Canada’sharshreality ofclimatechangeissues

While travelling, I was rereading Herald back issues and came across Andy Richards’ July 29 checklist of polices that he hopes Pierre Poilievre will honour.

His first item was… “a balanced budget over mortgaging future generations of Canadians.”

He is right to be concerned about us creating intergenerational penalties, but I don’t think he’s chosen the right one. In Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2015 election budget, he had to use chicanery such as raiding EI funds, selling GM shares, and selling Atomic Energy of Canada to SNC-Lavalin.

It produced a surplus that would have paid off our debt in 100 years.

The intergenerational obligation that we do need to worry about is climate change. Canada is indeed punching above our weight in greenhouse gas emissions. In overall GHG releases we are ranked ninth in the world. Fuelled by oil and gas, and our love affair for SUVs and pickups, our per capital GHG emissions are worst in the world. While we may only produce 1.6% of the total emissions, our lands and lives are damaged by increasing heat. Witness atmospheric rivers, heat domes, beetle-killed forests and the subsequent fires.

Richards’ claims our oil and gas is the cleanest in the world. Wrapping the technological wonder of the oil sands with a Canadian flag will not make it clean, or even ethical. A third party ranking of world oil fields shows our bitumens and heavies are in the highest emitting quartile. What Richards neglects is the concept of energy return on investment.

Conventional oil (think Saudi Arabia, ot Beverly Hillbillies “Texas T”) has an EROI of 25-to-1. The energy equivalent of one barrel of oil is required to produce 25 barrels of oil. For Alberta’s surface bitumen mines, which are about half its unconventional production, for approximately every 5 barrels of oil extracted, 1 barrel equivalent of Natural Gas or coal is required. SAGD (Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage) requires even more energy, 1 bbl equivalent energy input only produces 3-5 bbls output. Then most gets refunded to be burnt in internal combustion engines of 35-43% efficiency.

Richards’ also targets mandatory mask wearing and hastily-created vaccinations, after the disastrous two-year plus, COVID crisis. Mask and vaccination mandates work; lives have been saved. Oh, the COVID cris is not over.

Last week, Canada averaged 106.5 COVID deaths per day. Annualized that’s nearly 39,000 COVID deaths per year.

The pandemic has taken over two years for 44,000 deaths to date.

It’s worse, or better.

David Flater Okanagan Falls