Mr. Suzuki said that little has changed despite the government’s renewed focus on green issues, following a year in which Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) accused opponents of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline of being aligned with radical groups, Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) accused environmental charities of laundering foreign money, and restrictions on political activities by registered charities were tightened.
“I see no indication that this government is reaching out to the environmental community,” said Mr. Suzuki, who stepped down from the David Suzuki Foundation’s board of directors last spring over the restrictions on charities. “All of these announcements now about having an energy strategy to reduce our emissions from the tar sands are being cobbled together very quickly in response to the Keystone demonstrations.”
Mr. Suzuki and economist Jeff Rubin are on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) home turf this week, bringing their joint book tour, dubbed the Eco Tour, to Ottawa on Feb. 26 and Calgary on Feb. 27. The pair argue that the Earth’s finite resources will mean the end of economic growth as we know it.
Mr. Suzuki called the federal government’s current approach to resource extraction “suicidal.”
“Mr. Harper wants to make Canada an energy superpower. The economic implications of that are absolutely monumental, and the ecological implications in terms of a commitment to fossil fuels and continued tar sands extraction are immense. I don’t see any discussion about that at all by the government,” Mr. Suzuki said.
The Harper government appears to be scrambling to highlight its environmental record following increasingly strong climate rhetoric from U.S. President Barack Obama, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson, who recently acknowledged that U.S. policy has a “significant impact” on Canada in an interview with the CBC.
It’s become increasingly difficult to square the rhetoric with an approval of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would deliver up to 590,000 more barrels a day of Alberta bitumen to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
“Americans are saying that investing in infrastructure like the Keystone pipeline is simply committing to further extraction of fossil fuels when we should be leaving them in the ground,” Mr. Suzuki said. “I think the objections to the Keystone pipeline are showing that the Harper government’s ignoring of the environment as a serious issue is coming back to haunt them now.”
In his latest book, Everything Under the Sun, Mr. Suzuki and co-author Ian Hanington draw on ecology to provide a manual for sustainable living. Mr. Suzuki said that he wanted to tour with Mr. Rubin because their messages—one ecological, the other economic—arrived at the same conclusion that infinite economic growth is impossible in a finite natural world.
“I no longer have to say, ‘The end is nigh.’ Here’s an economist saying it, and then I can go from there to say what we do in a no-growth world,” Mr. Suzuki said.
In his latest book The End of Growth, Mr. Rubin foresees a future of no-growth economies where fossil fuels become too out of reach and too costly to develop. His position is based partly on the observation that when oil hit triple-digit prices in 2009, which he rightly predicted in 2005 would happen within the decade, it coincided with the U.S. recession in which the country’s carbon emissions fell for the first time in recorded history.
It’s not all bad news though, because he goes on to argue that zero growth economies will be ecologically sustainable.
“When you stop growing, you stop burning energy,” Mr. Rubin explained. “In that sense, David finds my book very hopeful for all the reasons the National Post would consider it rubbish.”
Mr. Rubin quit his job as chief economist of CIBC World Markets after a 20 year career to publish his first book, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, in 2009. In it he predicted that high energy prices would reverse globalization and bring about a return to more localized economies.
“I think we’re going to find that most of the 170 billion barrels of oil in the tar sands is going to stay in the ground,” said Mr. Rubin, who’s just as skeptical about the long term viability of natural gas. “All of these new sources of energy are environmentally challenging, and they all involve, to one extent or another, the contamination of water.”
The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimates that Canada’s recoverable oil reserves total 169 billion barrels, with more than 130 billion barrels situated in Alberta’s oil sands. Alberta currently produces 1.7 million barrels a day of bitumen crude, with production expected to double over the next decade if key pipeline projects like TransCanada’s Keystone and Enbridge’s Northern Gateway are approved.
Hydraulic fracturing of natural gas shale deposits has helped make Canada the world’s third largest natural gas producer, producing as much as the European Union annually and dwarfed by output from the United States and Russia.
“These used to be considered marginal resources on the fringe of world supply, but if you listen to what the International Energy Agency is saying, these are world supply in the future,” said Mr. Rubin.
The International Energy Agency in its 2012 World Energy Outlook forecasted that the United States was on pace to become a net energy exporter by 2030 and energy self-sufficient by 2035. The same report warned that the chances of limiting an increase in average global temperature to two degrees in the 21st century were becoming increasingly difficult to achieve.
“Not only are these sources of supply ecologically not viable, but economically they’re not viable either and we’re seeing that right now in the tar sands,” Mr. Rubin said. “The way to adapt to this is to learn how to use less energy, and I think that’s the direction should be leading us to.”
The Hill Times contacted the office of Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) for comment on the message of the tour. In a statement from Rob Taylor, Mr. Kent’s director of communications, the Environment Minister stated, “I wish David well on his book tour,” and went on to detail the federal government’s progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
“Canada has aligned its goals on greenhouse gas emissions with the United States, calling for a 17 per cent reduction by 2020. In some cases, such as coal-fired electricity plants, we have gone further than the United States,” Mr. Kent stated. The minister added that the government was aiming to release draft regulations for the oil and gas sector later this year.
David Suzuki and Jeff Rubin will be at Ottawa’s Centretown United Church on Feb. 26 at 7 p.m. Advanced tickets are $15 and available through Octopus Books. The pair are in Calgary the following day to speak at the Calgary Public Library’s John Dutton Theatre.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: CHRIS PLECASH
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