WE ALL NEED TO HAVE A GOOD RANT
Venting is good. Every once in a while, when life goes haywire, we need to release our stress — in a non-violent way, of course. Whether on social media or at Tim Hortons, Albertans are venting right now. And that’s all right.
Stress is provoked when we can’t control our situation, when we feel powerless, aggrieved and belittled. We have all those triggers in spades.
As we all know, over the years our energy industry has been trying to build more pipelines to transport a perfectly legal and essential product to market. We’ve got lots of oil and natural gas and we want to share it for a decent price, without resorting to costlier and riskier transport methods.
In this crazy, mixed-up world, however, not everyone wants to help, or even admit they enjoy our product. At every turn, new pipelines have been shelved or halted. We can’t even twin a pipeline that’s been operating safely for years. Our product and our main transport system are now considered the work of the fossil fuel devil.
Never mind that most people, from coast to coast to coast, pay scant attention to their own consumption sins. Instead, climate change is now blamed on Alberta. We have become the pariah province with the pariah product. Sigmund Freud would have a field day with the guilt transference.
Witness the attempt by B.C. municipalities to bill energy companies for climate change damage.
What happened to taking responsibility for your own actions?
Does Whistler not entice international visitors, burning tonnes of jet fuel, to fly in from every corner of the globe to enjoy its slopes? The resort’s new slogan should be: Come to Whistler, but only if you can walk, bicycle or hang-glide to get here!
Meanwhile, the prime minister wavers between buying pipelines and kissing the industry goodbye. Thanks for the Churchillian leadership.
The premier of B.C., in alliance with a Green devil on his shoulder, has vowed no additional pipeline will cross his province, at the same time as he celebrates a new LNG facility and pipeline farther up the coast frequently visited by fuel-burning cruise ships.
The new premier of Quebec, a province known for supporting carcinogenic asbestos and flooding thousands of square kilometres of wilderness and Indigenous homelands for “clean” hydroelectric power, said he will block any revival of the Energy East pipeline.
He sniffed that he had no use for Alberta’s dirty oil.
Saudi oil, that’s another matter.
Our Fathers of Confederation would be embarrassed by this parochial intransigence over the country’s most valuable asset.
This is also exceedingly destructive. The pipeline impasse is costing us billions of dollars in revenue, revenue to run our province and revenue we share with the rest of the country, including those who would block our efforts to generate that revenue they so happily pocket themselves. Hypocrisy is rocket fuel for venting.
Can you feel your temperature rising again? As broadcaster Howard Beale of the 1976 movie Network (criminally beaten by Rocky for the best picture Oscar) would say, “We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more.”
In Alberta, when we can’t take it any more, we threaten to separate. Soon after, steam vented, we realize that would cause more problems than it would fix. Then we go back to a simmer and hope common sense will eventually prevail.
It’s a good thing we’re incurably Canadian and relentlessly optimistic.