Alberta gets inconvenient

Al Gore’s sequel to his 2006 climate-disaster film, An Inconvenient Truth, opens this week, but conservatives in Alberta just spoiled the ending for everyone.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power was already off to a rocky start. In a summer chockablock with epic blockbusters, a documentary sequel to a PowerPoint presentation looked like a box-office long shot to say the least, especially one centred around someone whose political career peaked before today’s teens were born. Then came news last month that the distributor, Paramount, which had originally planned Gore’s film for wide release, was paring that back to limited release in select cities. And the advance reviews of the film from those who have seen it, well, they would seem to offer some idea why.

But the recent political earthquakes that have cracked the foundations of the global climate crusade provide the more glaring signs of trouble. That would include the big one in Alberta this past weekend, where two major parties agreed to merge, driven every bit as much by fierce opposition to the carbon-condemning agenda of the current NDP government as by Premier Rachel Notley’s fiscal recklessness. Members of the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose party proved so fervent to team up against NDP policies that referendums in both parties won more than 95 per cent support.

Until Saturday’s stunning results, even those deep inside the merger drive worried the vote wouldn’t clear the threshold of 75 per cent support that the Wildrose constitution required (the PCs needed only a simple majority). Getting both parties within a few points of unanimity makes it clear that right-leaning Albertans have no greater priority than putting a stop at one-term an unlikely Notley government made possible by vote splitting between the PCs and Wildrose, whose combined vote in the 2015 provincial election easily outstripped the NDP.

That was in an election when the NDP mentioned no plans for a carbon tax, which it has now rolled out to widely unpopular support. Polls show roughly two-thirds of Albertans disapprove of it, and aren’t buying Notley’s dubious, masochistic spin that taxing Albertans gets new pipelines built. Maybe that’s because while Albertans are feeling the tax pain, yet another pipeline, Northern Gateway, recently fell victim to pipeline politics and Trans Mountain still faces a new B.C. government intent on blocking it.