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.
“What a perfect post-fossil Green society!”
Excellent point Fred.
Let’s not forget that North Korea is the left’s version of the perfect post-fossil fuel Green society. The total lack of energy consumption in North Korea SHOULD be every enviromentalists’ wet dream. Funny how leftists never visit…
Phantom,
Yeah, I thought you were usually in the know.
And true about the constricted refining capacity. Big oil will be keeping it up there to pay off all those new auto-pumps, [ No empoyees], and to cover new battery tech / production, not to mention huge pollution coal liquifaction in Africa. = TG
there hasnt been a big refinery built in the US for 20 years. the regulatory process is too diffucult, add that to different gas blend requirements in every state and you have a supply problem.
any new capacity in canada will require a GHG certificate, maybe we can get chairman Moe Slong to permit some refineries in China and we can get it done there with coal as the heat source.
We need Peter Lougheed helping stelmach with the wise development of our tar sands. = TG
Google for “Peter Lougheed meg” (without the quotes if you wish) and see what comes up.
I do not work for MEG Energy.
Ever since the (signing of the) Magna Carta started to break up the “serfdoms” the elite has been fighting to reinstate its position. At first it was not a large issue for the elite until industrialisation created a wealthy middle class. Then position of power was threatened by the independence that the new wealth created. How can the peasants be controlled if they are in charge of their own destiny?
Socialism by the end of a gun did not work, even China is slowly losing its grip on the populace. How then to regain control? The current trend is to scare the people into believing that the planet is in danger and the only way to save it is to become socialist serfs.
Taking Josef Goebbels’ playbook word for word, we can’t watch a movie or anything on television without being bombarded directly or subliminaly with propaganda pushing the “cause”. The latest idocity is the World Wackjob Fund’s “Earth Hour”, which is nothing more than a test to see how many lemmings will go over the cliff.
The Left was successful in the 1920’s and 1930’s with these techniques. If we don’t smarten up, they’ll be successful again.
why are all the socialists at the top rich?
Gosh, it is hard to imagine when all of you armchair critics and experts on the far fringes of the right appear to be so incredibly intelligent…
Maybe they aren’t exactly socialists? Maybe they have been successful because they’re smart and have actually done things rather than spend hours in basements tearing people down and creating unbelievable and elaborate though laughably simplistic theories about suspicious motives and why science isn’t to be trusted….
Tory_Watcher_5
Oh, so you are young liberal Tory watcher club team member 5, eh?
Ok. You express a natural emotional condition. Do you have anything constructive to contribute? Any link of interesting reference?
No?
Well I have emotions too but not about to waste readers time. = TG