A New Energy Policy, A New Economy
It is the day after Obama was re-elected and the Dow/Dao fell 312. The
TSX fell 130. It was not a free fall.
It held steady the last 3 hours before the close. Pundits are
suggesting this is not a reaction to the renewed Obama presidency. In fact, futures were going up after the
President was declared re-elected. The
fall may be more related to negative speeches made in the early morning about
the financial crisis in Germany and concern over a possible contraction in the
American economy if Obama cannot negotiate an acceptable strategy for dealing
with taxes and the debt.
But there could also be some anxiety over Obama’s approach to energy
security. In his acceptance speech he
actually drew attention to the looming problem of climate change. What
will be the US energy policy to deal with this developing crisis? The environmentalists voted for him because
he delayed the XL pipeline. Romney said he would approve it the first day
of his presidency. Will Obama delay that pipeline with investigation and environmental
assessment? Will the people's will or the oil
company interests prevail?
Harper is not pleased to have to do battle with the President of the
United States who is supposed to be his buddy and ally. Harper will not
like begging to be allowed to set up systems for delivering a higher volume of
dilbit to the United States. The US was supposed to want an unlimited
amount of our dirty oil. Maybe industry and the stock market are nervous
that energy policy is about to change.
But if Obama focuses on renewables (as we want him to do), the demand
for oil might not come back. It might even continue to contract.
This could leave oil companies over-extended and in trouble. As
anti-pipeline activists let us separate our objectives. Our objectives
are not to destroy oil companies. Our objective is to work with energy
executives to plan the down-sizing of the oil sands in order to focus on energy
conservation and renewable energy. The big money will no longer be made
from ecocidal mining of oil and other minerals.
We want the big money to be made in making anything that uses power to
be more energy efficient: anything that improves on current batteries and
energy storage systems; anything that sets up systems to make hydrogen
whenever there is electricity being wasted; innovation in networking
complex power grids and setting up systems for maximum efficiency. Maximum
innovation must be stimulated in these areas. The oil, coal, and nuclear industries must
learn to change their focus and make money in the new economy. We may
need transition programming to help them convert. We need energy executives to lead us forward
toward a greenhouse gas--free world.
We need to understand as a society that when we conduct such
activities as mining, we must, intentionally, design the mining or forestry
processes for minimum impact on the surrounding ecosystems. We must
internalize the cost of preserving the environment into the price of any
activity we undertake.
Both companies and government must incorporate environmental and human
well-being indexes into the measure of how successful our economy is. GDP
will be one among several indicators tracked on a regular basis.
In my dream world, during this time of transition, the United Nations
would be leading a political dialogue with all the leaders of the world on how
we could build a world at peace and stop spending the world's resources on
manufacturing weapons and nuclear power plants.
I would like to see the world organized by watersheds such as the
Athabasca Watershed. Very large river catchment areas would be countries.
They might be broken into several provinces drained by main feeder
tributaries. Municipalities would centre around local watersheds.
People would be intimately connected with the water that provides the
life-giving capacity of the land.
In my dream world, the law would be changed so that private
corporations would have equal fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders and
to the community. We need a market-based
economy to ensure that we encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. We also need it accepted in the core values
of society that the activities of private companies have a big impact on the
communities in which they are located and on the surrounding environment. No activity that produces a negative
bottom-line for the community or the environment can be considered to be
beneficial to shareholders. The co-op
model of enterprise where workers own their own means of production is to be
encouraged.
In my dream world we would also substantially reduce military
spending. We can solve the world’s oil
crisis by massively reducing consumption.
We need to take similar steps with water. We cannot afford a century of war over these
precious resources. Instead, we need to
develop peaceful means to negotiate, and share the resources we have. With the financial dividend achieved by
reduced military spending, we create jobs in environmental reclamation,
environmental assessment, environmental management, health care, education, social
work, transportation, and so on. We build the new infrastructure and work
out piece-by-piece which parts are best done by the public and which by the
private sector and how the two complement each other. This is how we must
share the wealth in a service-based economy where everyone has worth and
dignity and all who are able have the opportunity to contribute through
meaningful work.
