.@cbcthehouse great show yesterday on green recovery. My thoughts in this THREAD on how the oil industry is holding out the promise of new technologies to reduce emissions from oil and gas development to justify continued expansion #cdnpoli #bcpoli #abpoli #BuildBackBetter 🧵 1/
We need to use clean technologies but not to expand. To clean up existing production. We need to regulate this industry so they are forced to use cleaner technologies. AND we also need to regulate a wind down that gets us to zero. 2/
Let’s be clear on two things: They have the technologies to reduce emissions per barrel. them. They are rarely using them because they don’t want to cut into their profit margins and they are expensive. So make them mandatory 3/
Secondly, promises of “net zero” are clouded in unrealistic projections of emissions reduction from CCS (carbon capture & storage) & BCESS (bio energy with carbon capture and storage) and increasingly alarming projections by both industry and government of paying for offsets 4/
Offsets literally mean not reducing our own pollution but paying someone else to do it & they benefit from the investment. After decades there are still no registry’s or certifications that ensure offsets are not a scam double counted or temporary etc. 5/
We also have a huge problem w/ faulty land use accounting. We count planting trees but fail to account for the emissions from logging old growth? & flat out ignore science showing our standing forests emitting now. Tree planting is good but can’t justify expanding fossil fuels.6/
Fudging numbers & false solutions will hurt us all. It’s like basing our pandemic response on promises for a vaccine that’s not in place but opening up the borders anyways. We cannot bend the curve if we ignore the science. 7/
and the science clearly says all industries and all countries must reduce emissions now. Not build more LNG, more pipelines and oil drilling while promising future reductions 8/
Last myth to bust that the oil industry has built up and even convinced the BC NDP of, is that LNG is a climate solution because it displaces coal. Given what we now know of unaccounted for methane emissions & the drop in renewable pricing it’s simply no longer true.
