One extreme begets another
Trans Mountain foes will harden climate attitudes
The disrespect shown by British Columbia Green leader Andrew Weaver for Alberta’s NDP premier, Rachel Notley, over her defence of the Trans Mountain pipeline is indicative of why Donald Trump seems poised to wash his hands of the Paris climate change accord.
When the environmental left goes too far — as Weaver and his new best friend, B.C. NDP leader John Horgan, are doing, and as former U.S. President Barack Obama did — the result is a corresponding extreme position.
It remains to be seen which one will prevail. One could continue to undermine the other and no progress will be made, to the detriment of the climate and of Canada.
Just watch what is happening in the U. S. Trump is expected to announce he will pull his country out of the Paris climate change accord, a move that dismantles one of Obama’s big legacies and that becomes the environmental left’s new legacy.
In Victoria late Tuesday, using a tone that was professorial, condescending, and inappropriate — Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid described him as “patronizing, petty, inaccurate and inflammatory” — Weaver scolded Notley for supporting the federally approved $ 7.4 billion pipeline, comparing it to failed B.C. Liberal plans that promised “unicorns in all our backyards.”
“The idea that somehow a pipeline in a market where it doesn’t exist is going to create jobs in British Columbia is nothing more than a myth,” Weaver said.
“For Ms. Notley to tell British Columbia that somehow (we should be) chasing the 20th century for our future is not a good sign for her and her economy in Alberta,” Weaver said. “Frankly, I think she should get with the program to embrace the 21st century as well.”
In fact, the Edmonton- toBurnaby pipeline has been in operation since before Weaver was born and is a major supplier of oil to B.C., fuelling its cars, planes and trains. About 90 per cent of the gasoline used in the B.C. interior and the Lower Mainland comes through the pipeline from Alberta’s oil fields, and will continue to be an important supplier unless Weaver has an energy miracle up his sleeve.
Contrary to Weaver’s views, Canada’s 21st century will be about increasing oil and gas exports because they matter to its prosperity. Environmental performance will increase, and if Canadian pipeline options aren’t available, oil will move in unsafer and costlier oil trains and keep Canada dependent on the U. S. market and its politics. This is the program.
Like her or hate her, Notley is the majority premier of Alberta, while Weaver is the leader of a party that just won three seats in B.C. and due to an inconclusive elec- tion result finds himself with much bigger influence than he earned.
Weaver is also guilty of double standards, or “carbon double speak,” as former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford, who’s now a resident of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, put it.
The B.C. NDP and Green agreement that will enable them to jointly overthrow Christy Clark’s Liberals takes singular aim at Trans Mountain, promising to “immediately employ every tool available to the new government to stop the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the seven-fold increase in tanker traffic on our coast, and the transportation of raw bitumen through our province.”
Yet it says nothing about natural gas or coal production in the B.C. interior, both fossil fuels, underscoring that the pipeline obsession is really about Alberta bashing.
“I support all this resource development,” Peckford said. “But I reject the hypocrisy of those who pretend environmental purity by promoting excessive environmental regulation, increasing carbon taxes, rejecting a neigh- bouring province’s ability to prosper through oil transmission, all the while ignoring their own coal production and transmission by rail and ship, and their own natural gas production and fracking with pipelines carrying it through two provinces and four states.”
Even more st r angely, Weaver is a supporter of media baron David Black’s proposed $25 billion refinery to process Alberta heavy oil. Black happens to be a constituent of Weaver’s affluent Oak Bay- Gordon Head riding, where jobs from resour- ces aren’t so top of mind in ocean- front mansions, golf and yacht clubs.
Like Weaver and Horgan, Notley started her mandate two years ago with an antioil, anti-business agenda. Reality of governing got in the way, like tens of thousands of unemployed oil workers, deficits that led to rapid-fire provincial debt downgrades, and a flight of capital.
By going to war against the Trans Mountain pipeline — supposedly the federal reward for Notley’s provincial tough climate change plan which is underpinning Can- ada’s Paris greenhouse gas reduction commitments — Weaver is hardening views in Alberta.
“It’s breathtaking to think we have Rachel Notley having to go to bat for Alberta’s oilsands,” said Rob Nieuwesteeg, president of Mud Master Drilling Fluid Services in Calgary.
It’s “also breathtaking that Alberta, of all provinces, will need to rely on another Trudeau to defend Alberta’s interest. His Liberal government is nowhere near as good at financial calculus in government ( as) previous Liberal governments, but they can count seats and B.C. has more. It is not going to end well for us, I am afraid.”
Anger and ali enation from the rest of the country are supporting the rise of the United Conservative Party, the new right wing party that if elected in Alberta in 2019 is sure to follow Trump’s footsteps and toss out climate change commitments with no upside. Environmental extremists like Weaver will have themselves to blame.