Albertans had barely read aloud to their children every last gratifying paragraph of last week’s court decision clearing the path for the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion’s when the temperature of the latest existential threat to the petro-province reached fever levels.
Which means that even if Trudeau’s reportedly divided cabinet approves the project, it is unlikely that birds and caribou will ever actually be threatened. Or if they reject the mine, that thousands of jobs will actually be killed. Yet somehow, the fact this oil sands mine is a largely theoretical 260,000-barrels-a-day project has failed to lower the stakes of approval.
But that red line is exactly many what climate-conscious Canadians expect of a Liberal government that’s supposedly serious about preventing ecological catastrophe. They find it tough to square long-range pledges to accelerate climate action with unending growth in the oil sands. If one side wants investor confidence, the other demands environmental confidence. Approval sends a signal that will strike many in the Liberal caucus as completely at odds with other signals they’re sending.
It’s true this mine intends to use new-generation extraction methods that have vastly better environmental performance than those used in older mines or steam-injection oil sands wells. But Teck projects its performance to be worse than other recent bitumen mines, like the Fort Hills development in which the company has a minority stake. Kenney’s claim in his letter to Trudeau that the project is “best in class” shows he has problems expressing his boasts factually.
markusoff Connections to many, many sub-systems in our environment, land and air - all connected !