Also, pay no attention to this guy:
Justin Trudeau: The reason environmental groups in Canada and across the United States are so concerned about Canadian oil is because Mr. Harper has turned the oil sands into the scapegoat around the world for climate change. He is – has put a big target on our oil sands, which are going to be an important part of our economy for a number of years to come, although we do have to get beyond them.Update: Or indeed this one.
Or this one: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/to-glimpse-the-future-of-oil-look-at-coal-in-the-us/article25875993/
ReplyDeleteTrue that. But even setting aside the obvious policy merits of the issue (which are that nobody can claim to take climate change seriously while insisting that we have to extract and burn every possible barrel of oil), McQuaig's statement isn't even meaningfully controversial from a political standpoint - as Trudeau has effectively endorsed, and Harper has committed internationally, principles which lead inexorably to leaving tar sands in the ground.
ReplyDeleteTrudeau's comment falls into the "aspirational" category. Much like the recent international agreement to end fossil fuels use by... 2100!
ReplyDeleteNeither the NDP nor the Liberals are about to move to sane fossil fuels policies.
Nor would the Greens if they actually got elected.
Find me a single political party - anywhere in the world - that is either in power, or has a reasonable chance to get into power - that has an effective fossil fuels policy.
Both Trudeau and Mulcair are nowhere on this issue while they pander to a wilfully ignorant electorate like all their counterparts around the world.
I listened to McQuaig's comments again, and agree that she was simply stating the obvious. But the subsequent microcontroversy points out one of the features of a long campaign that will be much harder for all parties to handle - you may be able to paper over or avoid scrutiny of regionally inconsistent positions in a 4-week campaign, but it will be much harder to sustain this for two months.
ReplyDeleteTar sands pipelines present exactly this challenge for Mulcair. Simply saying that we need better environmental assessments and an overarching carbon policy is only a start. Crucial support constituencies, like in Quebec or BC, will demand to know how you stand on specific projects, like Kinder-Morgan or Energy East. On the former, I think that the NDP has been spooked into evasiveness based on a misreading of what happened in the 2013 BC election when Dix's last-minute, poorly explained statement of opposition to K-M went over badly. Ever since, they've been scared into silence, undermining good work by individual MPs, like Kennedy Stewart, and strong allies, like the Mayor of Burnaby. The main result of this weakness is that it provides a continuing oxygen supply to Green candidates who will do their best to run strong campaigns and elect Conservatives.
Of course, Mulcair now has to worry about how this plays in Alberta. So far, Ms. Notley has been trying to be as unthreatening as possible to the oil industry, providing boosterish cheerleading as needed. And I have a lot of sympathy for her situation, because any minimally honest accounting of climate and energy realities will require the public to digest a lot of things that they won't want to hear. But as I commented elsewhere ( http://albertapolitics.ca/2015/07/can-the-great-wall-of-saskatchewan-resist-rachel-notleys-wish-to-put-democracy-back-into-energy-politics/ ), hand-waving just won't cut it any more.