Category Archives: Oil&Gas

Trudeau abandons green election promises, lacks real climate plan

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Renewables
Share
Justin Trudeau talking a good game at the Global Progress summit (Canada 2020/Flickr)
Justin Trudeau talking a good game at the Global Progress summit (Canada 2020/Flickr)

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” -Albert Einstein

With the recent National Energy Board approval of the Kinder Morgan pipeline and Justin Trudeau’s enthusiastic post-election remarks to the effect that Canada can build pipelines and address climate change concurrently, it is time to take stock of just where the current government is heading us. 

Put bluntly,  it remains questionable whether Canada can meet the very modest Conservative 2020 GHG reduction target should the Energy East and Kinder Morgan pipelines get the green light. Worse still, the Trudeau Liberals do not have a serious plan on climate change.

Western Canadian regulators band together to reduce pipeline delays
Under Trudeau, several major pipelines are closer to being built

True, Justin’s Liberal government came to power as a champion for addressing climate change – promising to establish a credible environmental assessment process for proposed pipelines, invest in clean tech, and reduce subsidies for fossil fuels.  Yet, barely half a year later, it is in full backtrack mode, as the government’s recent budget demonstrates. 

Most disheartening, while the green economy is advancing at an incredibly rapid rate in China, Europe and the US, the actions of the Liberal government on increasing the supply of petroleum to international markets and its 2016-17 budget initiatives on climate change will only increase the green economy jobs and growth gap between Canada and its competitors.

Market for fossil fuels disappearing

Consider for a moment that two of the largest markets for fossil fuels are electrical power generation and transportation – the latter nearly 100% dependent on petroleum.  The transition to a green economy is well-advanced in the electrical sector, as I discussed in my recent CSC article, “Pipelines to Nowhere“, while the transportation sector is showing signs that a transition is imminent. 

Signs of the times

Like a dog hanging on to its bone, the Liberals seem to be oblivious to the clear signs of the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. This despite the staggering warning signs. Here are just a few of the biggest ones:

1) 90% of all new global electrical generation capacity in 2015 came from renewables

2) Global emissions have remained flat since 2013

3) China’s coal consumption declined in both 2014 and 2015

4) US coal producers representing 45% of US coal output have gone into bankruptcy

5) 21 countries have experienced economic growth while diminishing their respective emissions since 2000

6) The tipping point when an electric vehicle becomes comparably priced to a conventional one is predicted to occur as early as 2020 – with the overall cost to the consumer being cheaper due to lower fuelling and maintenance costs.

7) The arrival of zero and low-emission vehicles, even under modest market penetration scenarios, will have devastating impacts on demand for petroleum.

8) China is a world-leader, with 331,000 electric vehicles sold in 2015. By 2020, it is expected to manufacture 2 million eco-vehicles/year and have 5 million on the road

9) Ford, Hyundai-Kia, Volkswagen and Volvo all have ambitious plans for a wide range of electric and hybrid models by 2020. Meanwhile, a full 10% of BMW’s North American sales in April 2016 were electric vehicles and 25% of all 2015 new vehicle sales in Norway were electric

10) The Chief Financial Officer of Suncor, Alister Cowan in April 2015 has candidly said that “The years of large, multi-billion projects are probably gone”

11) The Canadian oil and gas sector will see just $17 Billion in revenues for 2016 vs. $30 Billion in project spending (which is already a 62% decline from the previous year)

Despite all of this, the Trudeau government continues to do everything possible to promote Energy East and the recently NEB-recommended Kinder Morgan pipeline, for which the signs suggest that these pipelines may be economically redundant. So many new developments have occurred on this file since my “Pipelines to Nowhere” article was first published in The Common Sense Canadian in March that I’ve done an update to this piece on my blog.

Time to shift fossil fuel subsidies to clean tech

While the Liberal election campaign included a reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, Budget 2016-17 failed to deliver.

An offshore wind installation in Denmark (United Nations Photo/Flickr)
Offshore wind installation (United Nations Photo/Flickr)

With the $46 Billion/year Canadians already spend to subsidize the fossil fuel sector, coupled with the glut of supply on the global market, both the industry and country urgently need to diversify the Western Canadian economy and catch up to the high-growth, high-job-creation clean tech sector. The moment is ripe for the Canadian fossil fuel sector to be a leader in a common, pan-Canadian effort to join the global green economy.

Such diversification of the sector is possible. Just look at Norway’s Statoil, which recently made the former head of its renewable energy division its new CEO and defined clean techs as one of the prime pillars of its overall corporate goals. The company has become a major global investor in clean tech innovation, including a floating offshore wind platform and recently-created venture capital entity to invest in clean tech start-ups.

Trudeau fails to regulate the regulator

Perhaps most disconcerting is the Liberals’ broken election promise to create bonafide environment impact analyses for pipelines.

First, the “interim plan”, for National Energy Board (NEB) hearings on Energy East is “rubber stamped” in Budget 2016-17 by way of involving a mere 3 month prolongation of the hearings and an expanded NEB mandate to take into account emissions.  This constitutes insufficient time to put into place research contracts for scientific studies on GHG impacts.

More disturbing is that Budget 2016-17 cements the industry-friendly NEB as the permanent authority for environmental impact analyses concerning pipelines. Unfortunately, the much-dismantled and formerly internationally-respected Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency is relegated to that of an advisory body on environmental impact analyses.

Bonafide environmental impact assessments would entail starting the Energy East and Kinder Morgan review processes over, with the right parameters from the outset, and overseen by a competent team – at least comparable to that of the former Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

This is precisely the perspective that should have been adopted with respect to Kinder Morgan. Ditto for the upcoming federal and Government of Quebec hearings on Energy East.

Paying polluters

A tar sands operation in Fort McMurray, Alberta (photo: Chris Krüg)
Tar sands operation in Fort McMurray, Alberta (Chris Krüg)

The 2016-17 Budget’s three-sentence description of the Low Carbon Economy Fund bears a resemblance to the $1B Climate Fund announced by Stéphane Dion just prior to the defeat of the previous Liberal government by the Conservatives.  Under the still-born Climate Fund, the greater an entity’s emissions, the more money one could get from the government to reduce one’s emissions.  Put another way, that means that the largest emitters, such as oil and gas companies, would be the largest beneficiaries of a “pay the biggest polluters the most dollars fund” – a sharp and perverse contrast with “the biggest polluters pay more model”.  While this may make the fossil fuel companies appear to be righteous, it is an inefficient and costly way to reduce emissions.

Clean Tech funds cut

The amounts of funding for clean technologies in 2016-17 are lower when compared with the funding that was available during past Liberal governments – a period when emissions went up.

One example is that of Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), which had an average allocation of $40 million/year during past Liberal governments, while Budget 2016-17 only provides for $50 million over 5 years.

Another former Liberal government sustainable development program was Technology Early Action Measures, a program complementary to that of SDTC, which had an allocation of $56 million for the period 1999-2001.

Quebec to invest half billion in green transportationMoreover, past Liberal governments offered substantial funding for clean transportation innovation but Budget 2016-17 only calls for $56.9 million over two years, which is to be divided up to cover the development of regulations and standards, including international emission standards for the air, rail and marine sectors.  Thus, this money will only cover a handful of clean transportation projects.

This has all the appearances of a shell game.

With Canada’s share of global clean tech markets at just 1.3% while the green economy is advancing at a extraordinary pace, it is clear that Trudeau and his Liberals have a poor sense of priorities aligned with traditional centres of power and money.

Where are the green infrastructure funds?

The “all of the above”, positives-and-negatives modus operandi that is the Liberal trademark, is very prominent in the Liberal plan for infrastructure.  While Budget 2016-17 funding to support public transit is a strong positive, Trudeau has let it be known that the provinces and municipalities will define the projects for federal support. In other words, urban sprawl-related highways and bridges will also be eligible for this Santa Claus re-election fund, thereby undermining gains made on reducing GHGs attributable to public transit projects.

Low credibility, contradictions and manipulation

Further to the above weak links in the Trudeau climate plan, consider the following:

1) Trudeau has said that opposition to Keystone XL and Energy East is not based on science

2) Trudeau had praised Alison Redford for her boasting of Canada’s environmental record as a means to warm up the Obama administration to approve Keystone XL

3) The Investor State Dispute Settlement provision of the Trans Pacific Partnership would allow corporations to sue a national government like ours in the event domestic environmental laws impede the maximization of profits. Despite this, cross-country Liberal consultations on the TPP have been primarily with highly restricted audiences, little advance notice and no answering of tough questions.

As progressive Canadians, we must rise above the hype of the Trudeau government on climate, recognize that the Leap Manifesto is out-of-date and needlessly inflammatory, and focus on the urgent requirement for  Canada to catch up with its competitors on green economics – the better economic development model, yielding 6 to 8 times more jobs per government investment unit than does the traditional economy.

A combination of solutions

There is no magic solution for achieving climate goals, rather it is like addressing poverty: One needs a combination of measures that collectively contribute to goals pursued. With so many countries ahead of Canada, there is a wealth of examples from other countries to draw upon, such as:

1) A legislative agenda with meaningful penalties for non-compliance

2) Shifting some of the $46B/year in Canadian fossil fuel subsidies to investments in clean tech, training fossil fuel workers for green jobs, and creating a more-diversified and less-vulnerable Western Canadian economy

3) Engaging the Business Development Bank of Canada and other financing arms of the federal government to establish clean technology programs, coupled with a meaningful green bond programs

4) Building networks of research centres for clean technologies that cultivate public-private partnerships, plus a national clean technology integration centre that links clean energy, low carbon buildings and clean transportation – the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory is one great model for this

5) Supporting clean technology product development and manufacturing, including Quebec’s electric vehicle sector

6)  Initiatives comparable to those of China and California for encouraging a rapid migration to low and zero emission vehicles

The above is simply brief illustration that a meaningful strategy on climate change and a migration to a green economy is possible if there is a will to do so.

For a more detailed analysis of the myths and realities of the Trudeau government’s energy policies, check out this report.

Share

Rafe to Justin: Kinder Morgan approval makes mockery of democracy

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers
Share
Prime MInister Justin Trudeau (Canada 2020/Flickr CC Licence)
Prime MInister Justin Trudeau (Canada 2020/Flickr CC Licence)

My Nova Scotia pen pal, the voice of common sense in this country, Silver Donald Cameron, is fond of saying “laws are made by those who have the power to enforce them.” My own variation is that the people who make the laws are the ones that use them and you can judge that from how fair they are.

How long?

In the 1960s and 70s, the buzz words were “pourquoi pas?” or “why not?”. It signalled the end of the State in the bedroom and a whole new morality developed, ironically under the current Prime Minister’s father.

As of today, I put Justin Trudeau and Christy Clark on notice that the buzzwords are “how long?”

My remarks today will be basically from a British Columbian, for the simple reason that’s what I happen to be. I expect that my colleague Damien Gillis and I will have much more to say about this as time goes on.

How long, Mr. Trudeau and Ms. Clark, do you expect the people of British Columbia to put up with your bullshit?

Justin Trudeau and Christy Clark (Province of BC/Flickr CC)
Justin Trudeau and Christy Clark (Province of BC/Flickr CC)

Granted, this is only a recommendation by the NEB to approve the project, but you, Justin, have given every indication thus far of your support and done nothing meaningful to intervene in this Harper-appointed panel’s process. Christy says she’s “a long way” from signing off, but she already gave away the province’s power to the federal government and has made it clear where she stands on pipelines and fossil fuels, so we can’t expect her to hold this project up.

Your dictatorial decision on Kinder Morgan was not unexpected and simply typifies what we know the governments are going to do to us. And those are the operative words “do to us”. Let’s get it right on the table – there isn’t a soupçon of democracy any of the decisions that you have taken since assuming power, from the smallest through to Kinder Morgan.

Surely you don’t pretend the BC public in the last election debated and approved of any pipeline, let alone Kinder Morgan? What would have been the point?

Do you seriously suggest that any member of Parliament from British Columbia effectively represents a single person, let alone a constituency in our province?

Woodfibre LNG OK came from sham process too

Let’s examine that just a moment from the point of view of West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country. Even an Easterner would have heard something about the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant. Given the fact that the Tory MP was unceremoniously dumped because he supported this project, I have to assume you knew that the mood of the people was anything but supportive.

The so-called environmental assessment scheme the feds and the province concocted was, and there is no other word for it, fraudulent in the extreme. There had been no examination of flows of contaminated water into Howe Sound and the hugely important issue of protecting ocean values. The entire question of the width of Howe Sound, which is dramatically too narrow, has not even yet been canvassed. We were assured that your candidate, now the MP, if she did not oppose this project at least, had a completely open mind. (I must confess I told all who would listen that it didn’t matter and they now know I was dead right!)

Well, Mr. Prime Minister, how long did it take your minister of environment to approve this project based upon one absolutely phoney environmental process? Your MP, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, wasn’t even advised by the minister prior to the decision being taken. Not that it mattered, but it would have looked a lot better.

Let’s stop there – that’s democracy? That’s the way you see consultation with the people of British Columbia about British Columbia matters? That’s how important we are to you?

I am not wasting time talking about the Clark government, which has paid no attention whatsoever to our concerns. I ask you again, prime minister, when will it end?

Do you seriously suggest that the shenanigans that go on inside your office, caucus meetings and so on provide even the slightest opportunity for a British Columbian to present his or her feelings effectively? At least be honest!

Not an ounce of democracy

Oil tanker passing Stanley ParkNow comes Kinder Morgan. Your party screamed like a stuck pig at the Harper government’s loading of the National Energy Board in favour of business – business that financially supported his government and now yours. There were going to be reforms. Structural changes, independence, fair play and the appearance of it. I say it again – compared to the NEB and all environmental assessment boards I have attended, the old Soviet show trials look like paragons of British justice. My response to the press when asked what was proposed for WFLNG was that after attending several meetings myself, I would rather have a root canal without an anaesthetic than go through another.

Prime Minister, you must understand that these are not little niggles were talking about here – it goes to the root of the matter, for I’m telling you that there’s not an ounce of democracy in our system and that to say we must obey the law is making legitimate a law is set up by the brigands to assist the pillagers in their piracy.

The pretence of consultation and representation

As you know, I was a member of the British Columbia government back in your father’s time in Ottawa. I know how the game is played and where the bodies are buried. I played the game of making believe that my colleagues on the back bench did effectively represent their constituents and their constituencies.

It was rubbish! They did no such thing except in ill-disguised appearance. The best the backbenchers would hope for was a bit of consultation, which is to say having the bill presented to them as a fait accompli. The pretence of consultation was there – often lengthy caucus meetings occurred and sometimes even the premier and the minister appeared for show. And members spoke out, but cautiously, for the same reason that Pamela Goldsmith-Jones, very much on the make, is not going to offend you and all your pretence to the contrary are unbecoming. Her next stop is cabinet and no cruddy LNG plant is going to interfere with that!

Electoral reform plans are for show

There are many more examples but let’s just close with your proposed amendments to the electoral system. I was asked by a large organization to help in this matter, given my experience with Premier Bennett, your father and others during the Patriation of the Constitution. It didn’t take me long to realize it was the same old crap. The Liberal Party of Canada, professing to represent the country, has already concocted a scheme that I would be expected to rubber stamp. Worse than that, I would be asked to tell the world what a fair system it is to BC.

That’s not how it works Mr. Trudeau – any British Columbia will tell you what it’s like to be unrepresented, patronized, and instructed to be a good Canadian, Ontario definition thereof. You will take that as snivelling, but a couple of years at UBC doesn’t make you a British Columbian any more than graduating from Laval would make me a Quebecker.

The basic issue – please don’t lose sight of it – is democracy, namely the right of the people to participate in the decisions by which they are governed and have the right to remove laws that are odiferous.

What right do you have?

Botched English Bay oil spill confirms BC 'woefully unprepared' for more pipelines, tankers- Open letter
Bunker diesel debris from last year’s relatively minor spill in English Bay (Vancouver Aquarium)

On the three issues I mentioned, British Columbia has been absolutely correct insisting on its right to be heard and listened to. Our atmosphere and ocean are to be polluted, while dangerous LNG tankers expose our citizens to high risks without even consultation, much less consent.

What right does parliament have to expose our lands, parks and waters to the certain destruction that will come from toxic tankers from the Kinder Morgan pipeline? What right have you to do that without a word of consent from a single, solitary citizen?

You assume that right because it’s always been done – well, a great many of us are determined that it not be done that way much longer. If freedom and democracy are mere words, we’re left with a consultation process reminiscent of the Soviet presidium! As our leader, you ought to be ashamed not only of standing aside and doing nothing but actually exploiting this abomination for your own gain.

Be warned! Seminars on civil disobedience have taken place with many more scheduled. It’s no evil to disobey an evil law.

This is not going to go away, and while I don’t believe for a moment that Kinder Morgan is finished, even if it is, the fight will continue on and on and on until we get back our birthright, the privilege of participating in decisions made about us.

Share

Rafe: NDP’s Horgan too quick to dismiss Leap Manifesto

Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics
Share
BCNDP Leader John Horgan touring Metro Van Pipes in 2014 (BCNDP/Flickr cc licence)
BCNDP Leader John Horgan touring Lynnterm docks in 2014 (BCNDP/Flickr cc licence)

I  have a question or two for NDP leader John Horgan, given recent developments.

Let me be clear: I have no animosity towards Mr. Horgan – we only met once and just by accident. At that time, several years ago, Mr. Horgan stated that he favoured LNG because “the NDP couldn’t be against everything”. This illogical nonsense guides him still.

Still searching

I’m doing as many British Columbians are doing – looking for someone to support in 2017.

I certainly can’t vote for the incompetent, destructive, featherbrain in power; I thought I had a home with the Greens until I learned that their leader supports the Liberals’ IPPs policy, which destroys rivers and is bankrupting BC Hydro, so I had reconciled myself to the notion that this old Socred could vote NDP…but they lost me by uncritically supporting LNG and by the obvious political naiveté of its leader.

Mr. Horgan, how could you get this far and not understand basic politics?

Christy Clark stated, not long ago, that she represents the majority of British Columbians, or words to that effect. The incredible fact is that she does Mr. Horgan, but that’s not because of her, it’s because of you, sir.

Christy Clark, up against a reasonably presentable fence-post with hair, wouldn’t have a chance but you’ve managed to split your supporters and so alienate the great number of people who would have supported you to avoid the Liberals, that you and your party will probably lose to this quintessence of incompetence.

Kow-towing to unions

John Horgan meets Rob Ashton of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at Lynnterm docks in North Vancouver (BCNDP/flickr cc licence)
John Horgan meets Rob Ashton of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union at Lynnterm docks in North Vancouver (BCNDP/flickr cc licence)

Any winning leader must keep his supporters onside while not alienating too many “floaters” who have no party allegiance. This is fundamental – Axiom I for every party. Your party should have learned that from the many decades the old Socreds thrashed you regularly.

But you’ve scared the hell out of people. While it’s expected that an NDP leader will be concerned about labour unions, when he becomes so obsequious as to all but genuflect in public and before a union leader to apologize for changing party policy without his consent, it’s just too much, even, I suggest, for many members of unions.

Why not take the leap?

What I would really like to ask you today, Mr. Horgan, is why you have not seen the obvious way out of your difficulty – the Leap Manifesto?

Typical of the NDP, they cosseted the far left with the word “Manifesto” pissing off a lot of people they didn’t need to. But that’s minor. I’ve read the document with care – have you? It offers a reasonable blueprint for getting us all out of the difficulty posed by the coming demise of the fossil fuel industry.

But you would have no part of it, saying:

[quote]It’s a document that I don’t embrace personally. There are elements in the document that make sense and there are elements that make no sense for British Columbia. So we won’t proceed under any kind of manifesto in the next 12 months under my leadership.[/quote]

Can you not be more specific? Of course parts will annoy unions dependant on the fossil fuel industry but it’s just a discussion document and if you were to encourage the widest possible debate, it could turn out to be a brilliant political maneuver. Yes, you’d  have a harder time from some disgruntled supporters but you’d get support outside the party and the party generally would come along because they want to win and they’ve  nowhere else to go.

Moreover, have you considered how much the public think of Naomi Klein, and indeed the Lewis family? And David Suzuki?  More than they do of you, Mr Horgan. Is it good politics to stand against them just to stay in favour with one or two union leaders?

Bucking history

Here are the parts that I presume are the sticking points which make you say this document is not appropriate for British Columbia, being a resource-based province:

[quote]Shifting swiftly away from fossil fuels so that Canada gets 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable resources within 20 years and is entirely weaned off fossil fuels by 2050.

No new infrastructure projects aimed at increasing extraction of non-renewable resources, including pipelines.[/quote]

Here’s where your opposition is fatal. It’s a year before the election and opposition to fossil rules won’t lessen. More scientific evidence will likely be adverse. And this puts you and those of the NDP who support you out of sync with history. No politician can buck history for long and survive.

Can you not comprehend that the world is against you on this, including a great many traditional supporters of the New Democratic Party? If you had political savvy and vision, you would support Leap and work with union leaders and, indeed, with community leaders generally. The Leap Manifesto proposes that we wean ourselves off fossil fuels and ease the hardship that will impose on the many employed by the industry. What could be wrong with that, especially if it was a non-partisan, community effort?

No one expects that we’ll be off fossil fuels tomorrow afternoon, Mr.Horgan – the object is to avoid wasting time making adjustments, thus making matters worse. People expect that leaders will take us down that path in reasonably expeditious fashion, while making the changes as smooth as humanly possible for those impacted by them.

No point pretending

There is no point in pretending that the move away from fossil fuels isn’t going to happen and happen pretty quickly. The leader, the statesman, recognizes that the best policy is to control events and not be controlled by them while the demagogue tries to avoid reality for short-term advantage.

The most important consideration of all, Mr. Horgan, is that bringing united public support for a commitment to as quick an end to our reliance on fossil fuels, while caring for those hurt by the inevitable, dramatic changes, is the right thing to do.

BC's gift to the world- Premier Christy Clark
Premier Christy Clark at a government-hosted LNG conference (Flickr CC Licence / BC Govt)

It’s astonishing that the NDP will likely appeal less to the average voter than will premier Clark, considering her breathtaking incompetence, the massive debts that she’s run up, the bankrupting of BC Hydro, the destruction of our rivers, the wreckage and folly that is Site C, not to mention the embarrassment she’s brought herself and us over LNG.

You’ve abandoned the high ground of saving the environment, leading the province carefully and thoughtfully through the perils but likely have given the polluters the chance to escape unscathed and another four years to make it infinitely worse, while driving us deeper and deeper in debt.

Not your fault Mr. Horgan?

Then just whose fault is it, pray tell?

Share

90% of world’s new electricity coming from renewables: Welcome to the end of the fossil fuel era

Climate Change, Coal, Economics, Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Pipelines and Supertankers, Renewables, Tar Sands
Share
Solar installation class (Haggerston Community College/Flickr CC licence)
Solar installation class (Haggerston Community College/Flickr CC licence)

According to the International Energy Agency, a staggering 90% of all new electrical capacity brought online around the world in 2015 came in the form of renewable energy. That same year, China invested a record $110 Billion in clean tech – virtually 100% of its electrical capital – and in 2016, it’s set to close 1,000 coal mines. While Canada is shedding fossil fuel jobs like they’re going out of style, the world’s current economic powerhouses – China, the US, Germany, Brazil, Korea – are generating millions of new green jobs.

In other words, the bust we’re witnessing in Fort McMurray and North Dakota is no mere blip – no typical, “cyclical” downturn. Common Sense Canadian contributor and retired federal government energy innovation expert Will Dubitsky, who has been tracking and publishing these figures here for several years now and whom I draw on extensively for this article, put it to me in the following terms:

[quote]We don’t expect a return in the blacksmith business. At some point, it was simply replaced by more modern tools and trades.[/quote]

Statistics don’t have feelings

Bank of England's Carney- Most fossil fuel reserves shouldn't be burned
Mark Carney in Davos, Switzerland, 2010 (Photo: Wikipedia)

Even if you dismiss the extraordinary economic opportunities emerging in the clean tech sector, the mounting costs and existential threat of climate change are proving impossible for global leaders to ignore, as Paris demonstrated. People at the very core of the so-called “establishment” – from Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England to BP Chief Economist Spencer Dale, now acknowledge that most fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground.

Based on all the available research today – and we have reams of it in our Renewable Energy section – the fossil fuel era is rapidly drawing to a close.

And here’s the cold, hard truth: Statistics and facts don’t care whether you’re a bleeding-heart tree-hugger or dyed-in-the-wool Alberta conservative. They don’t care how badly you need your old job or whether you feel persecuted or unappreciated by the rest of the country. They don’t care about your stock portfolio, your values, your moral compass, your grandchildren, vanishing caribou herds, wild salmon or spotted owls. And we, as a nation – as citizens, employers, employees, parents, youth, pensioners, taxpayers and voters must decide whether we wish to embrace these new realities or bury our heads in the sand – a particular bitumen-laden variety.

Leaping in circles

Canada’s political parties, provincial and federal, are all grappling with these realities in their own, interesting ways – a spectacle now on display from coast to coast to coast.

The NDP’s gong show of a recent federal convention is a prime example. Following his election failure last Fall, Thomas Mulcair absorbed two final nails in his coffin – both over the same issue but from completely opposite ends of the party’s political spectrum. He was too centrist for the party’s left wing, while his openness to the Lewis/Klein faction’s anti-pipeline “Leap Manifesto” angered the Rachel Notley-led provincial party in Alberta, (not to mention working the usual pundits into a tizzy over its sheer audacity, pronouncing the NDP dead upon the manifesto’s arrival). Why on earth Mulcair let the convention happen on Notley’s turf is anyone’s guess.

But Notley fully merits recrimination for her recent ultimatum on pipelines. She won’t get them through BC – even Kinder Morgan is a non-starter, which, apparently no one but we British Columbians, in the “West beyond the West”, realize. The particular blend of First Nations, court challenges, municipal government opposition, powerful coastal activists, widespread public condemnation and complete lack of economic or “jobs” case for the project means that it simply will not happen. I’m taking bets for anyone foolish enough to lay one against me. I’m already collecting on my Enbridge wagers from 5 years ago. Notley will learn soon enough.

BC or Quebec – take your pick

New Quebec government choosing fossil fuels over green jobs
Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard (Photo: facebook)

As for Energy East, well, Notley’s got another fiercely “distinct” Canadian province to contend with in the form of Quebec. Good luck with that one.

But the bigger issue is the whole “getting bitumen to tidewater” argument – i.e. that Canadian bitumen producers are getting shafted on the price for their product because of a lack of pipeline capacity and shipping opportunities. While it sounds credible enough on the surface to people who don’t know better, and it may have been true a few years ago, it no longer holds water today. Moreover, the global growth in demand for fossil fuels is flattening out, while, according to this blog from the World Economic Forum:

[quote]Petroleum consumption in the US was lower in 2014 than it was in 1997, despite the fact that the economy grew almost 50% over this period.[/quote]

In this energy climate, there simply is no argument for expanding export capacity.

Trudeau singing same tune

You can lump the Trudeau government in with Notley on this one, as it continues to advocate for many of the same projects and backs BC’s LNG pipe dream. One of these days, Justin may learn that he can’t have his cake and eat it too – but we appear to be a long way away from that today. In the meantime, he would do a lot to assuage British Columbians, First Nations and the environmental community if his cabinet declined to issue the permit now before it for the controversial Lelu Island/Petronas-led LNG project near Prince Rupert.

BC NDP flip-flops on LNG

LNG, fracking and BC's Energy future- Multi-media discussion in Victoria
BC’s LNG ship may never come in

This project and many others are the brainchild of BC Liberal Premier Christy Clark, who evidently has not received the memo on all the above realities (though we at the CSC have sent her many!). Up until recently, the John Horgan-led provincial NDP was fully on board with fracking and LNG, then it showed signs of changing its tune – a welcome development that would have gone a long way to helping it get elected in May 2017, for the first time in 16 years.

That was, alas, before Horgan flip-flopped back to the pro-LNG side, kow-towing to union pressure. Besides the obvious political, moral and scientific problems my colleague Rafe Mair addressed with this catastrophic error in judgement by Horgan, even the labour justification is plain wrong-headed. Horgan and BC Building Trades boss Tom Sigurdson clearly don’t understand that there are no jobs to be had for British Columbians in LNG. Even if a single project of 21 proposed gets built – which is looking increasingly unlikely given global crash in LNG prices and steady withdrawal of capital – the BC Liberal government has already promised many of these jobs away to China, Malaysia and India in the form of cheap, foreign temporary workers!

I laid out in these pages precisely how the NDP could successfully re-brand itself, incorporating all these insights. In short, the key to their success is the following slogan and all that goes with it: “New Democrats, New Economy.” But the chances of them getting with the program are diminishing by the day.

Notley’s dilemma

Rafe- Notley should change electoral system following Alberta NDP win
Alberta Premier Elect Rachel Notley rode to victory on a wave of progressive policies she’s now steadily abandoning (Alberta NDP facebook page)

The same logic and opportunities apply in Alberta, though it’s an even steeper hill to climb there. I appreciate the bind Ms. Notley finds herself in – which explains her backpedaling on a number of more progressive energy policies she ran on last year. Her pollsters must be telling her she’s got to make these grandiose declarations on pipelines and undercut the federal party if she has any hope of getting re-elected.

She faces an electorate that is understandably anxious about its future –  that only wants things to go back to the way they were in the good old days of $100-150 oil. It’s a scary thing not knowing how you’re going to feed your family. But things in Alberta aren’t going back to the way they were before, no matter how uncomfortable that reality is. And giving people false assurances will only make the problem worse. The only thing that can rescue the Alberta economy and bring jobs back is creating new ones – and there are real ways that can happen (more on that in a moment). Alas, for the moment. it’s easy to see how that may yet seem politically impossible to Ms. Notley.

Not all wine and roses

OK, to the skeptics who’ve gotten this far in the article, first of all, thank you for hearing me out. Second of all, you’re right about a lot of things.

You’re correct that we won’t suddenly replace fossil fuels with renewables across the board. There will necessarily be a transition period and quite possibly a place for fossil fuels in the mix for some time to come. We also won’t be able to sustain the level of growth, materialism and waste in our economy that relatively cheap, abundant fossil fuels have enabled over the past century. Some tough adjustments will need to be made there.

BC sitting on enough geothermal to power whole province, say new maps
Steam rising from the Nesjavellir Geothermal Power Station in Iceland (Photo: Gretar Ívarsson / Wikipedia)

Moreover, not all renewables are created equally – and they all have their problems. Most are not “baseload”, meaning they’re only available intermittently. The exceptions are geothermal (a huge untapped opportunity for places like BC), and large hydro dams, which aren’t clean or green for a whole host of reasons.

The solution to the intermittency issue is multi-fold. It requires building a grid with overlapping sources which fill in each other’s gaps at different times. In places like BC, Manitoba, Quebec, and a number of US states, those large dams we already have can underpin newer, non-baseload renewables. Geothermal can do the same and has for decades in San Francisco. Iceland gets more than half its electricity from it.

There are other problems with renewables though. Aggressive incentives for renewables like feed-in-tariffs have led to soaring electrical costs and energy poverty in places like Germany and Ontario, while in BC, our disastrous private “run-of-river” sham has ravaged watersheds and put BC Hydro on the brink of bankruptcy. The renewable energy sector is no more immune to greed, corruption, foolishness, and government mismanagement than the fossil fuel sector is. Anything we choose to build must be done carefully and with the public interest in mind.

Conservation is the key

The most important piece of the puzzle is conservation – the only form of energy that carries zero environmental impact or cost. The good news is we’re already doing a great job at this. Americans are using roughly the same amount of electricity in their homes today as they did at the beginning of the millennium – despite population increases, more elaborate gadgetry, and the arrival of electric cars. It’s the same story here in BC.

Things are looking up

Now for the really good news! Once we get past the denial and difficulty of letting go of everything we’ve come to take for granted, there are huge upsides to the end of the fossil fuel era. As columnist Will Dubistsky put it in these pages recently, the above developments have resulted in “an amazing decline in energy-related CO2 in both China and the US and global emissions remaining flat since 2013! What’s more, for the first time in history emissions have declined during a period of economic growth.” 

Randall Benson is a former oil sands worker who runs a successful solar company and training program (Iron & Earth)
Randall Benson is a former oil sands worker who runs a successful solar company and training program (Iron & Earth)

The message we so often get from the media and our elected leaders, particularly in Canada, is, “Sure climate change is a problem and we have to act, but we’ll get to it in 20 years.” Well, the world is already getting to it. Reducing emissions is very much achievable. So is transitioning to renewable energy, and while Canada has remained on the sidelines of the green jobs revolution thus far, there are signs that’s beginning to change.

Suncor recently announced plans to build multiple wind projects in Alberta. Meanwhile, a group of oil sands workers calling themselves Iron & Earth is pushing for resources to retool their skills for clean tech. These welders, electricians, boilermakers, pipe-fitters, carpenters, etc. are well positioned to transfer their considerable abilities towards wind, solar and geothermal. They’re calling on Rachel Notley to expand Alberta’s solar training programs to include retraining of existing electricians for solar installations. And that’s no big leap.

So, we have two choices as Canadians: 1. Accept that the end of the fossil fuel era is nigh and get on with building a new economy that puts Canadians to work in sustainable, longterm jobs; 2. Remain in denial, chasing a vanishing sector, ensuring Canadians remain out of work…and then accept that the end of the fossil fuel era.

The statistics don’t care. It will happen either way.

Share

Rafe: Gutless Horgan caves to union, apologizes for opposing LNG project

Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics
Share
BCNDP leader John Horgan (BCNDP/Flickr)
BCNDP leader John Horgan (BCNDP/Flickr)

Apparently, according to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and BC NDP leader John Horgan, we have a new doctrine in Canada which essentially says that Jobs Come Ahead Of Crisis When A Powerful Union Leader Says So.

Any free society, as part of its basic philosophy, permits citizens to better themselves, legally, and to withhold their labour. At the same time, no society can permit those rights to endanger society as a whole. Moreover, it can hardly be permitted because society hasn’t been able to control some of its segments, like the bastards exposed by the Panama Scandal. That behaviour exposes the weakness of people, not of the philosophy.

Horgan’s about-face shows humiliating weakness

Having once been a cabinet minister in a Socred government, I risk being called anti-union if I offer any criticism of a union. There’s a distinct odour of Senator Joseph McCarthy in an allegation that because one belonged to a certain group, they therefore can be assumed to have certain beliefs. I support unions, have been a member of three, had formal election endorsements from two, and I couldn’t have been elected, twice, in Kamloops, a union town, if I was anti-union.

What I’m on about is the humble, indeed humiliating volte face when John Horgan met with the union, and its powerful leader whose support, more than any other, made Horgan the NDP leader.

This from the April 14 edition of the Toronto Globe and Mail:

[quote]B.C. NDP Leader John Horgan met with his toughest critics on the party’s liquefied natural gas policies, and said his party’s official rejection of the Pacific Northwest LNG proposal could yet turn to Yes.

Mr. Horgan was speaking to the annual convention of the BC Building Trade unions in Victoria on Wednesday, where he sought to diffuse anger from his party’s labour allies over his decision to ask the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to withhold approval for the proposed Pacific Northwest LNG plant near Prince Rupert.

The NDP Leader apologized to union leader Tom Sigurdson for sending the submission to the regulatory agency without giving him notice that the party had come out against the proposal.[/quote]

Many, evidently including Mr. Horgan, think there’s an easy, gradual way to deal with the fossil fuel/climate crisis so nobody ever has to make a sacrifice quite yet. Forgive the indiscreet example, but that’s like the young boy, who, being warned he’ll go blind if he keeps playing with himself, promises to quit just as soon as he needs glasses.

One leap forward, two bounds back

I heartily congratulate the NDP in Convention for, barely, passing the Leap Manifesto and ask Notley, Horgan and company, “What’s the equivalent of needing glasses to inform us we must now act?” Doesn’t this, at least in principle, make abundant good sense?

Of course Premier Notley has a problem, but letting it fester, indeed helping it get worse, is scarcely the solution. In spite of 70 years of Alberta arrogance towards less well-off provinces, we all have a societal obligation to help. And we must do that as part of the same Canadian way Albertans were so grumpy about when they were rolling in petrodollars.

What we do not have is an obligation to suffer the fatal consequences of “business as usual”. Someone has to explain that to Ms. Notley and Mr. Horgan, who must then stand up to those who would put themselves first.

A Canadian problem

The solution lies in accepting the fact that this is a national problem affecting every single Canadian and that those who will be most directly affected need the assistance of the rest of us. Just what form that takes must be worked out but we have to make a start, which the Leap Manifesto does.

Beyond a reasonable doubt

Tom Sigurdson
Tom Sigurdson

What the hell do Mr. Horgan and Mr. Sigurdson need for evidence? Ninety-seven percent of the world’s scientists dealing with this problem confirm that we have a crisis which, unattended, will be fatal.

Of course there are doubting Thomases – articulate ones. If you’re one, here’s my answer.

As a lawyer, I can assure you that there isn’t a proposition ever propounded that I couldn’t make a case against.

Are you a “round earther” – I guarantee I can make a hell of a case for it being flat.

Believe in God? I can rally no end of scientists, including Richard Dawkins, to refute that.

In support of God are many of the world’s greatest thinkers, including Albert Einstein.

Mr. Sigurdson (I take it you have precedence in the NDP), Mr. Horgan, the scientists have done more than meet the civil onus of “on a balance of probabilities” but have satisfied the criminal test of “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Beyond “a shadow of a doubt”? Perhaps not, but it’s impossible to think of any proposition that meets that test.

But Mr. Sigurdson, Horgan, if you’re wrong, if your “scientists” are wrong, everything is lost. And if the 97% are somehow wrong, we have still made the world a hell of a lot better, safer, cleaner and nicer place to live.

One might reduce the argument, then, to this: “Better safe than sorry”!

Gentlemen, we are all in this together, including you!

Share

Rafe: NDP’s LNG reversal is a game-changer for BC election

Energy and Resources, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics, Western Canada
Share

Rafe- NDP's LNG reversal is a game-changer in BC election

Important events don’t always seem to be so. So it is with the changes last month in both the Green party and the NDP.

Going back, say a fortnight, the ruling Liberals were unpopular as hell, led by an airhead who likes to have her picture taken and ride in airplanes. Despite that, I would have said – indeed I think I did – that she still had a very good chance of winning next year’s election, if only because of Mair’s Axiom I, “you don’t have to be 10 in politics, you can be a 3 if everyone else is a 2.”

Not only was John Horgan a 2 at that point, he was harried by the Green party who showed every sign of moving into second place, a humiliation that would have damaged the NDP for a considerable time to come.

The Green party was basking in the huge popularity of its national leader, Elizabeth May, undoubtedly the most popular politician in BC and perhaps in Canada. No one seemed to care that voters didn’t really know who the provincial leader, Dr. Andrew Weaver, was – let alone what he really stood for. A substantial number of British Columbians, wavering between voting Green or NDP didn’t like the NDP from another movie. That was the moment for the Greens to make a clear, concise, and comforting statement of their policy emphasizing, of course, the environment.

Dr. Weaver seemed reluctant to support the environment too enthusiastically because he wanted to demonstrate that the party has other strings to its bow – an awkward problem, to be sure, because the Green party is seen by many to be a one-trick pony. This changed somewhat when Elizabeth May arrived and gave a fair impression that even if no one else did, she knew what the she was doing. That’s why I suggested that the BC party drop Weaver and co-opt Ms. May and that if they did, their success in the next election could be truly remarkable.

Weaver blows it stumping for private power

BC Green MLA Andrew Weaver
BC Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver

In any event, Dr. Weaver destroyed himself on a talk show on 1070 CFAX in Victoria with host Ian Jessop . The issue was the Gordon Campbell Energy policy of 2003 as carried on by Christy Clark. Under this policy, the right to make new power was taken from BC Hydro and given to so-called Independent Power Producer (IPPs), who were permitted to destroy beautiful rivers in order to make the power.

In the 2009 election, this was a non-issue in spite of the efforts of some of us to make it one. One person who supported this government policy was Dr. Weaver, then a professor at the University of Victoria. To us going around the province speaking against the policy, that was a pain in the ass but no big deal.

Fast forward to last December 17 and Dr. Weaver appeared on the Ian Jessop show where the main question was his Party’s stand on IPP’s. This issue was  finally getting traction because economists like Erik Andersen had publicized the fact that the policy had all but bankrupted BC Hydro and many prominent environmental groups pointed out the horrendous damage done to these rivers, the fish and other wildlife that depend upon them, and at the ecology around. The public, slowly, step-by-step, was becoming au fait with this issue.

Dr Weaver evidently didn’t know this and clearly was taken by surprise when Ian asked whether or not he and the Green party still supported this Liberal policy that had destroyed so many rivers and all but bankrupted BC Hydro. Weaver babbled and the more Jessop questioned, the more he babbled. I suggest that you listen for yourself here – starting around the 41 min mark.

Far from trying to make things better, Dr. Weaver took to blaming me and a column I wrote and got into a slanging match, on Facebook would you believe, with publisher Damien Gillis. Whether or not he was right or wrong – he was wrong as hell – the point is, this was not a time for shrill name-calling but damage control; time for party to come to grips with this question and declare themselves against the IPP policy and in favour of public power and keeping BC Hydro solvent. That simply didn’t happen.

Now, silently, the NDP slipped into the game.

Horgan steps up to the plate

Photo: BCNDP/Flickr
John Horgan (Photo: BCNDP/Flickr)

Late last March, John Horgan, the leader, wrote the federal minister of Environment, announcing his Party’s opposition to Pacific NorthWest LNG and, while doing so, laying out four conditions that had to be matched before his party would give approval to any LNG project. The first three are pretty routine but the fourth one, a sort of omnibus clause, covers damn near any environmental eventuality one can think of. It states that “BC’s air land and water must be protected and resource development must be as clean as possible.” It then gives specific numbers with respect to greenhouse gases.

As a one time legal beagle, I don’t see how the NDP can make any exceptions to that blanket guarantee.

The scene has changed

It’s no mystery why this revelation was made privately: John Horgan wanted to save face. He’d have a hell of a time getting an appropriate motion from a convention because so many put jobs before the environment, as we saw in the 2009 election. Union members won’t understand that jobs can never trump the environment and that the terrible shape the world is in is proof of that. The Party knows this but never wants to start quite yet. They’re like the lad who is told that if he doesn’t stop masturbating he’ll go blind, and who in turn responds, “I’ll quit just as soon as I need glasses”.

In any event, the NDP have now pushed the Greens out the environmental field entirely.

Will their deeds match their words?  We’ll see when other LNG proposals come to their table.

But the scene has changed and, as has been so well and truly said, in politics, six weeks is an eternity.

Share
From-'Clean-Coal'-to-'Ethical-Oil'--How-propaganda-(actually)-works

From ‘Clean Coal’ to ‘Ethical Oil’: How propaganda (actually) works

Energy and Resources, Oil&Gas
Share

From-'Clean-Coal'-to-'Ethical-Oil'--How-propaganda-(actually)-works

Republished from DeSmog Blog

By James Hoggan

Political Propaganda employs the ideals of liberal democracy to undermine those very ideals, the dangers of which, not even its architects fully understand.

In the early years of DeSmog’s research into environmental propaganda, I thought of industry PR campaigns like “junk science,” “clean coal,” and “ethical oil” as misinformation strategies designed to dupe the public about the real issues.

Although there is obvious truth to that view, I now understand that propaganda is far more complex and problematic than lying about the facts. Certainly propaganda is designed to look like facts that are true and right, but not in a way we might think. What’s more, the consequences are far worse than most people consuming and even producing it realize.

Much of my new understanding comes from conversations with Jason Stanley, an American philosopher and professor at Yale University and author of an important new book How Propaganda Works. According to Jason Stanley, the danger for a democracy “raided by propaganda” is the possibility that the vocabulary of liberal democracy is being used to mask an undemocratic reality.

In a democracy where propaganda is common, you have a state that appears to be a liberal democracy, its citizens believe it is a liberal democracy (they have free speech) but the appearance of liberal democracy masks an illiberal, undemocratic reality.

How Propaganda WorksIn this rich and thoughtful book Stanley defines political propaganda as “the employment of a political ideal against itself.” DeSmog stories about groups presenting ideologies or financial interests as objective and scientific evidence are paradigm examples of this type of propaganda.

“Propaganda that is presented as embodying an ideal governing political speech, but in fact runs counter to it, is antidemocratic …  because it wears down the possibility of democratic deliberation,” Stanley writes.

He dismisses the idea that it’s deception that makes propaganda effective. Instead, Stanley argues what makes propaganda effective is that it “exploits and strengthens flawed ideology.”

It sometimes involves outright lies, but Stanley points to a bigger problem, which is that “sincere, well-meaning people under the grip of flawed ideology unknowingly produce and consume propaganda.”

My worry, alongside Stanley’s, is that when we can’t spot propaganda or don’t understand how it works, its detriment to democracy will grow to a point where it can’t be reversed.

Propaganda blazes a reckless path in politics

The best example of this dangerous form of propaganda is currently playing out in the race for a leader of the Republican Party in the U.S., with its surprising frontrunner, real-estate tycoon and reality TV star Donald Trump.

In his campaign, Trump has described Latino immigrants as criminals and rapists and proposed to build a wall across theU.S. border to keep Mexicans out of the country. He’s also called for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the U.S. as an attempt to crack down on terrorism and believes those already in his country should be registered on a special government database and required to carry special identification cards.

While it may sound like bluster to some, Trump’s efforts to build support by whipping up fear and anger about race and religion is unfortunately working, at least where popularity contests are concerned.

That’s even though people in his own party see him as reckless and dangerous for the country. Trump is now being regularly characterized as a demagogue in mainstream media, with parallels to Joe McCarthy, the Republican senator who is known for stoking anti-communist fears in the 1950s.

Canada isn’t immune to this propaganda-guided campaign strategy. Consider the Conservative-driven debate during last fall’s federal election around whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear the niqab during the citizenship oath. The former Harper government’s “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” also pandered to fears of immigrants, while claiming to address issues such as forced marriages and honour killings, which many pundits were quick to point out are already illegal under existing laws.

Understanding propaganda is key to stopping its spread

Obviously these examples of propaganda feed into negative stereotypes, but blatant bigotry is only part of the problem.

This style of rhetoric is not as much an attempt to persuade, as it is an act of cultural tribalism: the creation of a team divided against other teams in a manner that shuts down open-minded thinking.

Stanley writes that a democratic society is one that values liberty and political equality. It is a society suffused with a tolerance of difference. It rests on the view that collective reasoning is superior, “that genuine liberty is having one’s interests decided by the result of deliberation with peers about the common good.”

These examples of propaganda pose a challenge for liberal democracy because they sabotage joint deliberations of this sort. They are touted as free speech but in fact undermine public reason by excluding certain groups.

Such ad hominem name-calling undermines our ability to question our perspectives, or respectfully consider the perspectives of others, Stanley says. It undermines the inclusive, rational debate at the core of liberal democracy.

“…flawed ideologies rob groups of knowledge of their own mental states by systematically concealing their interests from them,” he says.

Understanding what makes propaganda effective is at the heart of understanding political inaction on issues that scream out for action. Stanley is most worried about demagogic speech, saying it “both exploits and spreads flawed ideologies,” creating barriers to democratic deliberation. “It attempts to unify opinion without attempting to appeal to our rational will at all,” he says.

Stanley describes propaganda as a method to bypass the rational will of others. The consequences are widespread and can be long-lasting. Accumulated over time, propaganda becomes a turn off that discourages citizens from participating in democratic responsibilities, such as voting, the participation level of which is already embarrassingly low in free societies like Canada and the U.S.

Propaganda’s attempt to silence critics

The propaganda problem goes way beyond terrorism, impacting the entire world around us. Consider the harm being done to the planet by those who deny climate change is a reality or label Canadian oil as “ethical” and coal from West Virginia as “clean” to justify its aggressive expansion and government subsidies.

According to Stanley, it’s difficult to have a real discussion about the pros and cons of an issue when they’re slapped with these types of spin. He believes assertions like these, where words are misappropriated and meanings twisted, are often less about making substantive claims and more about silencing critics.

In his words, they are “linguistic strategies for stealing the voices of others.” Groups are silenced by attempts to paint them as grossly insincere, which in turn undermine the public’s trust in them. Consider the former Harper government’s labeling of environmentalists who opposed their aggressive oil sands expansion policies as “radical groups” funded by foreign interests trying to block trade and undermine Canada’s economy.

When I first met Stanley in Harlem, he used the example of Fox News, which he says is silencing when it describes itself as ‘fair and balanced’ to an audience that is perfectly aware that it is neither. “The effect is to suggest there is no such thing as fair and balanced. There is no possibility of balanced news only propaganda,” Stanley says.

This style of propaganda pollutes the public square with a toxic form of rhetoric that insinuates there are no facts, there is no objectivity and that everyone is trying to manipulate you for their own interests.

James Hoggan is the co-founder of the influential website DeSmogBlog and the author of two books, Do the Right Thing: PR Tips for Skeptical Public, and Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

Share
The NDP's only shot at winning in BC: Embrace the NEW ECONOMY

The NDP’s only shot at winning in BC: Embrace the NEW ECONOMY

Economics, Energy and Resources, Fracking, LNG, Oil&Gas, Politics, Renewables, Western Canada
Share
The NDP's only shot at winning in BC: Embrace the NEW ECONOMY
BCNDP Leader John Horgan has a tough row to hoe to win the next election (BCNDP/Flickr)

The following is Damien Gillis’ rebuttal to colleague Rafe Mair’s recent piece, “By Backing LNG, the Horgan NDP lost election before it began”

I agree with my colleague Rafe Mair on most things – including his commentary that John Horgan and the NDP’s choice to back LNG has been a political disaster. The only real difference between Rafe’s and my views on the subject is that I still think they have a shot, a slim one albeit, to win next year’s provincial election. But only if they own up to their mistakes and quickly embrace a new, winning narrative.

Magic formula

That narrative is simple. It’s the only one they can win with and it’s so simple and powerful that if they pick it up, short of a Monica Lewinsky-level scandal, it will return them to government. This is it:

[quote]New Democrats, New Economy

[/quote]

Why is this the perfect slogan? It does everything the NDP needs it to. It promises an economic vision and jobs – the things people most want to hear. It contrasts them with the Liberals’ dowdy Old Economy – a shortsighted, failing vision based on fifty-year old ideas like big hydro dams and oil and gas.

It promises the single most popular and alluring of election outcomes – the very thing that brought Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau and many other usurpers to power: Change. Finally, it sets the stage for protecting the environment and the economy at the same time – the Holy Grail of Canadian politics today. I’m telling you, roll with this slogan, backed by a solid campaign, and you win.

It’s the economy, stupid

In the aftermath of the NDP’s catastrophic loss under Adrian Dix last time around, I penned a post-mortem titled, “It’s the economy, Stupid NDP” (based on American political guru James Carville’s famous slogan to that effect). I stand by every word to this day. The main points I made therein are:

  • The NDP didn’t deal with the ballot box issue of the campaign (and more often than not the key issue of all campaigns): the Economy.
  • The NDP failed to tell a compelling story, while the Liberals spun a powerful “jobs” meta-narrative. Sure, it was all bullshit, as we now see, but it worked at the time. They were going to deliver untold “prosperity” to British Columbians by building a brand new LNG industry. The NDP, by contrast, had no vision, no story to offer.

Nice guys lose elections

The latter was easy pickens. You can be a strong, respectable, principled leader and still attack your opponent wherever justified. Christy Clark and her Liberals are unpopular and vulnerable, but you have to be willing to get your knuckles a little bloody in politics. You have to be willing to draw attention to the fact that Christy Clark failed three times to get a university eduction; worse yet, that she got stripped of her student presidency and fined for cheating in a campus election at SFU – hardly irrelevant when gauging her political character today.

Christy Clark commemorating new Port Mann Bridge - as it rang in at 550% of the government's original cost estimate of $600 million (Province of BC/Flickr)
Christy Clark commemorating the new Port Mann Bridge – as it rang in at 550% of the government’s original cost estimate of $600 million (Province of BC/Flickr)

You also have to be willing to remind voters that this government has increased our real debt from $34 Billion to well over $170 Billion since it came to power – much of that owning to a whole, new category of taxpayer obligations it invented to sweep sweetheart private power contracts and PPP construction deals under the rug (that’s not even counting the likely $20 Billion tab coming if Site C gets built).

You have to be willing to say that this government couldn’t manage its way out of a wet paper bag – pointing to a pattern of more than doubling initial estimates for major capital projects like bridges, highways, transmission lines and convention centres.

You have to be willing to tick off a long list of scandals, from triple-deleted emails and healthcare firings all the way back to illegally broken teacher contracts and BC Rail (hey, if your opponents are happy to go back to the fast ferries well, two decades later, over what now seems a paltry cost overrun by comparison to today’s boondoggles, well, then, BC Rail and legislature raids are more than fair game).

All of these things are fair game – not only that, they need to be brought up, in fairness to the electorate. But I digress. Back to that winning formula: The New Economy.

A golden opportunity missed

Asian LNG prices set to tumble further
LNG is a sinking ship (Jens Schott Knudsen/Flickr)

Nearly three years ago, I began doing townhall presentations around BC on the myths of the Liberal LNG vision. Armed with the latest data from Bloomberg and respected global and local energy analysts, I predicted that the bottom would fall out of the Asian LNG market long before we got to it (I said $8/unit, where the break-even point is around $12 – today it’s fallen even below that, with predictions of $4-5 over the next year, meaning it’s impossible to make a buck at LNG).

The response I heard from NDP MLAs at the time was, “We can’t say ‘No’ to everything.”

No, you can’t. But you can say “No” to stupid ideas and “Yes” to good ones. Had the NDP picked up on this intel 3 years ago, they may have taken a political hit in the short term, but by now, a year out from the election, they’d be looking like geniuses who could shamelessly crow, “We told you so!”

Say “Yes” to good ideas

Randall Benson is a former oil sands worker who runs a successful solar company and training program (Iron & Earth)
Randall Benson is a former oil sands worker who runs a successful solar company and training program (Iron & Earth)

So, the flip-side of that coin is what you say “Yes” to. You say “Yes” to renewable energy. I don’t mean rip-off private power projects and old-school, destructive dams – rather our abundant geothermal potential, wind and solar.

You embrace a group like Iron & Earth – oil sands workers lining up to retool their skills for clean tech.

It’s no big leap for an unemployed gas pipeline welder from Fort St. John to weld wind turbine components instead, or for an oil sands electrician to wire up roof-top solar. We have the workforce – we just need to shift it from an old, shrinking economy, to a new, burgeoning one.

All around the world, except Canada, the leading industrial nations are getting it – investing tens of billions in renewable energy and reaping millions of new, green jobs. As our contributor Will Dubitsky recently noted, “according to the International Energy Agency, in 2015, an astounding 90% of all global electrical power capacity added was attributable to renewables.”  Translation: nine tenths of the market for new electricity in the world today is clean tech, not fossil fuels. Pipelines, oil sands and fracking are on the way out. Why stake your future on a losing, outmoded idea?

Get creative

You also say “Yes” to the creative economy. Vancouver now has the biggest digital effects industry in the world and a booming tech sector – driven by the great lifestyle the region has to offer and a growing cluster of skilled people and hubs of activity and resources. Mayor Gregor Robertson is embracing and nurturing this trend, while Christy Clark has shown half-hearted acknowledgement at best. In the last election, her government also ran against the film industry – which is now thriving again in today’s low-dollar environment.

Super, Natural BC

You say “Yes” to preserving and growing our $13-14 Billion Super, Natural BC tourism economy, which employs over 135,000 people vs. 10,000 at the absolute peak of our oil and gas industry – roughly 3,000 direct jobs for British Columbians in oil and gas extraction and maybe double that in additional support services. But you don’t do that by destroying our salmon runs with LNG plants, marring our coastal viewscapes with bad clearcut logging practices, oil tankers and LNG plants. You don’t attract people to “the greatest place on earth” if it no longer is “the greatest place on earth”.

Adding value

Gas industry contributes 0.01 per cent of BC revenues, few jobs
Two of the province’s surprisingly few gas workers – in BC’s Horn River Basin in 2011 (Photo: Damien Gillis)

You also say “Yes” to local, value-added manufacturing. You don’t ship raw logs to China and Japan – you turn them into high-grade wood products here first, employing thousands in the process.

We seem to have it set in our minds that we’re bound to be nothing more than hewers of wood and drawers of water – a “resource” economy – forevermore. That’s our lot in life and there’s nothing we can do about it. Balderdash. It’s that sort of self-determining crap we’ve been feeding ourselves for decades and which keeps us from moving forward.

The bottom line is this: Oil and gas contributes a scarce few jobs to this province, compared with other sectors – same goes for mining. Don’t take my word for it – check out this handy chart, put together with Stats BC figures, for this publication by Norm Farrell.

BC-jobs-by-sector

Oil and gas also contributes just 0.1% of our provincial revenues – partly because since 2008 we’ve been subsidizing the industry to the tune of a billion dollars a year in taxpayer-funded infrastructure and massive royalty credit-backs. Imagine, for a second, if we invested that kind of dough in building a renewable energy sector!

We all gotta eat

Site C review panel changes mind, asks for ALC's input on farmland
The Peace River Valley is home to some of BC’s best farmland (Damien Gillis)

Finally, you say “Yes” to feeding ourselves. That means you don’t flood or disrupt 30,000 acres of the best farmland we have left to build a $20 Billion dam we don’t need. Agriculture is not only essential to our survival – it’s also important economically.

Getting that land into production would create jobs at the same time as it saves consumers money from the rapidly escalating cost of importing half our food from drought-stricken places like California.

The NDP created the Agricultural Land Reserve – arguably its single greatest legacy. It should stand loud and proud for it now.

No more Mr. Nice Guy

John Horgan’s a smart guy. He’s a hell of a lot tougher than Adrian Dix too and I doubt he’ll make the same mistake of running a “nice guy” campaign. I’m also liking what I started hearing from him late last year, in terms of taking a tough stance against Site C Dam and rolling out a green economy platform called PowerBC. He needs to go much further on both of these points, but, hey, it’s a start.

Chances are…

That said, Rafe is correct that Horgan and the NDP have dug themselves a huge hole by failing to counter the Liberals’ disastrous LNG fib. So BC faces three possible outcomes next May:

  1. Despite all their mistakes, fibs and failings, the Liberals get back into power…again
  2. The NDP, under John Horgan, finally gets it together, embraces the “New Economy” and wins an election for the first time since cargo pants and Tevas were in fashion
  3. There is a very narrow possibility that the BC Greens, under the leadership of Elizabeth May – on the wild chance she heeds Rafe’s advice and takes over the BC party – come from nowhere and steal this election.

Based on our current trajectory, we’re headed for option 1 – which would be an unmitigated disaster for our economy and environment. But if there’s any chance of it being option 2, things have to start changing right now. The NDP can’t win by default – just because their opponents are so bad. The last election proved that in stunning fashion. Moreover, they don’t deserve to come to power, nor will they help the province unless they have the right vision and commitment to follow through on it.

They also must get their shop in order, as I noted in my post-mortem 3 years ago. The party’s back rooms need fresh blood and the various factions within the NDP must commit to working together and winning for once. This campaign cannot be the sloppy mess the last one was – they require a well-oiled machine to beat a slick political operation like that of their rivals. And all that starts at the top, with the party’s leader.

All of which means the ball is in John Horgan’s court. And nothing short of the future of the province hangs on his next move.

Share

With Site C, LNG Trudeau govt already breaking promises to First Nations, environment

Energy and Resources, First Nations, LNG, Oil&Gas
Share
Justing Trudeau and Jody Wilson-Raybould meet in Hartley Bay on the BC coast in 2014 (Flickr / Justin Trudeau)
Justin Trudeau and Jody Wilson-Raybould meet in Hartley Bay in 2014 (Flickr / Justin Trudeau)

It all started off so well. Justin Trudeau launched his career as Prime Minister with big promises to First Nations and the growing number of Canadians concerned about the environment. He installed indigenous MPs in key portfolios like Justice and Fisheries; vowed a new respect for Aboriginal people and their rights; re-introduced the climate to Environment Canada.

But five months later, it appears former New York Governor Mario Cuomo was right when he famously said, “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” And the prose Justin Trudeau is authoring these days tells a very different story than it did on the campaign trail.

Tough choices

Justin Trudeau at Davos (Flickr / World Economic Forum)
Justin Trudeau at Davos (Flickr / World Economic Forum)

It’s all frankly understandable. The forces behind major pipelines, hydro dams and LNG projects are considerable and deeply entrenched. It was always going to be a challenge for young Justin to appease two sides seemingly so far apart.

At the recent World Economic Forum, when he spoke of Canada shifting from “resources to resourcefulness” and joining the global green economy, he drew a mixture of ridicule and outrage from Calgary to Bay Street. Even as the rest of the world is getting it, we, as Canadians, clearly have a depressingly long way to go.

Yet there are some hard realities here which are simply unavoidable. And that means Prime Minister Trudeau has some very difficult choices to make.

Can’t have your cake and eat it too

He cannot, for instance, ignore the pleas and court challenges of Treaty 8 First Nations on the catastrophic and treaty-breaking Site C Dam and still claim to be respectful of First Nations.

He cannot approve LNG projects and pretend to care genuinely about climate change.

He cannot keep approving and subsidizing heavy oil pipelines and pretend to champion the green economy.

These, unfortunately for Justin, are not grey areas. There is no room for “balance” or a “middle path” – simply because of a stubborn little thing called facts.

Just the facts

Treaty 8, signed and adhered to beginning in 1899, guaranteed First Nations throughout the Peace Valley Region the right to hunt, fish, trap and practice their traditions on the land unimpeded by colonial settlement and development. Flash forward a century and it is abundantly clear this promise has been shattered.

Much of the Peace Valley's best farmland is already under the Williston Reservoir, behind the WAC Bennett Dam (Damien Gillis)
WAC Bennett Dam – the first on the Peace (Damien Gillis)

Over two thirds of the region has been impacted by heavy industry – in many places multiple layers of development stacked on top of each other. Logging, mining, roads, power lines, conventional gas, fracking, pipelines, massive hydro dams. As for the latter, there are two already. Site Site C would be the third and, undeniably, the final nail in the coffin of this treaty and the lives First Nations have lived there for some 10,000 years.

In other words, you cannot sign off on Site C – or refuse, in this case, to revoke illegitimate permits issued by your predecessor on the eve on an election, literally – and declare yourself a friend of First Nations. These two realities are utterly and completely incompatible.

Wilson-Raybould between a rock and a hard place

And this is where it gets very messy for even the best-intentioned, brightest young stars of the Trudeau Cabinet. I’m talking specifically about Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould. The former BC leader of the Assembly of First Nations has run smack into a wall of political reality. She claims no conflict between her current role and her former. But here we must go back to what she to said to me and others 4 years ago at the Paddle for the Peace, where she took a passionate, unequivocal, legal, treaty-based stand against Site C. See for yourself here.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould is the first indigenous person to be minster of justice in Canada. She is a smart, capable leader and she understands Aboriginal law perfectly well, as she attests to in the above video, noting:

[quote]The legal reality is that Aboriginal people have rights and treaty rights that must be respected…The country’s reputation is at stake with approval of these projects like Site C…running roughshod over Aboriginal title and rights, including treaty rights, is not the way to improve that reputation. [/quote]

But what good is all that if she can’t put it to use and do the right thing, legally, for the people of Treaty 8 territory, now that’s she’s finally in a position of real influence?

Suicide and dams

Before leaving off on Site C, I want to direct readers to Emma Gilchrist’s poignant and accurate piece titled “Want To Reduce Suicide in Native Communities? Step 1: Stop Destroying Native Land”. Mr. Trudeau has recently come face-to-face with the tragic epidemic of suicides on native reserves in this country. If he’s honest about it, he will stop compartmentalizing this issue from that of environmental devastation. This is no big leap. It is abundantly fair to connect these issues and it brings home the gravity of the decisions he now faces. There are, literally, many lives hanging in the balance. That’s a big responsibility for anyone to bear, but no one said being Prime Minister is easy.

The dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet

BC LNG plans could mean 50,000 new fracking wells-Expert report
A fracking operation in northeast BC (Two Island Films)

Next, we move onto LNG. And more unavoidable facts, which are as follows: BC’s LNG industry would require a massive increase in fracking in – once again – Treaty 8 Territory. This is not Liquefied Natural Gas but Liquefied Fracked Gas (LFG). Fracking is far worse for the climate – not to mention water, local air quality, wildlife habitat, etc. – than old school “natural” gas. It’s also even worse than coal.

When you then take that fracked gas and pipe it to LFG terminals on the coast, in order to turn it into a liquid you can load onto Asia-bound tankers, you first have to chill and compress it. This requires the burning of copious amounts of additional gas to create the electricity for the cooling process. One plant alone, the proposed, Petronas-led Lelu Island project, would increase the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 8.5%. Plus all that dirty fracking to get it out of the ground.

Don’t take my word for it: listen to the world’s top independent experts, like Cornell University’s Dr. Robert Howarth.

Woodfibre approval a bitter pill

Woodfibre LNG - Public comment period begins for Squamish project
Citizens line the Sea to Sky Highway to protest Woodfibre LNG (My Sea to Sky)

Suffice it to say, you cannot be a friend of the climate and still approve LNG projects. No way, no how. Which is why it came as a huge – though not surprising – disappointment when, this past Friday afternoon, the Trudeau Government quietly approved the proposed Woodfibre LNG plant in Howe Sound. (PS you don’t make an announcement you’re proud of on a Friday afternoon).

Once again, this decision came with casualties, including the tarnishing of another bright new MP’s credibility – that being West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country’s Pamela Goldsmith-Jones. This just after she held a series of public meetings to discuss the climate impacts of the project.

My colleague Rafe Mair called bullshit at the time, noting that climate calculations can easily be fudged and admonishing Goldsmith-Jones for ignoring all the other issues associated with the project – like tanker danger and the millions of gallons of hot, chlorinated water that would be dumped into local fish habitat by the plant. Some called Rafe cynical for not giving Pam a chance. Well, though it gives me no pleasure to say in this case, my friend Rafe was bang-on.

Pipelines to nowhere

Finally, a few more inconvenient truths on pipelines:

There is no market justification for them. As this recent study shows, Canadian oil sands producers are already getting the highest value possible for the resource – despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about getting bitumen to tidewater.

The Economist: China's going green...but is it fast enough?
China is investing $70 billion a year in renewable energy

There is no growth in demand for fossil fuels. As our contributor Will Dubitsky has aptly noted in these pages, “according to the International Energy Agency, in 2015, an astounding 90% of all global electrical power capacity added was attributable to renewables.” Global emissions have been flat since 2013 – which is really, really good news. The shift to the green economy is real and it’s happening right now – everywhere except Canada.

So instead of continuing our massive subsidies to the oil and gas sector and approving new pipelines, our prime minister needs to follow through on his bold statements about green energy and actually start supporting the stuff. That will lead to far more jobs, which will prove far more reliable into the future than would continuing to flog a dead oil sands horse. Again, that is simply what the best available facts point to, so wherever you stand morally on these issues, if you care about jobs, then this one is a no-brainer.

Where the rubber meets the road

So where does Mr. Trudeau go from here? I’m happy to report it’s not all bad. Fisheries Minister Hunter Tootoo appears to be listening seriously to First Nations on the Central Coast of BC about the upcoming herring fishery. The commercial quota has been significantly cut back this year and tensions appear to be much eased compared with the fierce standoff I documented in these pages last April. Fingers crossed.

Trudeau promises climate test for LNG...now will he stick to his word
Christy Clark and Justin Trudeau Flickr/Province of BC)

As for Site C, I know it’s messy. It’s tough for a new administration to reverse the policies of the old one – especially once they’re already in motion. Our new PM doesn’t want to run roughshod over BC Premier Christy Clark and this one is clearly her baby.

Yet Site C is still in its infancy. There is still time to reverse a very bad and politically unpopular decision – for taxpayers, ratepayers, farmers, fish, wildlife, and, frankly, all British Columbians. Make no mistake – this one decision will cast the die for Mr. Trudeau’s legacy with First Nations. That’s the choice before him, whether he likes it, recognizes it or not.

Lelu decision looms

Juvenile salmon at Flora Bank, where a controversial LNG terminal is proposed (Tavish Campbell)
Juvenile salmon at Flora Bank, where a controversial LNG terminal is proposed (Tavish Campbell)

As for LNG, Mr. Trudeau has already made the tragic mistake of approving Woodfibre. Still on his docket is the larger Lelu Island project that would, in addition to being terrible for the climate, also threaten our second biggest salmon run, the Skeena, and further alienate First Nations (I’m not talking about the band council that reversed its position on Friday, rather the clear opposition of the thousands of band members it represents who voted nearly unanimously against the project last year).

Mr. Trudeau received a letter from over 130 respected scientists slamming the government’s draft assessment of the project and urging it to protect wild salmon by turning down the permit. We shall see how the review panel finds and then how Mr. Trudeau’s Cabinet rules. But if they say “Yes” to this one, it will be exceedingly difficult to tell the difference anymore between Mr. Trudeau and his predecessor.

If that last line causes some to gasp, so be it. Nearly three years ago, I wrote a piece titled, “Why Justin Trudeau may be more dangerous than Harper”, which touched a nerve back then. I take no pleasure in being right about such unfortunate matters. But my thesis then was essentially that Justin represents a better-packaged version of the same policy positions as Harper on many defining issues – trade deals, oil and gas, the environment, and foreign ownership of strategic resources. The way things are shaping up today, I can see little justification for altering that assessment.

Here’s hoping

I hope I’m proven wrong. I hope, sincerely, that Mr. Trudeau, Ms. Wilson-Raybould, Ms. Goldmisth-Jones, and all their well-meaning, bright-eyed Liberal colleagues find the courage to right the ship, even if that means braving rough political waters ahead. It would be good for this country and the world if the next four years proved radically different from the last.

But, then, as they say, the proof is in the pudding.

Share

130 scientists slam Lelu Island LNG report; last chance for public comment

Energy and Resources, LNG, Oceans, Oil&Gas
Share
Juvenile salmon at Flora Bank, where a controversial LNG terminal is proposed (Tavish Campbell)
Juvenile salmon at Flora Bank, where a controversial LNG terminal is proposed (Tavish Campbell)

Over 130 scientists are slamming the draft environmental report into a proposed LNG terminal on Lelu Island over salmon habitat and other key issues. The concerns – expressed in a letter yesterday calling on the Trudeau Government to disregard the draft report on the project – come near the end of the public comment window, which closes Friday.

Report “scientifically flawed”

The letter, signed by such respected salmon experts as SFU’s Dr. Jonathan Moore, BCIT’s Dr. Marvin Rosenau, and retired senior DFO manager Otto Langer, calls the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency’s draft report on the project “scientifically flawed” and based on “inadequate” information. Said Langer, “The CEAA report is less than scientific, full of speculation and wishful thinking.”

The report took a tough stand on the project’s carbon footprint, warning of “significant adverse environmental effects” to the climate, but critics say it fell short on recognizing the damage the Petronas-led project would inflict on vital salmon habitat in the Skeena Estuary.

“You couldn’t find a worse location to develop in terms of risks to fish. The CEAA report does not acknowledge that this LNG proposal is located on critical habitat of Canada’s second largest wild salmon watershed”, said Charmaine Carr-Harris of the Skeena Fisheries Commission.

5 big mistakes

The scientists’ letter lists five key mistakes made by CEAA with its report:

  • Misrepresentation of the importance of the project area to fish populations, especially salmon
  • Inadequate consideration of multiple project impacts and their cumulative effects
  • Unsubstantiated reliance on mitigation
  • Assuming lack of information equates to lack of risks
  • Disregard for science that was not funded by the proponent

On the last two points, the scientists highlight fundamental flaws in the review process and its scientific methodology, noting:

[quote]CEAA’s draft report is not a balanced consideration of the best-available science. On the contrary, CEAA relied upon conclusions presented in proponent-funded studies which have not been subjected to independent peer-review and disregarded a large and growing body of relevant independent scientific research, much of it peer-reviewed and published…The CEAA draft report for the Pacific Northwest LNG project is a symbol of what is wrong with environmental decision-making in Canada.[/quote]

Citizens can add their voice

The window for public comment on CEAA’s draft report remains open until Friday end of day (see instructions for submission here). After that, the review panel will weigh the feedback it has received and produce a final report sometime in the coming months. It will then fall to the Trudeau government to decide whether or not it wishes to issue an environmental certificate for the project, over these serious climate and salmon concerns.

Share