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Danielle Smith believes that the future is in oil. Max Fawcett writes that she is misinformed:
Alberta’s UCP government may like to pretend it sees the world differently than Saudi Arabia but when it comes to their biggest industry, they speak the same language. Both have said the International Energy Agency’s predictions about the imminent arrival of peak oil demand are massively overblown and that consumption will remain strong for decades to come. That’s why the kingdom’s recent announcement to abandon plans to increase its maximum sustained production capacity should have gotten Danielle Smith’s attention. The explanation that Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman offered at a recent industry conference, meanwhile, should have stopped her cold.
“I think we postponed the investment simply because … we’re transitioning,” bin Salman said. “And transitioning means that even our oil company, which used to be an oil company, became a hydrocarbon company. Now it’s becoming an energy company.” They might not ring a bell at the top of a market, as the saying goes, but his statement is about as close as it’s going to get for fossil fuels.
So far, Smith has refused to reckon with this reality. In a world where global demand for oil is in the process of starting to roll over, she actually seems to think Alberta can double its production by 2050. As she told Tucker Carlson (during his brief stopover in Alberta en route to his date with Vladimir Putin in Moscow), “I think we should just double down and decide we’re going to double our oil and gas production because truly, where else does America want to get its oil from?”
And she's selling that idea to the Americans:
She tried to play this card again during her recent visit to the United States, where she met with some of the most notoriously retrograde Republican senators in an apparent attempt to drum up business for Alberta. “Serious question for America,” she posed on Twitter. “Would you rather get your energy from Iran and Venezuela or your friends in Canada?” Here’s one serious answer: America currently imports almost no oil from Venezuela and has only registered imports from Iran in six months over the last 32 years. There is, in other words, almost nothing for Canada to replace here.
This wasn’t the only aspect of America’s energy system she doesn’t seem to understand. In a video posted to social media, Smith suggests the United States is actually behind Canada when it comes to climate policy, and we should avoid getting too far ahead. “I know that there are often proposals for what decarbonizing might look like on a number of fronts,” she said, “but I’m not seeing that America is moving as quick as Canada. That’s one thing I’m hoping we can bring in sync.”
She's not the sharpest tool in the shed. But, like the guy to the South, ignorance does not slow her down.
Image: CBC
16 comments:
Misinformed is putting it too kindly. As Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan once said, "It is useless to argue with a man [or woman] whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest; the only way to deal with him is to outvote him."
In Alberta, Cap, that's a tall order.
Sounds like Rex Tillarson knows a guy just like her and he wasn’t afraid to tell us what he thought. That we, the public, has to put up with these moronic leaders is just getting to be too much. Their wilful ignorance and refusal to keep with the times and resistance to scientific evidence is in every way of very poor service to the electorate and shouldn’t be allowed.
Please, how can we get these flapjacking idiots out of our way and right down to the back of the bus where they belong?
That's a question that regularly makes it to our dinner table, Graham.
Alas Graham, 'we the public' get the gov't we deserve.
NPoV
Let's see how Graham responds, PoV.
Albertans/conservative have always had a superiority complex when it comes to the rest of Canada. An"us against them" attitude if you will. Now that attitude is "us against the world" as their self destructive pursuit of profit over environment will doom us all. We are all being asked to make a sacrifice to save ourselves from climate armageddon. The Albertons/conservative/rednecks don't get it. Think back to all that the rest of Canada has had to endure from these bust or boom crybabies tellings us Eastern bums to "freeze in the dark". I read a couple of weeks back some staggering statistics regarding the true undisclosed figures on the "oil Bog" and the understated damage that we Canadians are contributing to the global destruction. Albertans will drag the whole country down with them. Paris climate accords be damned.
It's tunnel vision, zoombats. And it's catastrophic.
I’ve heard that many times NPOV and sometimes it’s true I suppose. I believe though that many politicians purposely hide their true intents and talk up the voting public with things that they think will get them the votes. Take pp for instance and trump. pp is on a trumpian campaign tour where he does a rally and fundraiser every couple, few weeks. He keeps pounding the drum “It’s all trudeau’s fault”. Trump too employs the same strategy and pp’s camp has taken notice and employed it to great affect.
Yes, some of us can be blamed for buying into this rhetoric and hyperbole and voting accordingly and so I guess those people get what they deserve/wanted. I think there are some who are quite happy to see a trump a pp a smith “rock” the boat and p.o. the “progressives”. Overall though it is a poor strategy and has limited to negative gains, even for those who vote for them.
I didn’t vote for jt and the libs but I had hope for them and was happy to see harper voted out. Yes I have been disappointed overall in their performance, I did expect better. I know folks who did vote for the libs and were very much excited and on board with all that they said prior to the election. I knew these people were getting their hopes way too far up and had unreal expectations of what would be accomplished. It makes the fall that much harder when it comes. I am angry too that the libs have given so many opportunities to the reformers, pp, to pin failures on them and to be able to very easily engage in the rage farming that is proving effective in their quest to be the ruling party. It seems likely the ref/cons will win the next election and then we will see, those of us not in that camp anyway, that pp will be just like the others from whichever party. That it is much more difficult to be the pm than it is to take pokes from across the aisle.
Hopefully it’ll be one term for pp and crew and then we’ll go back to the libs or, I hope, we give another party a chance.
Let's see if you get a response from PoV, Graham. I suspect you will.
We the people want buck-a-beer solutions with no heavy lifting, Graham.
NPoV
Never let it be said that a politician let a fact get in the way of making up a story to suit their b.s.
If Smith thinks she can go ahead with oil, have at'er. Oil/gas production may have to be curtailed given the lack of water. While doing some reading one article advised drilling for oil produces a lot of water but the problem is the government doesn't let them put it where they want or use it how they want and even if its treated it can't be used for a lot of things, like drinking.
Last summer both B.C. and Alberta had forest fires and not much water. This winter we didn't get much snow. This summer I'd expect a drought and likely forest fires. If Albertans need to choose between running cattle and growing crops or pumping oil and using water and polluting it, even the farmers will sit back and have a think. the question for Albertans will become, do you want to drink clean water and water your crops with clean water or do you want to have more money in the bank, which you can not drink. I'm sure Smith and the gang will think they can drink bottled water from elsewhere and ditto for the corporate types. However, the voters may see this differently
A number of years ago, Germany was able to produce renewable energy at a fairly decent rate. Next article, its about how Iran is paying its citizens to switch from heating with oil to heating with solar. That is all I needed to know about where the future is. There will always be a need for oil/gas for some things but to the extent we use it today, it is doubtful.
Smith may not believe it but oil and gas are polluting the world. Some times it negatively impacts people's breathing. Exploring and getting oil/gas out of the ground is not good for the enviornment either.
Smith needs to understand not only do children have access to computers, I Phones, they know how to use them and get information which at times is very accurate. Then there are all those left wing teachers brain washing their children at school about how pollution can be bad for people's health and then they see the adds from american law firms regarding signing up with them and suing whomever for having cancer because of dirty water, soil, air, et.c
Saudi's sudden interest in sports and other things isn't an accident. they need new industries, be it producing something or entertainment. I'm waiting for the hellishly large casinos.
Electric vehicles are expensive and they do break and the repairs are expensive, etc. Two families on our small street recently each purchased one. Its a working class area, they all have children and they're concerned about the future. In Greater Vancovuer you see a lot of electric vehicles because then you can use the bus lane--no sitting in traffic.
I'd be watching the price of oil/gas stock. Change isn't coming fast enough, but people are starting to purchase electric vehicles. Who knows something besides an electric vehicle will come on the market. Lots of Albertans don't want their air quality to be like some cities in India.
When it comes to air, try to remember 3 minutes without it, you're dead.
Change is coming, e.a.f. Eventually, Smith will be left behind.
Further to e.a.f.’s post I recommend this read about Alberta’s water troubles at the moment.
https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2024/02/19/Alberta-Brutal-Water-Reckoning/
It doesn’t look like it’s going to get any better anytime soon. The other provinces should take heed as well.
If synchronicity is meaningful coincidence, Alberta has it spades. The coincidence is the location of the 3rd-largest reservoir of petroleum—bitumen in a sand matrix—and the high prairie, up against the mountains, remote from the capitals of power and, significantly, from tidewater. Remote, inhospitable and defensible terrain— the east slope of the Rockies—strategically define a redoubt into which an inferior contestant can escape pursuit and recuperate in relative safety until, presumably, it can retake lost territory, power and/or glory; morale is maintained by the prospect of revenge, the mythos often religious as a result. Although the location of the tar-sand deposit in such a well-endowed redoubt is actually coincidental (bituminous deposits occur in a variety of geographies) but some believe it has a spiritual purpose, a godsend, part of God’s plan. It’s no mere coincidence the religious right gathers here—and, therefore, the coincidence is meaningful to them.
The partisan Christian-right’s association with the Bitumen Mines of Albetar is well-known, the redoubt aspect historical and current, availed over time by indigenous peoples refugees from, first, other indigenous nations which acquired the horse and rife before they did, later by Métis defeated in the Red River and Northwest Rebellions, then Mormon objectors to Utah’s prohibition of polygamy, Newfoundlanders escaping unemployment and, today, even Canadian families looking for cheaper housing; also no mere coincidence that the American Redoubt movement aspires to a racially, religiously pure homeland in adjacent Montana (like the Mormon’s mid-19th century “Deseret”) and “Greater Idaho,” the redoubt of neo-Nazi militias.
This is the UCP cult: surrounded by heathens but righteous inside the wagon laager. Short on facts, heavy on faith.
Misplaced faith is a bulwark against knowledge and wisdom, Scotty.
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