Help is here. After the past several years of feeling like a voice in the wilderness, there is support for the contention that capturing and storing carbon is a dumb idea. And, what I found was particularly infuriating, was the tar sands exploiters wanted our government to pay the costs of the sham.
And even better, it leaves conservative leader Pierre Poilievre adrift on a sea of BS. It was his pathetic support for carbon capture and storage that would leave him free to criticize everyone other than himself. His friends in the Pathways Alliance of tar sands exploiters have been so busy ramping up oils sands exploitation that they have actually increased Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions when we were supposed to be cutting back. The tar sands billionaires have moved into the state of being the single largest producers of greenhouse gas in Canada at 28 per cent of the total.
Mind you, the equal stupidity of the federal government throwing billions away on the Trans Mountain pipeline is inexcusable.
And, can you imagine, in his usual rush to gather media attention, Poilievre was even criticizing Justin Trudeau for imposing some carbon tax on our friends in embattled Ukraine. That is not only untrue but it is a stupid lie, which is what we hear so often from those cheap seats. Poilievre is actually making Justin Trudeau look good.
The current critique of Canada’s tar sands exploiters comes from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) that represents some 44 countries and has spend the past 49 years studying and reporting on the world-wide energy consumption. The agency points out that the cold hard truth is that Canada is the only G7 country to actually increase greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. The tar sand exploiters are bringing up more bitumen from the earth’s core every year. It is estimated that if every liter of greenhouse gas emissions were to be found space underground, it would cost as much as US$ 3.5 billion every year to capture and store the greenhouse gases.
The latest figures of world-wide demand for oil and gas are expected to reach a peak by the end of this decade. And yet many oil companies continue to expand production. It is as though the world-wide industry members are competing to provide the world with its very last barrel of oil.
-30-
Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to: