Former MLA Taft discusses future of oil industry
Ex-Liberal MLA’s book an eye-opener
He is the poor man’s Al Gore.
A prophet of environmental doom, but without the former U.S. vice-president’s money, fame or Nobel Prize.
And he is all ours.
Kevin Taft, a former Alberta Liberal leader, has written a new book every Albertan should read, although many will be uncomfortable with, if not outright hostile to, his conclusions.
The title reads like a Twitter encapsulation of the whole book: Oil’s Deep State: How the petroleum industry undermines democracy and stops action on global warming — in Alberta, and in Ottawa.
Taft is not the first author to criticize Alberta for being a willing hostage to the oil industry, but he doesn’t call the province a petrostate. He calls it an “oil deep state”: “Petrostates are conceived in petroleum, while oil deep states are captured by petroleum.”
In other words, we had democracy in Alberta until we discovered oil.
Taft’s argument is exhaustively researched and presented with a confidence that will irritate his critics. And there will be plenty of those.
Taft, who was a Liberal MLA from 2001 to 2012 and party leader for four of those years, has first-hand experience with some of the troubled history he talks about.
When the Progressive Conservatives’ Ralph Klein ran the government, Taft proved himself an energetic thorn in the side of a tired and unfocused premier. Taft was well-educated, an author of books critical of the Klein government and a former political consultant — facets the Tories tried to use against him with Klein calling Taft a communist and “the worst kind of academic.”
Taft often proved himself the best kind of critic, holding the government to account over two issues he held particularly dear: health care and education.
Now he’s holding everybody to account over climate change.
And that includes Alberta’s new, environmentally friendly NDP government.
Here is part of Taft’s notso-friendly assessment of the Rachel Notley government one year after winning the 2015 provincial election: “They were now wholly in the corner of the petroleum industry, fighting for oilsands production and working hard to outdo Jim Prentice, Stephen Harper, and their opponents in the Alberta legislature as pipeline and oilsands champions. By the first anniversary of their surprise election victory, it seemed no one was left in the Alberta legislature to speak truth to power, to question the wisdom of adding another pipeline, or to point out the glaring fact that increasing oilsands production was not going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
Perhaps Taft is engaging in hyperbole to make his point, but this will infuriate NDP supporters who are happy to finally see an Alberta government take climate change seriously.
Taft’s argument is that no government in Canada is taking climate change seriously. And he blames the influence of the oil industry.
PHASE OUT OIL BY 2050
If his criticism of the Notley government will irritate NDP supporters, his list of solutions will antagonize just about everybody in Alberta not a member of Greenpeace.
The first on his list of recommendations: “We must demand governments and regulators, with the support of universities and other agencies, plan an orderly phase-out of oilsand and conventional oil and gas production, so that production is completely ended by 2050 at the latest.”
Whoa.
This is not the kind of suggestion you’d expect from someone who understands Alberta politics. Doesn’t Taft realize this would be political suicide for any political party even if it believed a total phase-out of oil was necessary?
But Taft didn’t write his book as a blueprint for politicians. He is no longer a member of the Liberal party and, during an interview for this column, he was not particularly interested in talking about the ins and outs of politics today in Alberta.
He is taking a much larger, much longer-term look at Alberta’s future beyond the four-year election cycles.
And what he sees isn’t pretty. His conclusion is the fossil fuel industry is in crisis and we’d better take faster, bigger steps to diversify our economy. He’s not alone in that view.
Bernstein, an investment research firm, was quoted by The Economist magazine in 2016 predicting gloom for the industry: “Whether or not you believe in climate change, an unstoppable shift away from coal and oil towards lower-carbon fuels is under way, which will ultimately bring about an end to the oil age.”
Of course, this seems to fly in the face of predictions that the demand for oil will continue to grow for another two decades and even when demand drops, it won’t suddenly disappear.
Also, when the G-7 leaders agreed in 2015 to cut greenhouses gases by phasing out fossil fuels, they were talking about the end of the century.
But Taft is talking about a complete phase out 2050?
Again, he’s not the not the only one saying that.
Last April, several U.S. senators, including Bernie Sanders, introduced legislation — the “100 by ’50 Act” — to phase out fossil fuels by 2050.
Of course, that would be a nonstarter in a fossil-fuel producing jurisdiction like Alberta. Taft, though, is not expecting any politician in the province to run an election campaign on the slogan along the lines of, “Oil’s not nifty, phase it out by ’50.”
He’s predicting we’ll be forced out of the oil game by external pressures. The world will come knocking on our door. Or, more to the point, it won’t come knocking on our door looking for more oil.
“That’s where change is going to come from for Alberta,” says Taft. “I’m not expecting this change to be led from the inside of Alberta.”
Taft makes a compelling case that our democracy has been polluted by oil. He makes a less compelling case that when it comes to rolling in bed with the fossil fuel industry, the Notley government is just as guilty as the Klein government.
And you have to wonder what a pragmatic politician is to make of his insistence we have to shut down our entire oil industry in the next 30 years.
But Taft shrugs.
A decade or so ago, many Albertans, particularly our premiers, thought the U.S. had no option but to buy our oil. And other provinces had no option but to accept our energy pipelines.
Now, the U.S. is awash in oil from fracking and many of our fellow Canadians don’t want another pipeline under their backyard.
Times change.
Taft is warning us the times are changing again, at a speed and scope we ignore at our peril.
I suppose as far as he’s concerned, it’s an inconvenient truth.