Mine has been a wonderful summer with endless days of warm sunshine, reminiscent of my childhood growing up in a resource town in southeast BC..Yes, there were the fires and the smoke. I don’t know how many of the fires were set by arsonists or lightning. What I do know is the smoke was not less annoying for the provenance of the flames. By some strange karma, the smoke tended to stay away from where I was, and I appreciated the consideration..It was a great summer, and nothing melted. Burned maybe, but not melted..Now to change geography and climate, I have a daughter who lives in Texas and suffered through the power outages of December 2021 in that state. The government of Texas, for reasons known only to it, overbuilt solar and wind energy systems at the expense of baseload energy that moves electrons even during night skies and windless days..It didn’t help that the natural gas distribution system froze during the unnatural cold spell. But aren’t energy systems supposed to be built with enough reliable redundancy to overcome weather glitches? Isn’t the Texas Railroad Commission supposed to handle such contingencies?.For all its assumed conservatism, Texas continues to get its energy mix just about exactly wrong as its landscape sprouts more windmills and its citizens are constantly warned about energy blackouts..Dear Governor Abbott. Instead of making your state 'green' you are turning it 'dark.'.But this is an issue for Texans to sort out..I have always thought of Alberta as a bit Texan in its political and business character. More polite, of course, but still recognizably Texan..Therefore, after my summer of climatic Zen, I steeled myself for an inevitable rise in blood pressure due to local approvals of large solar farms and added wind turbines. Perhaps I would get electricity only on those days that I am allowed to sprinkle my lawn..But what to my wondering eyes should appear but a decision to put all renewable energy approvals on hold!.Words to the effect that we need to understand the correct energy mix, so that Albertans are not left without energy when the wind stops blowing..Is such sanity possible in the year of our Lord 2023?.And from the government? Initiated, apparently, by the appointed commissioners of the Alberta Utilities Commission? As Vizzini put it in The Princess Bride, “Inconceivable!”.Well at least the world has not gone so crazy that the Trudeau government has ceased to throw rocks at Alberta. Comfortingly, Mr. Guilbeault, our tower climber extraordinaire, went to China, that national paragon of green energy and human rights, to tell the world that Alberta is the source of energy evil. The world is as I remember it exists after all..Yet what is this? Our premier immediately scolds Mr. Guilbeault as one might discipline an errant two-year-old?!.Stop your whining or there will be a time out in your bedroom until you can learn to control yourself and scale back your name calling. Or words to that effect....Since when did leaders from Alberta dig out the rhetorical wooden spoon and apply it so aptly to the metaphorical backsides of federal politicians?.Remember when Mr. Trudeau ran into hiding when the truckers crossed the border into Ontario?.I am now getting the same tingly feeling as I had then. Canadian politics is getting to be a lot more fun. Perhaps the way to handle political bullies is to treat them as the infants that they reveal themselves to be. Inconceivable!.Madam Premier, I think you are on a roll. Keep it up!
