked me to listen to the COP segment on the latest @CurseOfPolitics pod, and I live to serve.
A thread about Jenni Byrne's perspective here, and where it misses the mark. #cdnpoli
A few markers to put down before we get into her quotes. First, she says that we're "buying energy from China".
Nope! China's a net importer -- the biggest on earth. (We'll get to this in a second)
She says that the plan is to "phase out the oil sands". No: The plan is to drive its emissions down to zero.
If she wants to take issue with the idea of eliminating fossil fuels she should talk to her old boss Stephen Harper, who said it back in 2015.
nationalpost.com/news/world/har…
And she asks where we'll get our oil and gas from once we drive emissions down to zero.
The answer: Canada. Again -- asking industry to zero-out its emissions doesn't mean zeroing out its production. For as long as we use fossil fuels, we should want them to come from Canada.
Okay, enough preliminaries. First quote:
"Unless there is a reason for countries like China and India to completely turn over and start using electric cars, they'll continue to invest in [oil and gas] projects -- it will just not be projects in Canada."
Oh, there's a reason.
China and India are both huge importers of oil and gas. Generally speaking, that's a position countries try to get out from under. And both China and India have an obvious economic incentive associated with capturing market share in the green economy -- EVs, renewables, etc.
Why would they want to continue to pay to import oil and gas when they could produce their own renewable energy?
Answer: they wouldn't. If you don't think they'll transition away from fossil fuels as soon as it's economically/technologically viable, you're kidding yourself.
Next, we get into the ethical oil stuff. "The emissions [from Canada] are lower than what other countries that produce oil and gas are. You think the oil sands aren't less than oil and gas production in Tanzania or Russia? Come on."
About Tanzania:
Meanwhile, it's not clear that our emissions are actually that much lower than Russia's. Here's a couple of charts from the Oil Climate Index, which was produced in part by academics from the University of Calgary.
Am I suggesting Russia's oil is cleaner, or that they can be trusted on the environment? Definitely not! They're dreadful on that front, and their data is super opaque so we don't know how bad it might be.
Here's what @markusoff wrote back in 2019. macleans.ca/economy/scrubb…
That's why we can't rest on our laurels. The five biggest oil sands companies get this, and they've committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050. The government's announcement just formalized their pledge.
Maybe it's time that the industry's boosters got the memo here.
I assume Harper-era loyalists will be among the last to come around here, since they remain committed to his worldview of Canada as a global energy superpower.
We can still be a global energy power, of course. It's just going to look different than they thought it would.
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