The Alberta Climate Plan: Is Ezra Levant Right?

Not when he says the oil companies don't represent the oil companies, but in his generally negative attitude towards the whole thing?  Well, let's play Devil's advocate for a minute.  What does Alberta get from the rest of the planet for imposing on itself an economy-wide carbon tax?  We know what it wants: pipelines West and South so it can sell its oil to Asia.   Nobody really cares about Energy East.

But Keystone is dead.  So we're down to Northern Gateway and Transmountain.   Does the plan buy them either?  Well, the Trudeau government is going to formally ban oil tankers along B.C.'s North coast, so Northern Gateway is still dead.  What about Transmountain?  Well, a lot of the opposition to this line has nothing to with climate change, and of course there is a faction in the enviro community who would like the oil-sands shut down regardless of any commitments to better behavior the province and the oil companies might make.  They won't be swayed.  So maybe Transmountain goes through, or maybe not, but even if so it will be years down the line and billions spent along the proposed route to grease the skids before its open.  And who knows whether the market will need it by then.

And that's the only prize Alberta gets...potentially...from the whole endeavor.  So: good for the planet, good for Canada, but arguably not so great for Alberta.

CNOOC Loses On Tar Sands Investment

HONG KONG - State-owned CNOOC, which made China's biggest-ever overseas energy acquisition last year, said Friday that annual profit fell 9.3 per cent because of higher costs for exploration and for operating in Canada's oil sands.

[...]

Foreign operating expenses, in particular, jumped by a quarter because a higher proportion of production came from the Canada's tar sands, where costs to extract oil are significantly higher than conventional crude projects.

Ethical Oil

,,,pollutes just like the other stuff.  Folks at Red Deer, Snakes Head,  and Butcher Creek should toughen up and strain it through their teeth when they drink.  Remember, putting up with this shit is in the National Interest.

Good News

 ...because in Alberta the Tories are the lesser crazy.

Now There's Real Class...All Of It 3rd

Should you be thinking of making snarky comments re Ed Stelmach's departure from politics, go for it; you can't possibly be a bigger heel than Ex-Tory Craig Chandler.

I have been wondering, incidentally, what Ed's departure means for the future direction of the Alberta Conservatives: can they stay Centralist? After all, most of the loons have gone WAP, so there's not (I would reason) a lot of pressure within the party to move right. However, this story suggests that some of the WAPers might come crawling back. Which is possible; I guess nobody surrenders their PC membership card in Alberta; they just join other parties in addition.

That Was Fast

The same URL that an hour ago linked to a story claiming Ed Stelmach and Co. would be giving Haiti sweet FA now links to a story claiming they'll toss in a whole $500,000, half as much as Newfoundland and Labrador. Those boys sure know damage control

Oooh! Oooh! I See An Election Issue Right Here!!!

Its true! New Tory Environment Plan Coddles Blue Eyed Sheiks, Screws Over Rest Of Country!

Iggy In Edmonton: Lets Get Out Of Asbestos Business

Warning! Hardly a sympathetic source, but assuming it isn't outright lies (and I would assume from my experience with the source that it isn't), very interesting:

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is in Edmonton for a few days and last night he held a little town hall style gathering where he took questions from the audience. I would put the crowd at about 450, which is larger than Stephane Dion's numbers last July, and has to be considered a good turnout for an Alberta event.

And here, I think, is something genuinely newsworthy:

Question #11 Asbestos. While in the past Ignatieff has flip flopped on asbestos, tonight there was to be no beating around the bush on this one as Ignatieff answered by saying that "Canada has to be out of the asbestos business. We should not export it and we should not produce it".

And on a carbon tax:

Question #3 was on a carbon tax from someone familiar with Ignatieff's history on the idea. Ignatieff hinted that while he still liked the idea of a carbon tax, the political reality of such a tax makes it impossible to implement in a poor economy. He never ruled it out completely say if the economy improves, but votes ("practical politics") seem to be more important than the environment right now for the LPC.

The Western Canadian Word For "Hand-Out"

"Equitable support"

The Bums Go West

In which Edmonton columnist Neil Waugh tells PM Harper to cough up some of that federal deficit dough for Alberta or face the consequences.

Speaking of which, what's the WTBA up to? Stayed tuned!

Alberta To Become Have-Not Province?

Petro-Canada VP Neil Camarta holds a conference call to make official what has been obvious for weeks.

The Sturgeon County upgrader portion of the Fort Hills project has been 'put on hold".

I will refrain from gleeful cackling, but....

A blue-eyed sheik in Calgary somewhere is gonna be hawking their gold plated beer mugs!

Because an economic collapse is a kind of natural carbon tax.

Sorry, I cackled.

America Will Green Our Tar Sands

...hopefully:

U.S. environmentalists have declared another victory in their efforts to protect legislation that threatens Canada's booming oil sands, but oil sands advocates say there is no triumph to celebrate.

The legislation in question bans the U.S. government and its agencies from buying alternative fuels that produce more greenhouse gases than conventional fuels.

Environmentalists have argued vociferously that this includes fuel refined from oil from the oil sands, or tar sands, as they call them.

Just another quicky post while my brain gets unfried from sitting in a smelly room for three days with alot of smelly jurors. In the end I was not chosen to serve, so wound up reading every object in the vicinity with print on it. Eventually, I got down to the women's magazines with their (unillustrated) stories about breast care. These were totally non-arousing.

Anyway, while Ottawa is afraid of Alberta, the Washington is not, and frankly our best hopes for getting a handle on tar-sands' emissions lies there. Pity we have to get the Yanks to do our work for us.

Obama On The Oil Sands

"If it turns out that these [carbon sequestration] technologies don’t advance, and the only way to produce these resources would be at a significant penalty to climate change, then we don’t believe that those resources are going to be part of the long-term . . . future,” Jason Grumet, Obama’s senior energy adviser, told reporters in June.

Plans for Alberta carbon sequestration projects are going forward.

Just an FYI. Looks like another quiet news day.

The Yes Men Cometh (To The Tar Sands)

I think it was around the time of the G8 summit that I read a prediction that U.S. environmentalists would be targeting the Alberta Tar Sands as the epicentre of the fight against AGW. Well, they have arrived in the form of these two guys. The Yes Men:

...pretend to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations, accepting invitations received on their websites to appear at symposiums and TV shows. They use their newfound authority to express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways toward the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse.

Last week they showed up at Calgary's Go-Expo, Canada's largest oil conference, and gave a speech in which they announced

...that current U.S. and Canadian energy policies (notably the massive, carbon-intensive exploitation of Alberta's oil sands, and the development of liquid coal) are increasing the chances of huge global calamities. But he reassured the audience that in the worst case scenario, the oil industry could "keep fuel flowing" by transforming the billions of people who die into oil.

They described the technology used to render human flesh into a new Exxon oil product called Vivoleum:

"Vivoleum works in perfect synergy with the continued expansion of fossil fuel production.... With more fossil fuels comes a greater chance of disaster, but that means more feedstock for Vivoleum. Fuel will continue to flow for those of us left."

Apparently:

The oilmen listened to the lecture with attention, and then lit "commemorative candles" supposedly made of Vivoleum obtained from the flesh of an "Exxon janitor" who died as a result of cleaning up a toxic spill. The audience only reacted when the janitor, in a video tribute, announced that he wished to be transformed into candles after his death, and all became crystal-clear.

And here's that tribute to Reggie:



Unfortunately, when "mere" Canadians speak out against the ongoing disaster that is the Tar Sands as it is currently being developed, the folks out in Calgary just don't listen. Given the culture of Alberta, and our current federal government, it seems that a more effective tactic is for American Greens to pressure their own elected representatives to, for example, consider how much carbon is produced in the creation of their gasoline, as California is now doing. It kind of sucks that Canada should have to rely on foreigners to force us to clean up our act environmentally, but when you're faced with a bunch of recalcitrant cowboys, what else can you do?

Albertans Speak Out

From CBC:

A provincial government committee touring Alberta to hear what people have to say about the pace of development in the oilsands were told on their Edmonton stop to halt development.

[...]

Roberta Palynchuk says she hiked through Northern Alberta's forest in the 1970s, but those trees have been replaced by massive lakes of toxic waste water created by the oilsands companies, she said.

"I don't believe that as an Albertan I can be proud of that. These things have happened in our province unchecked."

[...]

The tone of comments from the public were similar at this hearing to the last time this panel, chaired by Vance MacNichol, was in Edmonton.

Who are these people, and why do their views go totally unrepresented in the Alberta commentariat?

Stephen Harper Readies His Carbon Tax

Apparently, Harper will be revealing his national emissions targets on Thursday, March 29th. From Claudia Cattaneoin in today's Fin. Post:

Word in the oilpatch is that Ottawa's plan will be tougher than Alberta's, but not as stringent as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Translation: Canada's oil-and-gas sector will have to pay up to meet Alberta's new regulations, and pay up even more to meet Ottawa's.

(Under Alberta's greenhouse gas regulations, announced this month, the 100 facilities that account for about 70% of the province's total emissions are required to cut emissions intensity by 12%, starting July 1, or about six months earlier than expected. Large emitters have the option of making operating improvements, buying an Alberta-based offset or contributing to a new fund that will invest in technology to reduce emissions.)

While Ottawa's plan is not expected to kick in until 2010, the two sets of regulations are likely to stack up on top of each other.

Ignore the woe-is-the-oilpatch tone and contemplate the political implications. Though the Harper plan will fall short dreadfully, it will be the same in kind as Dion's initiative. That is, it will be very difficult to tar the Liberal plan as being radical. Everybody is offering up some kind of a carbon tax, or at least something that can be interpreted as a carbon tax! The difference will be merely in the stringency of the various regulatory regimes, and the Liberal message should therefore be: Harper's plan is SOFT on Polluters, whereas Dion gets TOUGH with those who would use out skies as a garbage dump.

That's an easy battle to fight.

They've Got The Clap!

...or at least the French Pox (syphilis), right up the wazoo, as it were, in Alberta, especially around tar-sands towns like Fort McMurray . From The Globe:

People have a lot more expendable income. There is more drug- and alcohol-abuse going on. And there is more exchange of sex for a variety of things such as drugs and alcohol.

Ohhh, you naughty prairie monkeys! Given that late-stage syph can lead to dementia, some Western phenomenon become much easier to explain (although the whole idea of Ezra having sex seems pretty implausible, not to mention kind of gross).

Remember That Old Joke?

...about the farmer who claims to have the smartest donkey in the world. "I can teach this donkey anything," he tells a credulous city-slicker.

"Show me," replies the city-slicker. "Teach your donkey how to be environmentally friendly."

"Sure," says the farmer, so he takes up a big 2-by-4 and whacks the donkey across the snout with it.

"Why did you do that?" asks the city-slicker.

"Well, first thing you have to do is get the donkey's attention."

As I was reading the Calgary Herald's Saturday morning editorial, I was reminded of this joke, with Alberta standing in for the donkey. Because Ed Stelmach's new environmental plan, for all of its weaknesses (intensity rather than hard targets, a loopy sounding plan to build a CO2 pipeline), is essentially a home-grown Kyoto, with carbon taxes and cap-and-trade schemes and the whole magillah. As the Editorial says, who would have thought it possible?

And despite these weaknesses, the Alberta plan will be built so as to "interact" with forthcoming Canada-wide regulations, which will themselves eventually be linked up to a set of N.A.-wide regulations. I would not be surprised if we wind up with something very much like the Kyoto Accord functioning across a good portion of the planet in 10 years, even if politicians are careful to call it something else. And although it may start by regulating emission intensities, once a regulatory framework is in place it should become possible to tighten the screws until we are getting real emission cuts.

So I am allowing myself a brief moment of optimism on this issue.

And gratitude really ought to be extended to politicians like Mark Holland and Stephane Dion, who wielded the metaphorical 2-by4 that got donkey Alberta's attention. But do you think they'll thank us Easterners? Well, Chretien kept them out of that crazy Iraq war when folks like Ralph Klein were aching to kill for the American Empire. If there was any justice, Ralph and every cowboy in Calgary would have marched out to wherever in Quebec they kept J.C. and kissed his ass in gratitude. But did that ever happen? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo, it did not.

But its okay. We Easterners do it all out of Love.

Will Income Trust Coalition Run Spoiler Candidates In Alberta?

A number of writers have noted that, given the lock the CPoC has on Alberta, voters there are pretty much stuck without alternatives when Harper, for example, rains down hard earned oil money on such distant lands such as Quebec and Ontario, or taxes income trusts. Who else can they support? Well, maybe (according to Diane Francis in today's Natty Post column) a slate of "spoiler" candidates financed by a coalition of income trusts. As Bob Siegel of Cabot Capital Group in New York City writes:

I would recommend that the coalition step up its campaign against Albertan Conservative MPs beyond mere voicing of intense opposition [...] Specifically, I would propose that the energy trusts, given their economic and political clout within the province of Alberta, recruit and put forth a slate of candidates who will run against any sitting Conservative MP in Alberta who follows the Party line and votes for this measure.

The province of Alberta is the backbone of Conservative Party strength. If the Energy Trusts muster their considerable strength in Alberta to make known to Conservative MPs --in this kind of direct, immediate, 'in-your-face' electoral way -- that a vote for this measure will cost them their jobs and, thereby, cause at least some erosion in legislative support for this measure in Canada's Conservative stronghold.

I don't know how feasible a plan like this would actually be. Bleeding off a few votes here and there in Alberta ridings where Tory candidates routinely get 70% of the vote won't make any difference to the outcome on election day. However, as Francis also points out, there are plenty of places in Ontario and B.C. where an "Income Trust Spoiler" candidate could take down the sitting Tory.

The "ITS" Party, anyone?

Something Good Comes Out Of Alberta (With Pic)

It is, unfortunately, long dead.

Meet Albertaceratops nesmoi, named after Cecil Nesmo, whose ranch it was found upon. Here's a good quicky story on the discovery of this new horned dinosaur. Here's its wiki entry, and some more relatively technical data, including the original press release. And above is the only picture I've been able to find of this handsome bastard.

I remember that whenever dad was posted back and forth across the country, we would stop in his home town of Drumheller to visit relatives and tramp through the badlands looking for dinosaur bones. That was before the Tyrell museum was built, a place that I hope to visit before I die.

And to this day dad insists that, when he was a child, he knocked the top off the last hoodoo, a claim which is patently false.

Anyway, here's a map showing the pin-horn grazing reserve, where Albertaceratops was discovered. It's far South of Drumheller, almost on the U.S. border.

Ah, Alberta! A phantasmagorical wonderland for a child to play in! Too bad about the people.