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As a Canadian, born in Calgary, Alberta, I'm saddened to hear this. But it seems to be part of the platform of the Democrats. As a citizen of Earth, I'm of mix

by eloff 5y ago

As a Canadian, born in Calgary, Alberta, I'm saddened to hear this. But it seems to be part of the platform of the Democrats. As a citizen of Earth, I'm of mixed feelings. On the one hand heavy crude from the tar sands, which is some of the most polluting oil on the planet, because it requires so much energy to extract, will keep shipping by rail to the United States. That involves more spills than a pipeline and burning yet more fuel. That's bad. On the other hand that makes the prices higher and both constrains the volume of output and the price at which it's profitable to extract. Both things that mean more of that tar sands oil will stay in the ground. That's good. On the other, other hand - more tar sands oil staying in the ground means more oil from elsewhere in the world, often from politically unstable or unfriendly regimes will replace the oil the US otherwise would have imported from Canada. That's potentially bad. I'm not sure which outcome is better for Canada, the USA, or the world. I'm pretty sure neither Obama, Trump, not Biden had any accurate idea either. Edit: and the downvotes are because you disagree with my economic analysis? Or because you think any of those politicians actually have a solid, fundamental analysis including unintentional consequences? Get real, they did it for political reasons, that's why they came out on different sides of the issue based on party lines. Actually judging by the downvotes, I think it was a smart political move. I really wish HN would require a comment with a downvote, even if it's only visible to the OP.

tachyonbeam 5y ago
We all need to transition to renewable energy. It's not good for Canada to become more invested in the oil economy, just as electric cars, trucks and renewables are starting to boom. It's neither good for you environmentally or economically if you have a 10+ year horizon.
- eloff 5y ago
  I think you just read the first sentence of my comment.
  - eloff 5y ago
    The OP edited their comment, now mine no longer makes sense.
- treeman79 5y ago
  So we continue prop up terrorist regimes for the next few decades. Electric is approaching winning on its own merits. Giving billions to horrible people in the mean time is not an acceptable solution. Oil independence is great for America and Canada. Independence “from” oil is a separate if related matter. A half way point is to allow drilling and pipeline and add taxes to local oil and major tariffs on external oil. We get oil independence, alternative tech will be encouraged to replace expensive oil. Only losers are people that use oil.
  - tachyonbeam 5y ago
    Isn't the US already a net exporter of oil at the moment?
    - treeman79 5y ago
      https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41754 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41754 That is a recent thing. It can easily go the other way again.
marricks 5y ago
Our current government structures seem incapable of planning more than 1 year out. Without radically higher oil prices it seems unlikely we'll see the large scale changes needed. Shut down as many pipelines as we can, stop producing oil, build solar farms, build wind farms, build nuclear, everything should be on the table and done simultaneously if we want our grandchildren to have a live remotely similar to ours. The framing of governments and media seems like only half steps are possible, but those steps will still kill us.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  I wish we had a more informed perspective on oil. Yes it’s very important that we move individual and public transportation to electric now that we have the batteries to do so. Yes we need to switch energy production to renewables and zero carbon generation. Yes we need to get as much heat generation as possible for homes, commerce and industry switched to electric. All of these have in common the fact that we should not be burning oil. But, and this is a big but, we still need oil to produce a vast array of materials and compounds that our civilization depends on. Medicine and agriculture are two huge users that we cannot do without. We can’t shut down all oil production and drive the cost through the roof without destroying healthcare and creating famine. Please argue rationally, frame combustion of oil as wasteful while lionizing responsible usage that does not contribute to atmospheric CO2 and improves the human condition.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Alberta oil sands oil is the most expensive and dirtiest oil source on the planet. So when oil demand drops, the Alberta oil sands will be the first place to stop operating. Plastic will be made from the cheapest oil. It's also possible that eventually we'll make plastic using CO2 as the feed-stock rather than oil.
  - marricks 5y ago
    The lack of productivity in the conversation comes from voices like yours which compromise themselves internally before even facing the opposing side. Obviously if all oil companies magically shutdown today human society would be cataclysmically affected. That would never going to happen short of a "Childhood's End" style alien invasion. Any change, even with extreme external pressure, would be gradual. That's why one must always advocate for the position purely and without compromise. Shut down this pipeline, shut down the next one that comes up. Etc etc. "Reasonable" perspectives have not helped the planet at all in the past 50 years. ========== EDIT: One more thought, let's consider how EFFECTIVE the oil industry has been. Continuous profits, continuous increase in production, great subsidies. How did they do this? Well, for one thing, they knew about global warming was caused by burning fossil fuels decades before admitting it publicly. They argued from the strongest framing of their position: "fossil fuels don't cause global warning so nothing should change" It's only in the past decade or so that they put on a face of caring about renewables. That's because public pressure grew enough that the strongest portrayal of their side was acting like they're already doing everything they can. Moral of the story, if you want to be affective don't compromise. The benefit of caring about the environment is at least we don't have to lie about our side, just boldly state truths and what should happen.
epigen 5y ago
That sums up the dilemma. Killing the pipeline will help but not in a vacuum. Continued policy/pressure needs to be applied to move away from oil, which is probably best for the sake of the world.
gautamcgoel 5y ago
Yeah. My first reaction is that this is great news, but as you say, the oil may now come from Brazil, Iran, etc. On the whole, I think it's a win for the environment, but I would like to see a detailed analysis of the predicted effects of this decision on oil exploration, extraction, and consumption. I do feel a bit sympathetic for the company driving this project. They invested billions of dollars and over a decade of time only to see the project killed at the last minute. This is a consequence of our erratic and unpredictable political system - every four years we seem to completely change energy policy. It's the price of our democracy, but I'm sure it's frustrating for CEOs. Edit: It's frustrating to see the parent comment get downvoted. If you disagree, explain why in a comment - no need to bury a perfectly reasonable perspective.
pseudolus 5y ago
It's hard not to be sympathetic to those Albertans whose lives will be impacted by this decision. However, for too long Canada has relied on extractive industries leading to a mild case of Dutch disease. Perhaps the loss of Keystone will jump-start Alberta's nascent start-up scene and other non-polluting sectors of its economy.
- eloff 5y ago
  Alberta fundamentally has to shift gears - just like Saudi Arabia. The world will move on from fossil fuels and they had better have a plan to transition. Norway has been handling their fossil fuels remarkably intelligently.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > Norway has been handling their fossil fuels remarkably intelligently. How so? Oil production is ticking back up and is higher than any time since about 2010.
  - jgon 5y ago
    Norway is an entire country that has just slightly more people than the province of Alberta, which is to say that is it much smaller than Canada, while having oil reserves equal to or greater than those in Alberta. Alberta should obviously have been more diligent in saving up oil revenues generated, but this ignores the fact that a huge amount of oil revenues generated in Alberta have gone to help the rest of the country develop as well. Roughly 250-300 billion dollars from Alberta has transferred to the rest of the country since Alberta's discovery of oil, which would essentially give funding equivalent to the Norwegian sovereign fund. So when people say "where did all the money go?" the answer is that it went to hospitals in Chicoutimi, roads in Neepawa, schools in Battle Harbor, etc, etc. Trying to compare sovereign Norway with a single province in a confederation is always going to give a skewed view of what Alberta should or should not have done with its resource wealth.
    - mnouquet 5y ago
      > Alberta should obviously have been more diligent in saving up oil revenues generated It was literally all stolen by the Federal government through equalization payment. Can't really blame Alberta here...
munk-a 5y ago
> On the other, other hand - more tar sands oil staying in the ground means more oil from elsewhere in the world, often from politically unstable or unfriendly regimes will replace the oil the US otherwise would have imported from Canada. This statement has some inaccuracies in it, it is true that it will literally result in more oil from other places, but, given supply and demand, it will result in less additional oil from other sources. Whenever a cheap source of a good is eliminated the average production price of that good is increased (assuming there is an exhaustible supply of that good at that price) so the removal, or even inconveniencing of access, to tar sands extract will cause an up-tick in prices overall and a likely unnoticeable dip in supply. Additionally, as a Canadian myself, the Alberta oils sands have recently contributed strongly to an economic crisis in Calgary as extraction profitability has sharply declined. There is a lot of oil still left up there but Alberta needs to act now, while it has the funds to do so, to transition their economy. It is not a feasible long term revenue source.
- eloff 5y ago
  > This statement has some inaccuracies in it, it is true that it will literally result in more oil from other places, but, given supply and demand, it will result in less additional oil from other sources. Given strongly inelastic demand, I would say very marginally less. > Whenever a cheap source of a good is eliminated the average production price of that good is increased (assuming there is an exhaustible supply of that good at that price) so the removal, or even inconveniencing of access, to tar sands extract will cause an up-tick in prices overall and a likely unnoticeable dip in supply. I think we're saying the same thing? > Additionally, as a Canadian myself, the Alberta oils sands have recently contributed strongly to an economic crisis in Calgary as extraction profitability has sharply declined. There is a lot of oil still left up there but Alberta needs to act now, while it has the funds to do so, to transition their economy. It is not a feasible long term revenue source. Yes, they had better get serious about transitioning the economy away from oil before Calgary becomes a ghost town. People sure aren't there for the weather.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Hrm, my wording might have been a bit off itself but I mostly just wanted to highlight and rebut what could be worded in your original statement as a sort of fatalist "Even if we reduce what's coming from Canada it won't effect overall production". I do agree that the impact won't solve global warming or potentially cause a reflection in gas pump prices, but the supply is definitely elastic and while the demand is inelastic in the long term short term price fluctuations do actually cause short term fluctuations in demand so there is a fair bit of elasticity there as well. People will find ways to reduce their car commute when prices spike and, especially, oil power plants will defer operation to cheaper (possibly less clean :sigh:) alternatives.
whatever1 5y ago
Not sure why they are downvoting you. People here seem to not get the concept of supply and demand. Specially when the demand is inelastic in the short-medium term
tamersalama 5y ago
Coincidentally, four major Canadian producers are uniting in an alliance for net-zero by 2050. The four are responsible for 90% of oil-sands production [1]. To me, this makes Canadian energy a more responsible source compared to many US-based and other international producers. [2] [1] https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/major-canadian-oilsands-producers-partner-in-move-toward-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050-1.5462675 https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/major-canadian-oilsands-producers... [2] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-net-zero/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-net-...
- eloff 5y ago
  Well, I don't think we can take all the credit. Suncor is a US company, my dad used to work there during the takeover when it was Petro Canada. Edit: I take that back, it's always been a Canadian company. I'm thinking about something else, there was another takeover or merge with a US company back before 2000. That's before the Suncor merger. Very heartening to see though.
- cmehdy 5y ago
  Net-zero amongst companies is often a matter of paying a tax on what you still emit or shifting the accounting of emissions to not fully measure the entirety of your emissions (or to offload that onto other parts of society). It's fine to encourage companies to try and do things like that, but it's also important to keep that congratulatory tone in check when it comes to a world that still incentivizes profits singularly and doesn't necessarily put the price of ecologic externalities that they might deserve. Net-zero sounds perhaps cool but there should be some important education done for everybody to understand that it's far from Gross-zero (or near zero), which would be much closer to what we actually need to avoid some pretty cataclysmic collapses sooner than most people realize.
kokanator 5y ago
> and the downvotes are because.... The downvotes are because they disagree with your politics. The tough part is all your statements hold truth. We must face that if we want to find real answers. Down voting is supposed to be used to indicate a comment has no relevance to the conversation. Conversely, each of your statements must be part of the conversation. [ upvoted ] ( instantly downvoted )
- eloff 5y ago
  It's odd because I'm all over the place on the political spectrum, and I didn't even take a side here other than to discuss how it makes me feel thinking about the place of my birth, which will suffer, and expressing my uncertainty in whether this is a good or bad thing overall - which is more honest than what any of those politicians have done. Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white where it agrees or disagrees with their views. I don't like to believe that's true, but it probably is in general.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    It seems unfair and unnecessarily hostile to speculate about a subset of people you just addressed ("Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white") when the only thing you know about them is that they disagreed with you for some reason. It is of course natural to be annoyed by downvotes, but the urge to start painting yourself as a victim and the anonymous mass as unthinking tends to create a really bad atmosphere for discussion. Now, if you wanted to criticize the downvote mechanism in general, maybe it would be considered off topic by HN rules, but it certainly wouldn't be unreasonable. Edit: Also, perhaps some of your downvotes are due to your commenting on your own downvotes. Personally, I always downvote those kinds of comments (including the self-fulfilling-prophecy version: "I'll be downvoted/flagged for this, but..."), even if I find the rest of the post interesting, or completely agree with them. But I have no idea if other people do that.
    - eloff 5y ago
      Other reasons I might speculate about are just as uncharitable. Such as, they have no understanding of microeconomics as applied to a good with inelastic demand. Or they just read the first sentence and down voted and moved on. At best I think one could argue I phrased things such that it rubbed people the wrong way. Possibly the last comment about politicians.
raclage 5y ago
> I'm not sure which outcome is better for Canada, the USA, or the world. I'm pretty sure neither Obama, Trump, not Biden had any accurate idea either. > Or because you think any of those politicians actually have a solid, fundamental analysis including unintentional consequences? Get real, they did it for political reasons, that's why they came out on different sides of the issue based on party lines. Or maybe Obama, Trump, and Biden had different ideas about what "better for the USA" meant that led to them making reasonably rational but different decisions? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm not sure your assumption that all three of those presidents have a worse understanding of this issue than you do is justified.
- eloff 5y ago
  > Or maybe Obama, Trump, and Biden had different ideas about what "better for the USA" meant that led to them making reasonably rational but different decisions? Yes, that's basically what politics is about in a nutshell, making different tradeoffs based on values. I'm not sure any of them actually had a sufficiently detailed analysis or model to justify having any certainty in their decision. > But I'm not sure your assumption that all three of those presidents have a worse understanding of this issue than you do is justified. Don't get me wrong, I don't understand the issue either. I'm just honest about that fact and merely espoused why it's a complicated dilemma. This is all unintentional consequences and it's not clear which was the best call for the environment, the countries involved, or the world at large. I would have liked to see an in-depth study of the tradeoffs and a rational decision based on that rather than a political decision, which seems to be what we got all three times.
edoceo 5y ago
I only downvote cause of your comments about voting. Like the guidelines say "that shit boring". Your other points were creative even if a little /edgy/ and could(will?) get conversation on their own.
viraptor 5y ago
> That involves more spills than a pipeline Have you got a good source for this? I can only find information about ocean oil spills for transport. The rail ones are barely ever mentioned and much less than the pipeline ones.
- rascul 5y ago
  This PDF has a bit on spills on the last page. https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/pipelines.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/pipelines.pdf
- chris_va 5y ago
  Maybe this: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/safety-in-the-transportation-of-oil-and-gas-pipelines-or-rail-rev2.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/safety-i... ... (not my area, but I was curious too)
userbinator 5y ago
Lurk long enough here and you'll see that HN has an environmentalist bias. Edit: thanks for the downvote, and for reminding me why I almost always stay away from the political stuff here.
- useragent86 5y ago
  More specifically, the environmentalists are censorious, using their downvotes liberally (really, illiberally) to suppress dissenting views. This makes it hard for dissenters to even discover the presence of other dissenters. Meanwhile, the dissenters are less censorious and more oriented toward discussion, so they don't downvote opponents as much. The result is a heavy--and obvious--bias. But according to dang, because people on both sides perceive a bias against them, HN must be unbiased. It's kind of like that theory about vegetarians causing everyone else to eat vegetarian: it's too much trouble to cater to both, and vegetarians refuse to compromise, so everyone just gets vegetarian food.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    >environmentalists ... suppress dissenting views >dissenters are less censorious and more oriented toward discussion This is a really broad insult and complement to two really broad categories of people. This is frankly almost as over-general as saying "people I agree with are good people and people I disagree with are bad people".
    - useragent86 5y ago
      You're entitled to your opinion. Nevertheless, I think it's an obvious conclusion borne out by observation of the political spectrum and conversations on HN. One could even say that your reaction lends it credence ("He must be talking about me!"). BTW, friendly correction: complement vs. compliment.
  - dang 5y ago
    > But according to dang, because people on both sides perceive a bias against them, HN must be unbiased. I've never made that argument. Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please stop doing that? It's against the rules because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. That means it's an abuse of the site and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what their ideology happens to be.
hindsightbias 5y ago
It was scrapped either because the Chinese decided they don’t want your tar or because we want to screw them.

by eloff 5y ago

tachyonbeam 5y ago

We all need to transition to renewable energy. It's not good for Canada to become more invested in the oil economy, just as electric cars, trucks and renewables are starting to boom. It's neither good for you environmentally or economically if you have a 10+ year horizon.

eloff 5y ago
I think you just read the first sentence of my comment.
- eloff 5y ago
  The OP edited their comment, now mine no longer makes sense.
treeman79 5y ago
So we continue prop up terrorist regimes for the next few decades. Electric is approaching winning on its own merits. Giving billions to horrible people in the mean time is not an acceptable solution. Oil independence is great for America and Canada. Independence “from” oil is a separate if related matter. A half way point is to allow drilling and pipeline and add taxes to local oil and major tariffs on external oil. We get oil independence, alternative tech will be encouraged to replace expensive oil. Only losers are people that use oil.
- tachyonbeam 5y ago
  Isn't the US already a net exporter of oil at the moment?
  - treeman79 5y ago
    https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41754 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=41754 That is a recent thing. It can easily go the other way again.

marricks 5y ago

Our current government structures seem incapable of planning more than 1 year out. Without radically higher oil prices it seems unlikely we'll see the large scale changes needed. Shut down as many pipelines as we can, stop producing oil, build solar farms, build wind farms, build nuclear, everything should be on the table and done simultaneously if we want our grandchildren to have a live remotely similar to ours. The framing of governments and media seems like only half steps are possible, but those steps will still kill us.

throwaway316943 5y ago
I wish we had a more informed perspective on oil. Yes it’s very important that we move individual and public transportation to electric now that we have the batteries to do so. Yes we need to switch energy production to renewables and zero carbon generation. Yes we need to get as much heat generation as possible for homes, commerce and industry switched to electric. All of these have in common the fact that we should not be burning oil. But, and this is a big but, we still need oil to produce a vast array of materials and compounds that our civilization depends on. Medicine and agriculture are two huge users that we cannot do without. We can’t shut down all oil production and drive the cost through the roof without destroying healthcare and creating famine. Please argue rationally, frame combustion of oil as wasteful while lionizing responsible usage that does not contribute to atmospheric CO2 and improves the human condition.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Alberta oil sands oil is the most expensive and dirtiest oil source on the planet. So when oil demand drops, the Alberta oil sands will be the first place to stop operating. Plastic will be made from the cheapest oil. It's also possible that eventually we'll make plastic using CO2 as the feed-stock rather than oil.
- marricks 5y ago
  The lack of productivity in the conversation comes from voices like yours which compromise themselves internally before even facing the opposing side. Obviously if all oil companies magically shutdown today human society would be cataclysmically affected. That would never going to happen short of a "Childhood's End" style alien invasion. Any change, even with extreme external pressure, would be gradual. That's why one must always advocate for the position purely and without compromise. Shut down this pipeline, shut down the next one that comes up. Etc etc. "Reasonable" perspectives have not helped the planet at all in the past 50 years. ========== EDIT: One more thought, let's consider how EFFECTIVE the oil industry has been. Continuous profits, continuous increase in production, great subsidies. How did they do this? Well, for one thing, they knew about global warming was caused by burning fossil fuels decades before admitting it publicly. They argued from the strongest framing of their position: "fossil fuels don't cause global warning so nothing should change" It's only in the past decade or so that they put on a face of caring about renewables. That's because public pressure grew enough that the strongest portrayal of their side was acting like they're already doing everything they can. Moral of the story, if you want to be affective don't compromise. The benefit of caring about the environment is at least we don't have to lie about our side, just boldly state truths and what should happen.

epigen 5y ago

That sums up the dilemma. Killing the pipeline will help but not in a vacuum. Continued policy/pressure needs to be applied to move away from oil, which is probably best for the sake of the world.

gautamcgoel 5y ago

Yeah. My first reaction is that this is great news, but as you say, the oil may now come from Brazil, Iran, etc. On the whole, I think it's a win for the environment, but I would like to see a detailed analysis of the predicted effects of this decision on oil exploration, extraction, and consumption. I do feel a bit sympathetic for the company driving this project. They invested billions of dollars and over a decade of time only to see the project killed at the last minute. This is a consequence of our erratic and unpredictable political system - every four years we seem to completely change energy policy. It's the price of our democracy, but I'm sure it's frustrating for CEOs. Edit: It's frustrating to see the parent comment get downvoted. If you disagree, explain why in a comment - no need to bury a perfectly reasonable perspective.

pseudolus 5y ago

It's hard not to be sympathetic to those Albertans whose lives will be impacted by this decision. However, for too long Canada has relied on extractive industries leading to a mild case of Dutch disease. Perhaps the loss of Keystone will jump-start Alberta's nascent start-up scene and other non-polluting sectors of its economy.

eloff 5y ago
Alberta fundamentally has to shift gears - just like Saudi Arabia. The world will move on from fossil fuels and they had better have a plan to transition. Norway has been handling their fossil fuels remarkably intelligently.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > Norway has been handling their fossil fuels remarkably intelligently. How so? Oil production is ticking back up and is higher than any time since about 2010.
- jgon 5y ago
  Norway is an entire country that has just slightly more people than the province of Alberta, which is to say that is it much smaller than Canada, while having oil reserves equal to or greater than those in Alberta. Alberta should obviously have been more diligent in saving up oil revenues generated, but this ignores the fact that a huge amount of oil revenues generated in Alberta have gone to help the rest of the country develop as well. Roughly 250-300 billion dollars from Alberta has transferred to the rest of the country since Alberta's discovery of oil, which would essentially give funding equivalent to the Norwegian sovereign fund. So when people say "where did all the money go?" the answer is that it went to hospitals in Chicoutimi, roads in Neepawa, schools in Battle Harbor, etc, etc. Trying to compare sovereign Norway with a single province in a confederation is always going to give a skewed view of what Alberta should or should not have done with its resource wealth.
  - mnouquet 5y ago
    > Alberta should obviously have been more diligent in saving up oil revenues generated It was literally all stolen by the Federal government through equalization payment. Can't really blame Alberta here...

munk-a 5y ago

> On the other, other hand - more tar sands oil staying in the ground means more oil from elsewhere in the world, often from politically unstable or unfriendly regimes will replace the oil the US otherwise would have imported from Canada. This statement has some inaccuracies in it, it is true that it will literally result in more oil from other places, but, given supply and demand, it will result in less additional oil from other sources. Whenever a cheap source of a good is eliminated the average production price of that good is increased (assuming there is an exhaustible supply of that good at that price) so the removal, or even inconveniencing of access, to tar sands extract will cause an up-tick in prices overall and a likely unnoticeable dip in supply. Additionally, as a Canadian myself, the Alberta oils sands have recently contributed strongly to an economic crisis in Calgary as extraction profitability has sharply declined. There is a lot of oil still left up there but Alberta needs to act now, while it has the funds to do so, to transition their economy. It is not a feasible long term revenue source.

eloff 5y ago
> This statement has some inaccuracies in it, it is true that it will literally result in more oil from other places, but, given supply and demand, it will result in less additional oil from other sources. Given strongly inelastic demand, I would say very marginally less. > Whenever a cheap source of a good is eliminated the average production price of that good is increased (assuming there is an exhaustible supply of that good at that price) so the removal, or even inconveniencing of access, to tar sands extract will cause an up-tick in prices overall and a likely unnoticeable dip in supply. I think we're saying the same thing? > Additionally, as a Canadian myself, the Alberta oils sands have recently contributed strongly to an economic crisis in Calgary as extraction profitability has sharply declined. There is a lot of oil still left up there but Alberta needs to act now, while it has the funds to do so, to transition their economy. It is not a feasible long term revenue source. Yes, they had better get serious about transitioning the economy away from oil before Calgary becomes a ghost town. People sure aren't there for the weather.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Hrm, my wording might have been a bit off itself but I mostly just wanted to highlight and rebut what could be worded in your original statement as a sort of fatalist "Even if we reduce what's coming from Canada it won't effect overall production". I do agree that the impact won't solve global warming or potentially cause a reflection in gas pump prices, but the supply is definitely elastic and while the demand is inelastic in the long term short term price fluctuations do actually cause short term fluctuations in demand so there is a fair bit of elasticity there as well. People will find ways to reduce their car commute when prices spike and, especially, oil power plants will defer operation to cheaper (possibly less clean :sigh:) alternatives.

whatever1 5y ago

Not sure why they are downvoting you. People here seem to not get the concept of supply and demand. Specially when the demand is inelastic in the short-medium term

tamersalama 5y ago

Coincidentally, four major Canadian producers are uniting in an alliance for net-zero by 2050. The four are responsible for 90% of oil-sands production [1]. To me, this makes Canadian energy a more responsible source compared to many US-based and other international producers. [2] [1] https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/major-canadian-oilsands-producers-partner-in-move-toward-net-zero-greenhouse-gas-emissions-by-2050-1.5462675 https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/major-canadian-oilsands-producers... [2] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-net-zero/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/oil-companies-net-...

eloff 5y ago
Well, I don't think we can take all the credit. Suncor is a US company, my dad used to work there during the takeover when it was Petro Canada. Edit: I take that back, it's always been a Canadian company. I'm thinking about something else, there was another takeover or merge with a US company back before 2000. That's before the Suncor merger. Very heartening to see though.
cmehdy 5y ago
Net-zero amongst companies is often a matter of paying a tax on what you still emit or shifting the accounting of emissions to not fully measure the entirety of your emissions (or to offload that onto other parts of society). It's fine to encourage companies to try and do things like that, but it's also important to keep that congratulatory tone in check when it comes to a world that still incentivizes profits singularly and doesn't necessarily put the price of ecologic externalities that they might deserve. Net-zero sounds perhaps cool but there should be some important education done for everybody to understand that it's far from Gross-zero (or near zero), which would be much closer to what we actually need to avoid some pretty cataclysmic collapses sooner than most people realize.

kokanator 5y ago

> and the downvotes are because.... The downvotes are because they disagree with your politics. The tough part is all your statements hold truth. We must face that if we want to find real answers. Down voting is supposed to be used to indicate a comment has no relevance to the conversation. Conversely, each of your statements must be part of the conversation. [ upvoted ] ( instantly downvoted )

eloff 5y ago
It's odd because I'm all over the place on the political spectrum, and I didn't even take a side here other than to discuss how it makes me feel thinking about the place of my birth, which will suffer, and expressing my uncertainty in whether this is a good or bad thing overall - which is more honest than what any of those politicians have done. Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white where it agrees or disagrees with their views. I don't like to believe that's true, but it probably is in general.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  It seems unfair and unnecessarily hostile to speculate about a subset of people you just addressed ("Maybe people don't like nuance and prefer to see the world in black and white") when the only thing you know about them is that they disagreed with you for some reason. It is of course natural to be annoyed by downvotes, but the urge to start painting yourself as a victim and the anonymous mass as unthinking tends to create a really bad atmosphere for discussion. Now, if you wanted to criticize the downvote mechanism in general, maybe it would be considered off topic by HN rules, but it certainly wouldn't be unreasonable. Edit: Also, perhaps some of your downvotes are due to your commenting on your own downvotes. Personally, I always downvote those kinds of comments (including the self-fulfilling-prophecy version: "I'll be downvoted/flagged for this, but..."), even if I find the rest of the post interesting, or completely agree with them. But I have no idea if other people do that.
  - eloff 5y ago
    Other reasons I might speculate about are just as uncharitable. Such as, they have no understanding of microeconomics as applied to a good with inelastic demand. Or they just read the first sentence and down voted and moved on. At best I think one could argue I phrased things such that it rubbed people the wrong way. Possibly the last comment about politicians.

raclage 5y ago

> I'm not sure which outcome is better for Canada, the USA, or the world. I'm pretty sure neither Obama, Trump, not Biden had any accurate idea either. > Or because you think any of those politicians actually have a solid, fundamental analysis including unintentional consequences? Get real, they did it for political reasons, that's why they came out on different sides of the issue based on party lines. Or maybe Obama, Trump, and Biden had different ideas about what "better for the USA" meant that led to them making reasonably rational but different decisions? Maybe, maybe not. But I'm not sure your assumption that all three of those presidents have a worse understanding of this issue than you do is justified.

eloff 5y ago
> Or maybe Obama, Trump, and Biden had different ideas about what "better for the USA" meant that led to them making reasonably rational but different decisions? Yes, that's basically what politics is about in a nutshell, making different tradeoffs based on values. I'm not sure any of them actually had a sufficiently detailed analysis or model to justify having any certainty in their decision. > But I'm not sure your assumption that all three of those presidents have a worse understanding of this issue than you do is justified. Don't get me wrong, I don't understand the issue either. I'm just honest about that fact and merely espoused why it's a complicated dilemma. This is all unintentional consequences and it's not clear which was the best call for the environment, the countries involved, or the world at large. I would have liked to see an in-depth study of the tradeoffs and a rational decision based on that rather than a political decision, which seems to be what we got all three times.

edoceo 5y ago

I only downvote cause of your comments about voting. Like the guidelines say "that shit boring". Your other points were creative even if a little /edgy/ and could(will?) get conversation on their own.

viraptor 5y ago

> That involves more spills than a pipeline Have you got a good source for this? I can only find information about ocean oil spills for transport. The rail ones are barely ever mentioned and much less than the pipeline ones.

rascul 5y ago
This PDF has a bit on spills on the last page. https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/pipelines.pdf https://www.strata.org/pdf/2017/pipelines.pdf
chris_va 5y ago
Maybe this: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/safety-in-the-transportation-of-oil-and-gas-pipelines-or-rail-rev2.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/safety-i... ... (not my area, but I was curious too)

userbinator 5y ago

Lurk long enough here and you'll see that HN has an environmentalist bias. Edit: thanks for the downvote, and for reminding me why I almost always stay away from the political stuff here.

useragent86 5y ago
More specifically, the environmentalists are censorious, using their downvotes liberally (really, illiberally) to suppress dissenting views. This makes it hard for dissenters to even discover the presence of other dissenters. Meanwhile, the dissenters are less censorious and more oriented toward discussion, so they don't downvote opponents as much. The result is a heavy--and obvious--bias. But according to dang, because people on both sides perceive a bias against them, HN must be unbiased. It's kind of like that theory about vegetarians causing everyone else to eat vegetarian: it's too much trouble to cater to both, and vegetarians refuse to compromise, so everyone just gets vegetarian food.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  >environmentalists ... suppress dissenting views >dissenters are less censorious and more oriented toward discussion This is a really broad insult and complement to two really broad categories of people. This is frankly almost as over-general as saying "people I agree with are good people and people I disagree with are bad people".
  - useragent86 5y ago
    You're entitled to your opinion. Nevertheless, I think it's an obvious conclusion borne out by observation of the political spectrum and conversations on HN. One could even say that your reaction lends it credence ("He must be talking about me!"). BTW, friendly correction: complement vs. compliment.
- dang 5y ago
  > But according to dang, because people on both sides perceive a bias against them, HN must be unbiased. I've never made that argument. Edit: it looks like your account has been using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please stop doing that? It's against the rules because it destroys the curious conversation that HN is supposed to exist for. That means it's an abuse of the site and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of what their ideology happens to be.

hindsightbias 5y ago

It was scrapped either because the Chinese decided they don’t want your tar or because we want to screw them.