Canada

The oil sands are downsizing. Alberta's Big Oil CEOs are talking to environmentalists. And proposed oil pipelines are in serious trouble.

Those were the takeaways from a trio of experts who spoke in Vancouver Wednesday at a "Carbon Talks" event hosted by Simon Fraser University with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Centre for International Governance.

And the reasons for them have a lot less to do with vocal activist opposition or the Trudeau government's climate commitments than they do with the brute forces of the global marketplace for oil.

Photo courtesy of Josh Berson/SHARE 

Oil at the first phase of separation from the sand is seen at the Suncor tar sands processing plant near Fort McMurray, Alberta, in this Sept. 17, 2014 file photo.
(Todd Korol/Reuters)

Oil sands producers may have collectively breathed a sigh of relief on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent failure to get the premiers signing on to a national price for carbon emissions. However, domestic measures to reduce carbon emissions are the least of oil sands producers’ concerns when it comes to how actions to mitigate climate change will challenge their industry’s survival.

So much for the suburban answer to high house prices in the city.

Costly homes in Toronto have driven so many buyers to the suburbs that bidding wars are becoming common and prices are soaring. But that's only part of the affordability challenge of moving outside the urban centre.

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Commuting, whether by car or public transportation, is also an issue.

A worker-owned factory in Argentina. The Working World / Flickr

[Webpage editor: Yes, ecosocialists need to take up the issues about the state and the party that are raised in this sympathetic critique of the limits to workers' ownership and cooperatives.]

[Finds less acceptance in Canada than US that climate change is anthropogenic]

[Excerpt]:

Ontario has chosen the companies that will build the next round of renewable energy projects in the province, in a competitive-bidding process that will see wind and solar power generated at much lower prices than in the past.

Eleven companies will be offered 16 contracts to build five new wind projects, seven solar projects and four hydroelectric projects, for a total of 455 megawatts of new power capacity, Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) said Thursday.

Mody Torres of Select Energy Services monitors water tanks at a Hess fracking site near Williston, North Dakota (ANDREW CULLEN/REUTERS)

People need to get their heads around the idea that fossil fuels are "probably dead," the CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway said Wednesday.

"I’m not maybe as green as I should be but I happen to think the climate is changing (and) they’re not going to fool me anymore," Hunter Harrison told a J.P. Morgan transportation conference in New York.

The veteran rail executive said the transition to alternative fuels will be long, but new investments in traditional energy sources will dry up because of environmental hurdles.