Canada has an estimated 1.6 trillion barrels of oil on its territory, much of it locked in tough-to-excavate tar sands in the province of Alberta. By comparison, oil-rich Saudi Arabia has an estimated 270 billion barrels left. It isn’t even close.
Yet, according to the Financial Times of London, Canada’s government recently sent U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter of warning that it might not be able to sell the U.S. any of its oil, which the Pentagon desperately needs for national defense.
For that, you can thank the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, passed with great gusto and self-righteousness by the Democratic Congress.
So let’s do a quick review of the energy bill so far: environmental degradation, rampant food inflation, and a potential Third World famine due to corn ethanol; increased potential for mercury exposure from mandatory CFL bulbs; and the prospect of a ticked-off major trading partner on our northern border and an increased dependence on ever-more-expensive Middle Eastern crude. If this is the best the Beltway class can do, hopefully the public will become more inclined to trust the private sector and free markets to find solutions.
Law of unintended consequences? Hardly. This is Law To Enrich Socialists, and all is unfolding as planned;
Criticisms of Environment Minister John Baird for the vagueness of the moves announced this week to force oilsands to sequester CO2, and prevent construction of “dirty” coal plants reflects the Alice in Wonderland quality of the climate-change non-debate. Opposition parties brayed that he had not been “tough” enough. Media headlines suggested that big emitters had “won.”
But nowhere in either the policy or the attacks would you find any suggestion that any measures, whether tough or not, would have the slightest impact on the global climate. How did we get to this ridiculous mess? It is all inextricably tied to the remarkable job that the Left has done in the past 20 years to rescue itself from the brink of extinction by exploiting environmental concerns.
[…]
The old/new Left was quick to seize upon the potential of climate change at the huge Brundtland follow-up at Rio in 1992. Rio was organized by Brundtland commissioner Maurice Strong, a long-time committed Canadian socialist who was the strategic mastermind of the new environmental Left. From Rio emerged the processes that led to the Kyoto accord.
Why would governments support the theory of potentially disastrous man-made climate change? It was a combination of the success of the environmental Left — in particular activist non-governmental organizations — in stoking the concerns of the electorate, and of the desire of bureaucrats and policy-makers to stay relevant, busy and in power. This in turn gave them an interest in supporting the NGOs’ radical message, which was amplified by government funding, and by allowing them into the policy-making process. The policy process became self-feeding.
This orientation helps explain why the abject failure of Kyoto was not taken as an indication that such processes were fatally flawed. Rather it was seen as a justification for “redoubling efforts,” and for having bigger conferences in more exotic locales.
They were raising those glasses at the swim-up bar to us, dear suckers.
Didn*t Virgin Airlines* Branson save us from all this air travel guilt?
Didn*t he add a thimbleful of Ethanol to one of his planes and fly it about a little?
Problem solved? = TG
Bruce Power has announced plans for a nuke-u-lar plant in Peace River, large enough for 2 million homes.
Are they ahead of the curve in providing AB residential electricity?
OR is that power going to be used in the diirrtty (thanks x-tina) TAR SANDS for extraction, reducing the carbon FOOTPRINT, to satisfy US energy guidelines for production?
just askin’
Every person dreams about being the hero who saves the world, and this feeds the hysteria about global warming. Everybody who wants to believe in climate change wants to feel good about themselves, leading or contributing an effort to save humanity.
In particular, for Gore and others, it is all about being Superman, about being the leaders who save us all from ourselves. It’s typical socialist thinking.
Truth does not matter. People believe what they want to believe, it’s human nature.
I’ve always thought GW is part of a larger agenda ,follow the money, it always leads somewhere, who benifets? nuclear energy anyone?
It’s those pesky greens holding things it up.
Kate,
How do we get out of this mess?
Branson flew a four engine plane, running one engine on a 20% biofuel, so a net 5% converted chicken grease or something the equivalent.
“all hail the conquering hairdo.”
Im not sure why the unabashed capitalist is a perpetual CBCpravda favourite.
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1447
Ranchers in the US are now shooting cattle because the high cost of feed is putting them out of business.
The USA will be, for the first time, this year a net importer of Wheat.
And meanwhile, our atmosphere continues cooling down . . .
This data is based on global (including over the ocean) average temperature readings per year, per altitude, as reported by the U.K.’s Hadley Climatic Research Unit:
altitude (meters/feet) hPa Trend (C/decade)
24,000/79,000 30 -0.84
20,000/65,500 50 -0.76
16,000/52,500 100 -0.35
14,000/46,000 150 -0.12
12,000/40,000 200 -0.01
9,100/30,000 300 0.10
6,500/21,500 500 0.05
3,000/10,000 700 0.06
1,500/5000 850 0.08
zero (surface) 1,000 0.13
(from HadCRU3)
As the data indicates, over the past two decades, temperatures have actually declined in the upper troposphere, even though there has been some minor upward trends in temperature at sea level and lower altitudes. This completely contradicts conventional global warming models.
we are on the path to a Nirvana Socialist paradise . . .
“the model for Canada’s low-emission future is—Cuba! Under Castro, especially since the Soviets stopped gifting the Cubans with free oil and fertilizer, Cuba has developed the closest thing on the planet to a “modern low-energy society.”
Instead of making new cars in emission-prone factories, Cuba’s workers spend their time machining new parts for the island’s few 1950s relics on elderly lathes left over from its sugar-exporting days. Castro originally sold clothing through the food rationing system, but now most of the clothing comes from antique sewing machines run by Cuba’s women.
The women also produce much of their families’ food in urban gardens, since the ration system doesn’t deliver much. Cuba’s ration cards are good for 6 pounds of rice per capita per month, 20 ounces of beans, six pounds of sugar, and 15 pounds of potatoes or bananas. Cubans get less than one quart of milk for each kid under 7 per month, but cool, rainy Europe may offer its consumers a bit more milk and cheese and a lot fewer bananas.
Cubans get a pound of beef per month, and two pounds of chicken—though often the “meat” is hamburger mixed with soy flour, or “chicken tenders” made partly with chicken and mostly with “other.” Europe’s per capita food supply will plummet to similar levels when fertilizer plants consume too many “energy points.”
The official Cuban transport system is energy-efficient hitch-hiking. With so few vehicles, and little gasoline, cars and trucks that refuse to pick up hitch-hikers on the highway are fined for a “crime against society.”
Tourism is Cuba’s biggest industry now, but that won’t work for a Kyoto-driven Europe. The EU won’t have any fuel for airplanes, and precious little for buses. Nor is Cuba building big rental houses on the beaches any more to attract their tourists. In fact, one of Cuba’s big problems is that Hurricane Michelle in 2001 destroyed or damaged 100,000 homes, which the Castro economy has been largely unable to rebuild. There isn’t much heavy equipment for such projects.
As a Kyoto bonus, Michelle’s damage to Cuba’s electric grid was severe.
Best of all, 90 percent of the jobs are with the Cuban government. No complaints allowed, even if your wife has to sew your shirts and hoe the garden in the hot sun. Kids over 11 owe 45 days per summer working on the farms, which teaches them how to control weeds and bugs without any nasty pesticides.
What a perfect post-fossil Green society! ”
I think it’s a combination of a number of factors.
First, there’s the ubiquitous Western guilt, with us from the mythic era of Adam and Eve. Because we are material beings, we are guilty. After all, matter only formed when it ‘fell’ from grace.
Eastern philosophies don’t have that guilt; they define the world as a materialized expression of ‘force’ and humans as just another Form of expression. There’s no ‘fall from purity’. But then, eastern philosophies don’t move to explore, analyze and control matter.
So, since we do, then, we in the West are prone to guilt. And to the notion of utopia, a return to Purity. We are susceptible to any and all ideologies of utopia, whether they be fascist, communist, socialist or Liberal.
They are all the same; all focused round general platitudes of ‘conquering the bad’.
And then along come the unscrupulous who make use of this human frailty, this awareness of our material fragility. They try to use our guilt to extort money. Millions and billions of money.
That’s the UN and the majority of its projects. That’s Kyotoism, which is simply a money scam to get the West to pay for the industrialization of China and India.
What do the NDP and Liberals get out of Kyotoism? Control. Control over corporations. And money – enormous sums of money that on the surface, are supposed to be used for better technology, but heck, who knows where all that money went? As Chretien said – ‘what’s a few million stolen’?
Speaking of Kyoto and unintended consequences , in the legislation Baird tabled , the oil-sands and coal-fired generation plants must “capture” the CO2.
Just imagine a huge amount of CO2 stored under say Lake Ontario or underground in Alberta and some catastrophe caused a massive release of CO2 into the surrounding environment.
It does not take much imagination to envisage the resulting environmental disaster. If a significant CO2 release occurred under Lake Ontario which altered the pH significantly , most of the aquatic life in the lake would perish.
Either Baird is a complete idiot on the carbon capture issue , or perhaps he realizes that the environmental impact study required for such a gargantuan (CO2 Capture) project would essentially kill it.
Us Albertans hate it when the CBC calls it the TAR sands.
We prefer OIL sands.
I think I’ve gotta stop reading about this stuff. It’s enough to turn an ordinary, curmudgeonly, middle aged guy from merely an angry crank into some sort of anti-eco terrorist!
Just think though–if we ‘capture’ all the CO2 and Global Cooling occurs, we will be the nation with the best thing to conteract Global Cooling. WE WILL ALL BE RICH!!!!! If CO2 causes GW, doesn’t it stand to reason that it will combat Global Cooling? So store up all the gas you emit–it will be worth money some day!
I think Mr. Baird is playing rope-a-dope with the Opposition brain trust.
Sequester all the CO2 represented by Canadian oil production? Sure thing! How many tons per minute is that? How many BTUs per ton of CO2 to separate it, compress it, and shove it into the ground?
I’m pretty sure the answer is more BTUs than you get when you burn the oil that made the CO2. Which means you can’t do it.
Obviously Mr. Baird will announce that his targets are better than Dion’s targets, make a buncha noise, then quietly release a couple studies that prove the whole thing is completely impossible and forget about it. Politics as we have come to know it, in other words.
The sole difference between the CPC approach and the Dion approach is that Dion would levy a new tax to pay for the impossible project and hand out building contracts to friends. eg: Gun registry.
It is my HOPE that Baird will not do that. If he does do it, we shall have to yank him and the rest of the CPC and put actual conservatives in their place.
I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.
When you’re right you’re wrong, unless you’re left.
Humans are naturally competitive, self interested and aggressive. Since the cracking of the human genome it has become increasingly clear that we are not wired to be socialists. Thus there is no example anywhere of socialism or its darker cousin Marxism working.
The average socialist thinks that human behavior can be altered if you just get the formula right. As more knowledge of the role of genes determining behavior comes to light, socialists will have to face facts. That there is no bloody way you can get a country, city or even a quorum at a condo meeting to act in the interests of the whole. Of course they won’t face those facts, and will continue tilting society towards Utopia. Bribing citizens with their own money along the way.
In the end, every socialist experiment will fail. Doomed by the design of each individual human being.
It must be so great to be a socialist. You get to feel like you are this magnanimous pure soul while you stuff your pockets full of cash and order people around.
At least until the duped masses revolt and rip you to shreds like they did Nicolai Ceausescu.
What more evidence can you ask for than the catastrophic failures in Cuba, China, Soviet Union…….. even Sweden where they have one of the highest rates of suicide on the planet.
How long before Sweden collapses into chaos. Not long I venture. Canada will go on a lot longer because we are fabulously rich in resources and arable land. Ultimately though, Canada will travel along the path to full socialism and failure. As will the US. Hillary and Obama have this all planned out. As does Jack Layton, Steffi Dion, Rae and company. We live in a country where the Conservative party of today is caught at the helm of a ship that won’t turn. Where is the flat tax, slashing of government payrolls, trashing of bilingualism, multiculturalism, and the welfare state in general. Seems remote, as we rapidly approach the point at which a majority of Canadian citizens depend on the largesse of government for their daily bread.
Fred>
“Cuba’s ration cards are good for 6 pounds of rice per capita per month, 20 ounces of beans, six pounds of sugar, and 15 pounds of potatoes or bananas”.
Six pounds of sugar! What the hell do they do with all that sugar?
knight99
what do they do with all that sugar?
Have you seen their teeth? make the English look like a source for ivory.
pretty small rations, Dr.Bono Suzuki went down there and made their substandard ruined economy look like a paradise of the sustainable future, what a complete nut.
why are all the socialists at the top rich?
rcgz. we will just carry on down the road to disaster. then we will let someone [ a dictator] solve all our problems. the left will love it because that is what being left is all about.
Its about a 100HP per mcf to compress CO2 from atmospheric to miscible pressure. that does not include moving it or separating it. since amine, the the cheapest process is a water wet process, all the CO2 must also be dried before shipping or you make a very corrosive mixture. add to that that Amine also pulls H2S and other trace gases. nice stuff like H2, that dissassocates into H- ions that reform part way thru a pipe and cause hydrogen embrittlement. Im just waiting for the talking heads and talking politicians to solve it by decree.
Ps , there are lots of guys around that will do a paid gubmint study to say you can or almost can. wtf have we got ourselve into.
This is not about climate, it’s about the left stealing from the right using scare tactics and Utopian dreams.
C’mon John West , the left does’nt discriminate , they steal from everyone …….. just happens the right has more to steal .
If the Left wins and all the horse crap about climate change is complied with, there will be massive loss of business and jobs. Who will then supply to dough for social programs the Left loves so well and used so much?
“After all, matter only formed when it ‘fell’ from grace.”
Where do you get this from? Secret, suppressed gnostic texts?
The lefties are already a pathetically dependent mindset! They beg for socialism because it’s a steady source of dependable care for them instead of wavering right social support. Better to seal the deal with a sugar daddy dictator and forget having to fight & scurry for their scraps.
John West, the glorious example of Cuba will reveal that lack of money is no impediment to the creation of social programs. Those who are in favor with the regime get to be in the program, everybody else gets nada. Easy, see?
“After all, matter only formed when it ‘fell’ from grace.”
“Where do you get this from? Secret, suppressed gnostic texts?”
For all the intelligence ET displays in some posts, other snide or ignorant remarks makes one pause.
However, there is a certain amount of wrongly interpreted Christian altruism that can be blamed.
Interesting insight, ET. You always manage to capture a sort of messianic flare.
I particularly enjoyed your facile synthesis of western history. In fact, I recently found myself wondering what the basis for all of western thought was. “Guilt.” Of course! Let’s ignore the formative force of… say Greek philosophy, which predated the rise of Christianity by centuries, for a second.
The idea of Utopia is fairly inconsistent with theology, and most Biblical tales, I’m afraid. The Marxists, for example, have never been friends of religion (Christianity included).
Also, I see that you still haven’t figured out the difference between Facism and Communism. I can’t imagine that any facist that has ever existed would refer to his vision as “utopian.”
You have some vague notion that communism is bad… and some vague notion that guilt, facism, and utopias are bad, so you lump them into a single category. I hope that your devotees don’t put much credence into what you write here. Then again, they’d have to have read some of those book things in order to realize that you’re making this stuff up as you go along.
… and now, a barffff from the mole, aka Kyoto: barffff …-
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Stéphane Dion’s Bali Blog
Friday, December 14, 2007 – Meeting with Mrs. Bianca Jagger
http://www.liberal.ca/entry_19
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What*s all this doom and gloom? The Liberals are depressed, remember?
The US makes a move for fewer dougnuts and less meat induced heart attacks. Lower health costs . . .
Fred says; at March 13, 2008 3:53 PM
==================================
** Ranchers in the US are now shooting cattle because the high cost of feed is putting them out of business.
The USA will be, for the first time, this year a net importer of Wheat. **
Clever way to trim obesity . . eh?
Kate posts above. . .
==================
** Criticisms of Environment Minister John Baird for the vagueness of the moves announced this week to force oilsands to sequester CO2, and prevent construction of *dirty* coal plants reflects the Alice in Wonderland quality of the climate-change non-debate. **
Pumping CO2 waste gases into depleted fields pumps up more oil.
My friend Cal from Alberta is looking forward to bigger royalty cheques on his family*s old pumped out homestead section.
Silver lining?
Brian at March 13, 2008 4:20 PM
==============================
** It does not take much imagination to envisage the resulting environmental disaster. If a significant CO2 release occurred under Lake Ontario which altered the pH significantly , most of the aquatic life in the lake would perish.**
Will never happen. . .
CO2 is stored in thousands of separate sites. If a catastrophe was severe enough to open the majority of holes at one time, pH values would be the last thing to worry about. = TG
TJ: we need a war to draw the lines between evil (Moonbat/Islamofscist Axis) and good (liberal/democractic adherents) and rid the world of some serious rot.
The alliance of the Good will need plenty of oil.
** They were raising those glasses at the swim-up bar to us, dear suckers.* *
Us / this *dear sucker* just filled up the jeep gas tank at PtroCan.
Yesterday the price was $1.13 per litre.
Today the price was $1.17 per l.
My *Early in, Wells Fargo / Citi card gives me 5.5 cents per litre off, so that helps.
Small fleet and taxi operators must be applying bandages today.
ExxonMobile,PetroCan, please don*t take Baird so seriously or we*ll have to switch to Zenn or Dynasty. = TG
“So, since we do, then, we in the West are prone to guilt.”
Bwahahahahahaha….ET. The only “guilt” I’m prone to is kicking my own a** after blowing a chance to get to home plate with a gal. But then I just go fire up the SUV to go the 2 blocks to the store to get my charcoal for the barbie, which I of course leave idling. Oh. And I also plan to have damned light,including my vehicles and fish tanks on between 8 and 9 on the 29th.
The USA will be, for the first time, this year a net importer of Wheat.
What are you talking about, Fred?
Check your numbers.
irwin daisy – no, nothing to do with gnosticism. I certainly don’t believe in ‘divine souls’ or being entrapped in matter’..and so on.
The notion of matter emerging as a fall from grace is purely christian – Augustinian, in my view. Matter, after all, is mass that is differentiated in space and time. That is, ‘this’ is distinct from ‘that’. Such an emergence of differentiation is akin to ‘consciousness’ (Adam and Eve’s awareness of their differentiation and distinctiveness). And matter is, of course, finite, with a specific birth and death.
This idea of the reality of Spirit as differentiated from Matter, is a basic Christian and western concept.
forain – No, I certainly don’t ignore the Greeks. I’m a fan of Aristotle. I think the Christian ideology took the Platonic view of Form (Spirit) and Matter. You’ll find that in Aquinas, Boethius. I prefer Aristotle’s view.
Fascism is utopian. It posits a Pure Existential State that either existed at one time, or, is existent as an Essence within the people. This Pure Essence must be enabled and allowed to emerge by organizing the society in such a way that it exists. Fascism is a socialist or collectivist ideology – just as as communism.
Communism posits that future Purity in the future, rather than in the past. But it’s as utopian as fascism.
No, I don’t have a vague notion that communism is bad. I have a clear understanding that it’s bad. Collectivism as a means of social organization is only viable in small populations, and pure communism is only found in Bands of about 30 people. It won’t work except by totalitarian rule in larger populations.
Plus, collectivism as a societal organization prevents dissent. That means that the society loses its ability to think, question..and adapt. Very dangerous. Very bad.
Yes, fascism is also bad – because it is a collectivist system – and, in large populations can only exist by force. And, it is essentialist, ie, its notion of The Way We Should Live isn’t based on reality but on a mythic fictionalized idea. Facts and fancies don’t mix.
Of course utopia is ‘bad’. Its idea of ‘what is good’ is based, not on reality, but on fiction. Furthermore, utopias are ‘end points’; they strive for homogeneity and a state where ‘everyone is X’. Right there, the society is in trouble.
Biologically, any system that reaches a homogeneic state is finished. It has lost its capacity for variation, for adaptation. Same with a society. If you reach ‘utopia’, a state of homogeneity – you are finished.
The numbers are in: 6.48 billion gallons of ethanol made in the U.S. in 2007
Posted Mar 12th 2008 8:06PM by Sebastian Blanco
AutoblogGreen.com
6.48 BILLION GALLONS Ethanol…[no effect]
TDI Diesel and hybrids by the thousands…[No effect]
National truck and bus fleets going green…[No Effect]
Gas up by 16 cents a gallon? Something smells.= TG
You may have read a few days ago that the global warming fighting governator flies every day between LA and his office in Sacramento.
Of course you have to excuse that since he wants to see his children and have a family life, unlike you, driving to work willy nilly and making a living looking after your family. Why don’t you walk or something.
You don’t seem to understand that Suzuki, Gore, Swartzeneger and others of the like mind are just too damn important, they are burning the fossils for your own good.
ET said
“””””Biologically, any system that reaches a homogeneic state is finished. It has lost its capacity for variation, for adaptation. Same with a society. If you reach ‘utopia’, a state of homogeneity – you are finished. “””””
ET, I always say that liberalism/socialism will cause the demize of democracy, because it dictates that the state will “think” for, by regulation, the individual. Basically an intellectual homogeneity!!!!
Next time GREENPEACE or SIERRA CLUB sends you one of those stupid letters urging you to oppose oil drilling in the ANWR tell them to GO TAKE A HIKE becuase you have more important things to spend money on then their fruadulent campaign. And why dont we quit shipping CANADA something they buy from us
TG, no kidding eh? No effect because the “problem” all these “solutions” are meant to “solve” are RHETORICAL. Its all talk! CO2 is not pollution, its not poisonous. Only an idiot or a lying POS Liberal thinks otherwise.
OTOH, mercury IS poisonous, and we are supposedly switching to those friggin’ curly lightbulbs by the zillions. Five years of that, and the landfills are going to get some serious heavy metal runoff issues. Ask the Chicoms about that, they are the polluted water experts these days. Experts at polluting it anyway, if not at cleaning up after themselves.
BTW, any news on what it cost to make, store, ship and blend that 6.48 billion gallons of alcohol into our fuel? Compared to the eeeevile hydrocarbons, I mean. Part of your 16 cents a quart increase is right there. Alcohol is expensive!
“Taylor said she feels people will warm up to the tax once they understand how it works.”
tinyurl.com/2tular
Where’s the beef? Alberta has 14 billion in its heritage fund. Norway has 300 billion and the highest standard of living in the world. What happened to Ralph’s billions? Any bets some of the tory boys got paid off? There was a great show on TV tonight about how mismanaged our energy sector is. What’s your answer? Do you have any idea where we’re headed?
OK4ua. Yer back. Were you hibernating or did that turd you use for a brain just thaw? Pssst. It’s not over. Wasn’t a dream, the SaskParty is still in power! And your post is once again off topic.
In better news, now that the U.S.A. is busy converting all that corn to ethanol instead of cattle feed, maybe a person will be able to get a decent tasting steak south of the 49th. We can only hope.
Mind you, with all the water vapour I see pouring out of the ethanol plants, and global warming fast approaching (or is that just spring?) the cattle may be cooked to rare on the hoof, before we even get them slaughtered.
Phantom,
Did I confuse you? Who the hell cares about CO2?
If a group wants to pump the stuff into wells for more oil production, well, that*s a fine make work project.
Don*t worry about the mercury in curly lamps. Paper mills have been dumping mercury in Canadian rivers for 70 years.
Grassy Narrows Manitoba where the wild rice is great but the fish cause brain damage.
Arsenic is common in many of our streams and it*s dangerous downhill from old gold / copper mines.
We have an electronics section in our landfill where the TVs and Flouro-lamps go.
True, Alcohol / ethanol are impractical in several ways. It is however, a job-making tax-paying backup against petro fuels.
Governments love it so no way to slow it. There will be a big switch to gin making when alternates become more common. = TG
“ok4u”, who first showed up on a thread about the 2006 Desenethe-Missinippi-Churchill fiasco (making SDAers conclude he was Aboriginal), then in another thread during the 2007 Saskatchewan election declares himself Slavic (Polish?), makes three observations I would like to critique/refute:
1.) “Norway has 300 billion and the highest standard of living in the world.”
Norway has competition in the heath care economic sector and no competition in the oil economic sector. Two-tiered health care ensures that the huge nest-egg is maintained. The state oil monopoly floods government coffers while Norwegians are doubly hosed at the pump by gas taxes on a (guesstimate) $3.50/L state-owned resource.
2.) “What happened to Ralph’s billions? Any bets some of the tory boys got paid off?”
Greenpeace should have mentioned that before the 3rd of this month – maybe they would have been listened to (or sued). As it is, whether they voted or not, most Albertans are comfortable with the present management -> 72 gov. seats vs. 11 opp. seats.
3.) “There was a great show on TV tonight about how mismanaged our energy sector is. What’s your answer?”
“Our” energy sector? “OUR” energy sector? The Government of Alberta’s energy sector! Not the 1980-NEP-Trudeau-“Canada’s” energy sector, “ok4u”!
Ed Mykhailo Stelmakh, Hetman of Andrivs’k (Andrew) and All Alberta, has the ultimate say on OUR (Alberta’s) energy sector. Our “farmer Premier” and his fellow “agriculturalists” and ranchers (“animal husbandry experts?”) might be better attuned to the land and its health/illness than the suit-and-tie management of the Greenpeace multinational NGO.
Human beings, well those who have some semblance of character, tend to work best under pressure. Every dark cloud has a silver lining.
Canada has oil but extracting it poses more than a few problems. They ve been trying it since the 70’s and they havent done a brilliant job of it. So far.
Car companies are perfectly happy with petrol. Changing manufacturing lines will cost a lot in the short term, but not much in the long term. Right now they dont have any incentive to change. But with no alternative, they will change. That much I can guarantee.
Humans adapt when they have to. Not when they want to.
Harping on about tar sands oil is great on paper, but theres a very sound reason behind why Canada is not producing it. The Americans/Dems have realised that. Whats wrong with signalling to the innovators that change is no longer just welcome, it is a neccessity.
ps – another thing about Democracies. Laws come. And laws go. Under pressure, they adapt too. When the tar sands become viable, the Americans will change tune. If they have to.
CBC Tar Sands special last night:
I*m sure the Oil boss from Norway promised to work their section of the Tar Sands without removing the trees and natural top growth?
Norway did a great job of working their off-shore oil under careful / clean management.
They also have a multi-Billion$ reserve fund that puts the Alberta Heritage fund to shame.
We need Peter Lougheed helping stelmach with the wise development of our tar sands. = TG
I’m agreeing with you TG, I’m just a sloppy writer is all. AGW annoys me, and the whole ethanol scam does too.
If we end up where we -need- to use alcohol for fuel, it certainly won’t be from a lack of petroleum. It will be a global collapse of shipping and refining infrastructure, aka a big frickin’ war.
Sorry, ET, but you’re out to lunch. Matter is part of creation, and in Christian teaching creation is good. Man was indeed materially created before he fell, and did not fall because he was material, but because he acquired an understanding of good and evil.
The idea that matter and the material world results from a fall from grace is indeed gnostic, and definitely not Christian.