B.C. Green Leader Weaver leaves room for pipeline hope
B.C. Premier Christy Clark now has a shiny new cabinet. It’s expected to last no more than two weeks before the NDP and Greens kick her Liberals out of office.
A new government will then form, without an election. NDP Leader John Horgan will be the premier. Green Leader Andrew Weaver will be his Rasputin, plying magical powers behind the throne.
At least, that’s how he’s seen here. Weaver is almost a stock villain to Albertans who see a future for oil and gas. It’s a role he seems to relish.
Weaver has already publicly insulted Premier Rachel Notley — urging her to “embrace the 21st century” — even though she created a climate-change strategy far more comprehensive than B.C.’s.
And, of course, this MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, on Vancouver Island, promises to support Horgan in obstructing Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
It’s damned annoying. One MLA with no recognized party, commanding only three votes in total, could stall the pipeline for more months or years, and maybe right out of existence.
But Weaver turns out to be more complex than his image. There are little cracks of light in his stance. They may provide a glimpse of the future.
For instance, Weaver is not an opponent of either the oilsands themselves, or oil and gas as an industry. Rather, like Notley, he sees them as transitional assets in the switch to a green economy.
He has suggested he’d be more welcoming if Alberta bitumen were refined in Alberta, and shipped to B.C. as gasoline, aviation fuel and other products.
The Alberta NDP has long been keen on more refineries here. There’s one in planning.
Weaver wrote a paper called “British Columbia and the Alberta Tar Sands” in 2014.
He outlined his problems with the Harper government’s all-in support for the oilsands.
Then he wrote, “but does this mean I am trying to shut down Canada’s oil and gas industry? Of course not.”
Weaver cited a study he did in 2012 with a graduate student. It found negligible global warming even from burning all the bitumen in the oilsands.
“Tar sands under active development would add 0.01 degrees Centigrade to world temperatures,” he wrote.
“Economically viable tar sands reserves would add 0.03 degrees …
“Entire tar sands oil in place, which includes the uneconomical and the economical resource, would add 0.36 degrees ...”
By contrast, he said, burning all unconventional natural gas would add 2.86 degrees to world temperature. All coal reserves would raise it by a stunning 14.8 degrees.
Weaver is hardly pulling out the pompoms for the oilsands, but neither does he see the land of Mordor in northern Alberta.
He wants development slowed while land reclamation catches up. He doesn’t want production vastly increased.
In 2014, he saw the oilsands in the context of “a national strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels using the wealth of today to position ourselves for the economy of tomorrow.”
That was before Justin Trudeau and Rachel Notley were elected. Now, they both have just such strategies.
If Weaver doesn’t fear Armageddon in the oilsands, and he sees oil and gas as useful transitional fuels, what’s his problem?
From my reading, it’s pretty much confined to dilbit — diluted bitumen — shipped off the B.C. coast.
If Weaver doesn’t fear Armageddon in the oilsands … what’s his problem?
He wants to restrain current rail shipments of bitumen to Burnaby. He’s very concerned with pipeline integrity on land. But the main reason he fights Kinder Morgan is that he believes bitumen can never be safe at sea.
It doesn’t matter that Ottawa pledges to spend more than $1 billion on marine safety.
Dilbit is poison to these people, period.
Is there compromise anywhere in this? None the provincial government wants to talk about.
The NDP is still convinced Kinder Morgan will be built as it is.
But perhaps in Alberta, we need to be thinking more of the future, and how to accommodate the heartfelt worries of people on the coast.
Maybe Horgan and Weaver would be more amenable if they had a pledge that bitumen shipments would taper off as Alberta refines more.
Perhaps Albertans would be happier to create the whole product here, rather than shipping off the raw stuff, as the province has done for 70 years, often to our great pain.
Then again, maybe I’m delusional.
But it is comforting to realize that Andrew Weaver, although quite puffed up about himself, is not a crackpot.