[Website editor's note: This article is a useful summary of provincial emission-reduction policies, or rather the lack thereof.]
Provincial premiers boast leadership in the country’s effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but achieving their own lofty ambitions will require political courage and aggressive policies to drive fundamental changes in the way Canadians produce and consume energy.
A leading columnist in Canada's Globe and Mail daily newspaper known in the past to voice concern about the global warming emergency has penned two columns recently in support of Alberta tar sands pipelines, including praising the efforts of the premier of Alberta to sell the construction of these project to an increasingly sceptical and wary public in Canada
Building and expanding crude-oil pipelines will not get oil trains off our railways. I repeat, building pipelines will not get oil trains off our railways. We do have serious rail congestion and derailment problems, but new pipelines will not solve either. The choice between rail and pipeline is a myth. Media coverage and public-policy discourse are consistently wrong about this. People have a right to know the truth, and policy decisions should be based on fact.
On the surface, the Sturgeon refinery project has just about everything Albertans would hope for as their economy sputters.
It will create jobs by processing scads of gooey crude from the oil sands into diesel fuel. It has long-term bitumen supply agreements with the province and one of Canada's largest oil companies.
Its carbon emissions will be piped away for use in old oil reservoirs to help produce leftover crude rather than vented into the atmosphere. That fits well with the province's new climate framework.
It was quite a sight: The CEOs of Alberta’s oilsands projects stood with NDP Premier Rachel Notley to announce Alberta’s climate plan before the climate talks in Paris. The CEOs had the widest smiles.
No wonder. Alberta’s climate plan targets the 28 per cent of Alberta’s greenhouse gases from power generation and transportation (driving), and leaves the 46 per cent of the province’s emissions from the production of oil and gas almost scot-free.
