FOURNIER: Trudeau the irrational, asking the impossible

Canadians woke up Monday November 4th to witness two opposing national political forces on course for a head-on collision.On the one hand, they learned that Alberta’s Premier Smith received a 91.5% rank and file mid-term confirmation that her administration was delivering on her election campaign promises at the United Conservative Party’s (UCP) annual general meeting over the weekend.On the other hand, they witnessed Trudeau’s administration respond by demanding that the Canadian oil and gas (COG) sector reduce its CO2 emissions by 35% relative to 2019 levels by 2030.To give you a sense of the magnitudes here, the COG would have to decrease its CO2 emissions from 195 million tonnes to 126 million tonnes or by 68.5 million tonnes in a mere 5 years. Putting this into perspective, the Oil Sands Pathways Alliance’s (Pathways) yet-to-be-sanctioned $16 billion conceptual carbon capture and storage (CCS) project will reduce CO2 emissions by 27 million tonnes per year.Even if this project is sanctioned, it will fall massively short of Trudeau’s expectations.Thus, it is fair to say that these new regulations are in essence an edict to shut in production in order to achieve compliance.Further, note that global CO2 emissions in 2023 are estimated to be 37,400 million tonnes. In other words, unless the COG decreases the global CO2 emission rate by 0.18% over the next 5 years, Canadians will have to live without the massive benefits of a million barrels of oil per day of production revenue ($50 to $80 million per day.) It is now more obvious than ever that Premier Smith’s legacy will be defined by how she handles this latest assault on Alberta and Canada’s oil and gas sector.However, I sense that a serious rift formed between UCP leadership and the party rank and file this weekend, following the ratification of Resolution #12 that called to abandon net-zero aspirations, removing designation of CO2 as a pollutant and to recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.The UCP, going back to the Wild Rose and Progressive Conservatives have always endorsed the idea that large CO2 emitters should pay a carbon tax and that CO2 is a pollutant.I was quite thrilled to discover this motion being put forward, given I have been advocating for these very ideals now for the past two years.Note that this motion put forward by the Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock constituencies is a duplication of a referendum by the Saskatchewan rural municipalities in March that was passed by an overwhelming majority.In my opinion, the prairie provinces are witnessing a grassroots rural led movement that seeks to deny the metropolitan academic (aka experts) led narrative that CO2 is an environmental toxin and that the solution is runaway eco-socialism.Yes, I believe that this topic represents the growing cultural divide between blue collar rural and white collar metropolitan citizens.Here is what I am witnessing.Rural Canadians are losing access to schools, gas stations, hospitals, and high-paying jobs and while this trend goes back two generations, it has accelerated over the past decade and especially since 2020.As basic services and employment opportunities have migrated to major city centers, so too has younger demographics in search of employment opportunities in metropolitan centers.Blue collar Western Canadians have seen $700 billion in natural resource investment capital flee south of the border and overseas over the past 9 years in the name of climate leadership and in a futile effort to buy social credit with climate alarmists.The epitome was former Alberta Premier, Rachel Notley’s promise that the forced closure of 18 coal mines and six coal power plants between 2016 and 2019 would usher in a new era where Alberta energy development would receive positive reception.Boy, was she wrong.Let us not be overly partisan here folks, for this political naivety extends beyond the left.A prime example was former Canadian Prime Minister Harper signing onto the G7 Net Zero 2050 commitment; all this did was embolden Trudeau’s Liberals to unilaterally declare CO2 a toxin.Or another example was former Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach’s creation of the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation tax in the province and the 2009 creation of yet another bureaucracy called Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA.)Albertans were told that if they taxed their most economically productive citizens and funneled these taxation revenues into ERA to be invested in new more sustainable technologies, not only would our CO2 emissions decline, but that our altruism would be rewarded with warm hugs by climate ideologues.According to the ERA, by 2030, these investments will produce a mere two million tonnes of annually avoided CO2 emissions at a cost greater than $9 billion.Folks, that is at least $4,500 per tonne or over 700 % higher cost than Pathway’s capital cost estimated at $600 per tonne.Considering Alberta’s oil and gas CO2 emissions of 110 million tonnes per year, we would have to spend anywhere between $60 to $450 billion to achieve net zero.Why should we spend such immense sums of capital when the growth in global CO2 emissions in a single year is more than 300% greater than Alberta’s total oil and gas emission rate?We could eliminate COG emissions overnight and within 4 months all our efforts would be for nothing.Yes, you heard that right folks.Between 2022 and 2023, global CO2 emissions grew by by 370 million tonnes.Clearly, both Conservative and Socialist politicians struggle with math and with telling the hard truths of our energy reality.Don’t get me wrong, I am not alarmed by these CO2 facts.We know from history that primates developed at 400% higher tropospheric CO2 levels and that most plant species crave higher temperatures as CO2 levels rise and that the optimum photosynthetic productivity is between 1500 and 2000 ppm versus current concentrations of 414 ppm.I say, let’s ignore CO2 alarmism.Rather let’s focus on reversing Canada’s rapidly declining economic productivity. .In closing, I urge all parties to focus on supporting the resurgence of mining, oil and gas and load following utilities as the path to revitalizing rural Canadians and the Prairie region in particular, while resisting all climate related ideologies.