I can’t help but be dismayed when as I watch the energy story unfold in Canada. The Federal Government seems stuck in 19th century thinking, when we need 21st-century solutions to 20th-century problems.
Twentieth-century problems? Indeed! Large oil corporations became aware of the problem that high carbon emissions from burning coal, oil and gas would increase the Greenhouse Effect a while back.
The year was 1959. The keynote speaker at the American Petroleum Institute’s 100th anniversary symposium Energy and Man was Edward Teller: the Hungarian-American physicist and so-called “father of the hydrogen bomb”.
He told the audience of the need to rapidly look for alternatives for coal, oil and gas, as burning of these fossil fuels would start chemically contaminating Earth’s atmosphere, leading to climate change, Artic ice melt, and rising sea levels.
It is now 2018 and we see the Canadian Government jump to a new level of support for the oil and gas industry, literally going in overdrive with its recent decision to bail out Kinder Morgan by buying the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
That was enough reason for a good number of Bowen Islanders to join fellow-riding members in a Nation wide Snap Action that was held on Monday June 4. Armed with placards, banners, and chants they gathered at the constituency office of our MP Pam Goldsmith-Jones and marched through Horseshoe Bay.
Our MP wasn’t there, but her assistant Natasha Lepur was. She graciously invited everyone to leave messages – which we did.
The messages were loud and clear. Many of those who came out and many of those who couldn’t, are divesting from fossil fuels, trying to limit their greenhouse gas output as well as they can.
We were inspired by Canada signing on to the Paris Climate Change Accord in 2015, but the expansion of oil pipelines doesn’t fit that picture. It fits even less now our Government has decided to use $10 billion (or more) of taxpayer money for the purchase and expansion of an oil pipeline. People feel betrayed. Why bother taking climate action when the Government, expected to provide leadership, is bailing out full time.
I feel the same way. Although I am a Green party supporter, I was inspired by the election campaign that Goldsmith-Jones ran three years ago.
As part of it, she hosted a large pre-election gathering at the Kay Meek centre in West Vancouver where well-known Bowen Islanders Wade Davis and Ross Beatty were part of panel discussion. The message back then was that Canada must transition to renewable energy and divest from fossil fuels.
Beatty explained that this was already happening, and it was happening faster and faster, and Canada had to step in before it falls behind.
Instead of doing divesting, though, Canada’s government has now decided to move backward altogether.
In hindsight, Goldsmith-Jones was courting soft Green supporters to vote Liberal and they did in large numbers. That might have been a clever political move, but with an issue that concerns the survival of life on this planet, it is a cynical and deeply disturbing one.
I doubt that soft Green supporters will be as soft in 2019, and I doubt they make the same mistake twice.
