GREEN ACTIVISTS DOUBT TRUDEAU’S DREAM OF A RENEWABLE RECOVERY

It’s no surprise to see conservatives upset about Justin Trudeau’s new “Just Recovery” plan to spend mega-billions on green energy.

After all, the plan will plunge a country already drowning in debt so deep that we’ll likely smash our head on the bottom of the pool.

Trudeau’s green dream scheme is getting major input from Gerald Butts and Bruce Lourie, two of the same green gurus who more than a decade ago helped concoct a costly Ontario solar and wind energy build. That scheme, according to Ontario’s auditor general, led to more frequent power outages, doubled consumer electricity prices in one decade, and will add an extra $170 billion for Ontario electricity consumers by 2032.

Conservatives stake their honour on looking out for taxpayers and fighting for business efficiency, so it’s little wonder they shudder at the thought of what Trudeau might now offer up.

But green and social-justice advocates, such as director Jeff Gibbs and producer Ozzie Zehner of Planet of the Humans, the popular documentary on hidden environmental costs of solar, wind and biofuels, also have doubts, though of a different kind, about Trudeau’s plan.

This week, I interviewed Gibbs and Zehner, who will do a series of virtual town halls across Canada in October for their documentary, which has had 12 million downloads and 9.6 million Youtube views.

Gibbs and Zehner focus on humankind’s overall industrial growth, which they argue puts an unsustainable strain on the earth’s resources. That strain includes the toll from the vast amounts of land and materials needed to produce and deploy solar panels and wind turbines.

Gibbs cites a new study posted at physics.org which digs into the grave threat posed by creating a new solar and wind energy infrastructure. The hunt for lithium, cobalt, copper, nickel and aluminum for batteries, solar panels and turbines will necessitate numerous new mines, an effect not considered in international climate policies.

Millions of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of wind turbines aren’t the answer.

“The mining to do that if expanded fully could create as much biodiversity collapse as climate change,” Gibbs says of solar and wind.

“It’s our job to kind of expose the reality that it might be a dead end.”

One important critique of Gibbs and Zehner’s view comes from environmentalists like U.S. activist Michael Shellenberger, who argue that nuclear energy can help solve climate change, cut pollution and promote worldwide prosperity.

The real problem, Shellenberger argues, is that low-density fuels, like dung, wood and coal, create too much pollution, while solar and wind both pollute, use massive amounts of land and don’t produce nearly enough reliable energy.

Instead, we should turn to energy-dense fuel sources, Shellenberger says, with nuclear at the top of the pyramid. This will give us reliable and abundant energy, with nuclear also being the one energy source where all the pollution is contained.

When I put Shellenberger’s argument to Zehner, author of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism, he says that someday nuclear may be part of a broader solution, but he stresses: “Until we get a handle on the out-of-control consumption in other ways, then it’s not going to help.”

“It’s the same dead end,” Gibbs says of nuclear, adding it will enable destructive overconsumption to continue. “We’re all desperate to have some answer. What I’m saying is there is no answer, whether it’s nuclear, renewables or finding more fossil fuels. We have to accept that we’re hitting limits.

“As much as I like my lifestyle and I want all of us to be well and happy and have a great economy, in some ways unless we realize we have limits, the worst thing for humans would be to just hand us another magic energy source and keep doing what we’re doing.”

It’s an interesting debate, and I’ll add one final thought, that in recent years this argument between using nuclear or solar/ wind or any of these energy systems has largely been between energy wonks, but the topic is about to become huge in Canada.

In the last election, the Conservatives adopted a pro-nuclear platform, but in the campaign ex-leader Andrew Scheer failed to argue forcefully for nuclear as the best answer to climate change and for meeting our Paris climate accord commitment.

New federal Conservative leader Erin O’toole is a far more willing and able advocate for the green nuclear solution. His powerful and fact-based arguments will challenge Trudeau’s solar and wind green dream scheme like it’s never been challenged before.

There is no answer, whether it’s nuclear, renewables or finding more fossil fuels. We have to accept that we’re hitting limits.