Today most of that discussion is dominated by progressives. Too many conservatives are still too fixated on polar bears, Milankovitch cycles, sunspots, Justin Trudeau’s virtue signalling, and who really started those forest fires. Unless you’re a cop none of that matters. The blazing five-alarm fire that really matters is Canada’s need to compete with rich U.S. climate incentives. If we don’t, companies will be drawn south, especially in the oil and gas sector.
We need a deal with Ottawa but not just any deal. It must respect Alberta’s constitutional authority over natural resources, and be incentive based so we can compete with the U.S. while also reducing emissions. Big industrial emitters in Alberta are waiting to invest tens of billions of dollars in technology to lower emissions via carbon capture utilization and storage, hydrogen and biofuel production, electrification via small modular reactors and electricity storage.
In 1989, in a speech to the UN, she argued every nation must fight climate change and biodiversity loss. She argued for nuclear energy and private-sector solutions. She invoked her faith saying, “We need our reason to teach us today that we are not, that we must not try to be, the lords of all we survey. We are not the lords, we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself — preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder.