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I disagree with this screed. Are you okay with the PM being called names? Milosevic indeed. Are you an adult? Show some respect for your elected officials. Aft

I disagree with this screed. Are you okay with the PM being called names? Milosevic indeed. Are you an adult? Show some respect for your elected officials. After all your neighbours voted for them. Are your neighbours dictators and fascists? It's down to numbers. It costs about $40 to produce a barrel of oil in the sands. When the price is above that mark, it's profitable to produce and sell. When it's lower, it's not. That's the supply side. On the demand side, oil is sold on the global market, US is a large customer but certainly not the only one. There is always a market for oil. The key is transportation. Alberta is a landlocked province, it needs a transportation infrastructure to get the product to market. Canada has the third largest reserves of oil on the planet, and the world uses oil for far more than gasoline engines. To leave it in the ground when there's so much demand is folly. It should be harnessed for the betterment of the country. Why can't we be like Norway and use the profits from oil to make our energy infrastructure greener? Why does it have to be a zero-sum game?

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Don't much care what people call the PM, I didn't vote for him either. Can't say I like the tone that whole thing has taken, but it's people like Smith who crossed the Rubicon to bring us there many moons ago. In the end: We need to be done with hydrocarbons, like yesterday. And the people who've staked their political livelihood to it realize this, and they're distorting the entire political culture out of desperation to hold onto what they have.
- glitchc 3y ago
  > In the end: We need to be done with hydrocarbons, like yesterday. And the people who've staked their political livelihood to it realize this, and they're distorting the entire political culture out of desperation to hold onto what they have. We can set the vitriol aside and discuss this point, as this is where we disagree. Our way of life is almost entirely dependent on hydrocarbons. Forget gasoline cars and diesel trucks, we can't even build roads or medical devices without them. Just take a look at a saline IV. We have no substitute for the flexibility and durability of plastic. Pick any item in your house, it's everywhere. Same with lubricants, they are in everything. Electric motors require brushes and lubricants too. Switching wholesale will cause will be very costly, and without acceptable substitutes, cause a huge reduction in the quality of life. It's essentially economic and lifestyle suicide. And for what? Canada contributes ~2 percent of global emissions. Reducing that to zero still won't make a dent in global emissions. China and India just need to build a few more coal plants to make up the difference. Meanwhile we will have destroyed our way of life irrevocably. It's far more pragmatic to have a slow, phased rollout of eco-friendly technologies. Alternatives have to be built and tested to show that their total ecological footprint is lower. In many cases, the alternatives don't even exist yet. They need to be designed first. Look at paper straws, turns out they're impossible to make without plastic, and the plastic used is completely under-studied. It leaches into the drink and is more likely than not toxic. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, feel-good thinking is not a substitute for science. Climate change is a global problem. Whether we like it or not, our part to play in it is quite small. We should do what's best for the country and its people.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Here we're going to have to strongly disagree, for sure. Absolutely Alberta and others will continue to supply the world with hydrocarbons for generations to come. But that is not the same argument as demanding that the entire nation chip in to ensure that the sector be aggressively expanded. Saying the world needs plastics and lubricants is hardly an argument for expanding -- significantly -- production. This is an argument I hear often from folks in Alberta like it's some sort of "oooh gotcha" moment, but it's frankly insulting. Yes, we all know how stuff is made. They're not telling us anything we don't know. They're not smarter about fossil fuels because of their proximity to it. Just insanely and heavily biased. What Suncor and others and the Alberta taxpayer and energy sector wants is not a trickle of oil used for those purposes -- it's what any corporation wants: year over year growth, large profits for stock holders, revenues for governments, and jobs -- lots of jobs -- for Albertans. Unfortunately that growth is not compatible with the ecological scenario of the planet. And the rest of the country is under no obligation to shift policy and economic planning for it. And this 2% number is an absolute distortion of the facts and simply a product of cherry picking how things are measured. North Americans impact on the climate isn't just from their direction product & emissions, but also from the imports they bring in from abroad. Emissions from Chinese factories producing products for western consumers is not "China's fault" that somehow absolves us such that we can aggressively turn around and increase emissions. What we're seeing demonstrated here is just classic deflection of responsibility. The bias within the western energy sector will always be to find "facts" to back up a world in which they can continue to grow and, in fact, destroy the climate. Intelligent people should be able to see past this. In the end, Alberta provides oil and gas for domestic consumption, and that's not a bad role. Contrary to what Kenney was saying when he was premier, the large majority of domestic consumption does in fact come from Canadian (primarily Albertan) production, and has since the mid-2010s when the direction on Line 9 was reversed. Only the Atlantic provinces are substantially importers. Alberta must diversify. Amazingly it actually was, at the level of renewable energy production, and ... you can see what a threat that was to established energy sector interests, because one of the first things Smith did was to put an end to that. Finally, there seems to be a misperception in Alberta that the energy sector and Alberta are somehow underwriting the whole Canadian economy such that Ontario and Quebec "owe" it something. This is a falsehood. As a % of GDP, even for exports, oil & gas is still behind manufacturing, despite the multi decade decline in that sector. Share prices on the TSX are one thing, dollars and cents in paycheques and gov't coffers on the whole are driven by manufacturing, real estate, agriculture, etc., too.
kranke155 3y ago
Seems to me the previous commenter knows his shit because you sound enraged about a lot of things he seems to understand better than you.
- glitchc 3y ago
  Can you refute any of my statements? If not, you are merely polluting the discourse with more hot air.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    OP already did and this is clearly a flame war.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Circling back on this: "Why can't we be like Norway and use the profits from oil to make our energy infrastructure greener? Why does it have to be a zero-sum game?" Why indeed? You might recall there was a federal government that attempted to engineer this kind of scenario, 40ish years ago, in the form of the National Energy Program. I grew up hearing all about the horrible NEP and the horrible things it tried to do to Alberta... We're still living with the fall-out from that, and in large part .. a lot of the western hate for Trudeau Jr. is deflected flack from Trudeau Sr's attempt to enact what you just asked for. At least Lougheed made an attempt at something like what Norway has in the form of the Alberta Heritage Fund. But it didn't go far enough and has been chipped away at by his successors.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Oh, and one more point since I can't edit this... isn't this basically what a carbon tax is anyways? I'm sure if Alberta had proposed that to the feds -- that instead of collecting carbon tax revenue that it take money from oil revenues and invest it in a green energy fund -- the feds would have been fine with that. They were fine with the Ontario/Quebec/California cap'n'trade system before Ford killed it. But you know that Alberta would never accept or suggest such a thing.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Don't much care what people call the PM, I didn't vote for him either. Can't say I like the tone that whole thing has taken, but it's people like Smith who crossed the Rubicon to bring us there many moons ago. In the end: We need to be done with hydrocarbons, like yesterday. And the people who've staked their political livelihood to it realize this, and they're distorting the entire political culture out of desperation to hold onto what they have.

glitchc 3y ago
> In the end: We need to be done with hydrocarbons, like yesterday. And the people who've staked their political livelihood to it realize this, and they're distorting the entire political culture out of desperation to hold onto what they have. We can set the vitriol aside and discuss this point, as this is where we disagree. Our way of life is almost entirely dependent on hydrocarbons. Forget gasoline cars and diesel trucks, we can't even build roads or medical devices without them. Just take a look at a saline IV. We have no substitute for the flexibility and durability of plastic. Pick any item in your house, it's everywhere. Same with lubricants, they are in everything. Electric motors require brushes and lubricants too. Switching wholesale will cause will be very costly, and without acceptable substitutes, cause a huge reduction in the quality of life. It's essentially economic and lifestyle suicide. And for what? Canada contributes ~2 percent of global emissions. Reducing that to zero still won't make a dent in global emissions. China and India just need to build a few more coal plants to make up the difference. Meanwhile we will have destroyed our way of life irrevocably. It's far more pragmatic to have a slow, phased rollout of eco-friendly technologies. Alternatives have to be built and tested to show that their total ecological footprint is lower. In many cases, the alternatives don't even exist yet. They need to be designed first. Look at paper straws, turns out they're impossible to make without plastic, and the plastic used is completely under-studied. It leaches into the drink and is more likely than not toxic. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, feel-good thinking is not a substitute for science. Climate change is a global problem. Whether we like it or not, our part to play in it is quite small. We should do what's best for the country and its people.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Here we're going to have to strongly disagree, for sure. Absolutely Alberta and others will continue to supply the world with hydrocarbons for generations to come. But that is not the same argument as demanding that the entire nation chip in to ensure that the sector be aggressively expanded. Saying the world needs plastics and lubricants is hardly an argument for expanding -- significantly -- production. This is an argument I hear often from folks in Alberta like it's some sort of "oooh gotcha" moment, but it's frankly insulting. Yes, we all know how stuff is made. They're not telling us anything we don't know. They're not smarter about fossil fuels because of their proximity to it. Just insanely and heavily biased. What Suncor and others and the Alberta taxpayer and energy sector wants is not a trickle of oil used for those purposes -- it's what any corporation wants: year over year growth, large profits for stock holders, revenues for governments, and jobs -- lots of jobs -- for Albertans. Unfortunately that growth is not compatible with the ecological scenario of the planet. And the rest of the country is under no obligation to shift policy and economic planning for it. And this 2% number is an absolute distortion of the facts and simply a product of cherry picking how things are measured. North Americans impact on the climate isn't just from their direction product & emissions, but also from the imports they bring in from abroad. Emissions from Chinese factories producing products for western consumers is not "China's fault" that somehow absolves us such that we can aggressively turn around and increase emissions. What we're seeing demonstrated here is just classic deflection of responsibility. The bias within the western energy sector will always be to find "facts" to back up a world in which they can continue to grow and, in fact, destroy the climate. Intelligent people should be able to see past this. In the end, Alberta provides oil and gas for domestic consumption, and that's not a bad role. Contrary to what Kenney was saying when he was premier, the large majority of domestic consumption does in fact come from Canadian (primarily Albertan) production, and has since the mid-2010s when the direction on Line 9 was reversed. Only the Atlantic provinces are substantially importers. Alberta must diversify. Amazingly it actually was, at the level of renewable energy production, and ... you can see what a threat that was to established energy sector interests, because one of the first things Smith did was to put an end to that. Finally, there seems to be a misperception in Alberta that the energy sector and Alberta are somehow underwriting the whole Canadian economy such that Ontario and Quebec "owe" it something. This is a falsehood. As a % of GDP, even for exports, oil & gas is still behind manufacturing, despite the multi decade decline in that sector. Share prices on the TSX are one thing, dollars and cents in paycheques and gov't coffers on the whole are driven by manufacturing, real estate, agriculture, etc., too.

kranke155 3y ago

Seems to me the previous commenter knows his shit because you sound enraged about a lot of things he seems to understand better than you.

glitchc 3y ago
Can you refute any of my statements? If not, you are merely polluting the discourse with more hot air.
- kranke155 3y ago
  OP already did and this is clearly a flame war.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Circling back on this: "Why can't we be like Norway and use the profits from oil to make our energy infrastructure greener? Why does it have to be a zero-sum game?" Why indeed? You might recall there was a federal government that attempted to engineer this kind of scenario, 40ish years ago, in the form of the National Energy Program. I grew up hearing all about the horrible NEP and the horrible things it tried to do to Alberta... We're still living with the fall-out from that, and in large part .. a lot of the western hate for Trudeau Jr. is deflected flack from Trudeau Sr's attempt to enact what you just asked for. At least Lougheed made an attempt at something like what Norway has in the form of the Alberta Heritage Fund. But it didn't go far enough and has been chipped away at by his successors.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Oh, and one more point since I can't edit this... isn't this basically what a carbon tax is anyways? I'm sure if Alberta had proposed that to the feds -- that instead of collecting carbon tax revenue that it take money from oil revenues and invest it in a green energy fund -- the feds would have been fine with that. They were fine with the Ontario/Quebec/California cap'n'trade system before Ford killed it. But you know that Alberta would never accept or suggest such a thing.