TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford should consider Australia’s massive wildfires as he tears down renewable energy projects, Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath charged Thursday.
“We’re all witnessing the very real threat we face from the climate crisis,” Horwath told reporters at Queen’s Park Thursday.
“The devastating bushfires
that continue to rage in Australia should be a wake-up call about the
urgency to take action. Yet we have a premier who is waging war on the
environment.”
“A lot of the political conversation about an energy transition has involved the suggestion that an energy transition is anti-Alberta, or something happening only in Canada, or a thing that could be stopped by a more pro-oil federal government,” said Abacus Chair Bruce Anderson. “But Canadians and most Albertans don’t see it that way. They believe whatever disruption a transition will cause is necessary and inevitable, and they want governments to work together on a plan to adapt our economy, not debate whether we need to or not.”
“Climate change is here, and the clean energy transition is happening with or without us,” added Clean Energy Canada Executive Director Merran Smith. “The majority of Albertans realize this too, and half of them believe it will actually benefit Alberta. A sustainable future for ourselves, our kids, and our economy—that’s something Canadians can agree on. We’re not as divided as some would have us believe.”
“The warmer it is the longer the fire season,” said Flannigan. “The warmer it is the more lightning you see.”
He
said for every degree of warming, the number of lightning strikes goes
up by about 12 per cent. Lightning usually causes more than half of the
wildfires in Canada.
He also said warmer temperatures dry out
trees and other fuels for the fire. Unless there is an associated
increase in rainfall, there is more fuel available to burn, allowing
fires to start easily and spread more rapidly. They are also more
intense fires, making them harder, or even impossible, to extinguish.
“It’s a warmer world and part of a warmer world is more fire,” he said.
But guess what? Canadian taxpayers are now paying $1 billion for the Ocean Protection Plan. (Even though no credible technology for cleaning up ocean oil spills exists.)
Put all the costs together and the purchase of the Trans Mountain pipeline has probably cost taxpayers $8 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies through unjustifiably low pipeline tolls.
And Canadians are still on the hook for escalating construction costs on a project that hasn’t been built.
None of this should surprise Canadians. Federal and provincial subsidies subsidies — tax breaks, royalty reductions and infrastructure credits — to the oil and gas industry total $3.3 billion a year.
Allan pointed out these disagreeable facts on Trans Mountain pipeline to Ottawa months ago and asked for a response from Morneau’s office.
“None has been forthcoming,” says Allan.
The promise of profit, from the Kinder Morgan pipeline the federal government bought, is that every dollar they make off the pipeline would invested in green energy and climate projects. I took a snapshot picture from their election platform. Here it is.
Now here’s the thing. Morneau is a business man. Read the article from the Tyee. It wasn’t/isn’t ever going to earn any money.
The latest science from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicates that we have to fundamentally shift our energy systems away from fossil fuels to stay within the limits set by the 2015 Paris Agreement. By 2030, global carbon emissions must be cut in half, compared to current levels, to be in range of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C).6
Despite global recognition that we need to transition to a zero-carbon economy, oil companies continue to plan for and invest in new oil and gas projects. Data from Rystad Energy, an industry consultancy, indicates that the oil and gas industry is ignoring the significant risks of climate change, acting contrary to what is required, and instead planning to dramatically expand oil and gas production over the next decade and beyond.
