Today we learn that reports show that
growth in the Tar Sands is negating all progress in reducing Canada’s
contribution to greenhouse gases. The
report recommends we buy carbon credits abroad to offset our own
pollution. I can’t think of a stupider
solution to this problem.
Activists have been telling Prime Minister
Harper for years that expanding the Tar Sands is a wrong-headed policy and
today’s news proves it. It is not
possible to be a legitimate world citizen and expand production in the Tar
Sands. They are simply too dirty. We have to leave the vast majority of Tar
Sands oil in the ground. In fact, we
have to leave a great deal of conventional oil and gas in the ground – let alone
unconventional sources that are even less efficient. (See Canada’s carbon budget in extended data
table 3.)
How can it possibly help Canadian economic
development to buy carbon credits from other countries, in effect financing
their conversion to renewable energy, while we stay stuck in this old, dirty
technology. How will Canada ever compete
in the twenty-first century with a carbon-based energy system?
The only way forward for Canada is to plan
a quick transition to renewable energy.
All investment towards oil and gas exploration, tar sands expansion, and
fracking should be redirected toward developing the technology and
infrastructure to run our factories, heat our homes and run our cars on renewable energy.
It’s time for Harper to start planning
Canadian economic policy in the interest of Canadians in this and coming
generations. It is time for Canada to cooperate with world efforts to respond to the climate
crisis, instead of lining the pockets of his buddies in the oil sector at
everyone else’s expense.
