A World on Fire
Wildfires are becoming a major disaster around the world. Last year we even saw fires sweep across Siberia and deep inside the Arctic Circle. In a coastal towns in Australia, bush fires pushed the locals to take refuge in the sea in 2019 and 2020. Some had to be rescued by the Australian navy.
The graphic above from today's New York Times shows how the wildfire problem has spread throughout the American west over the past 15 years. See anything slightly apocalyptic in that?
A number of articles have appeared over the past year of people in places such as San Francisco who are leaving because of the fire and smoke hazard. San Francisco, city on the bay. Even out here on Vancouver Island an efficient air purifier can be necessary.
Now tell me how anyone can support a government that lavishes billions of dollars in subsidies, deferrals and indirect benefits to the fossil fuel industry and, to add injury to insult, insists on building a new pipeline to the coast to flood world markets with the nastiest, high carbon, low value ersatz petroleum, Athabasca bitumen? Why? Why do they want to do this to us?
And this morning, I get to hear a news report that because the Keystone XL pipeline has been cancelled, well, Alberta's increased dilbit production will find its way to the Gulf States refineries USA by increased RAIL shipment instead.
ReplyDeleteTake that, tree-huggers, for getting in the way of Capital!
The reporter blandly stated that rail shipments are more likely to cause more spills than a pipeline. No shit. Lac Megantic 2013 in Quebec comes to mind as the worst outright loss of life. And if a spill happens near someone who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, most likely an American, well the cigar-puffers will no doubt chortle with delight.
I had thought tarsands dilbit production was not going to increase. But apparently it is. 50% up since 2016. And there's the Trudeau's TMX to feed as well. Not to mention the wholesale fracking of northeastern BC to get a little methane to fill a pipeline to Horgan's LNG plant in Kitimat, leaving open pores in the earth where methane can leak, and its too expensive to capture.
Nobody in charge gives a ratfuck about the environment. There's money to be made, and Alberta and BC's royalties these days are peanuts anyway. So your average pro-oil Albertan gets taken every which way to Sunday. As do the rest of us, cough, cough, sweating in ridiculous temps. No water left in California to grow veggies this year. Nor to fight wildfires.
Perhaps the tipping point is already here.
I was opposed to oil-by-rail. In general I still am opposed, but if it is a choice between oil-by-rail or pipelines, I'll go with rail.
DeleteA rail road can easily be re-purposed. A pipeline not so much and the pipeline has way more sunk-costs, requiring long amortization for ROI. The momentum pressure to keep it flowing will be much stronger and last longer.
(The Lac Megantic fire was N. Dakota's highly flammable Bakken crude, not dilbit and the railroad operator was an unregulated fly-by-night hustler.)
Whether provincial or federal our politicians are terrified of being the one blamed for bursting the "carbon bubble." Some one will have to wear that eventually but, until then, they all hope to kick that can down the road for the next guy.
DeleteOne of the best climate science types I know is Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, former chief of the Potsdam Institute. He's the personal climate adviser to Angela Merkel and Pope Francis.
Schellnhuber was in attendance at the 2015 Paris climate summit that we remember for our newly minted prime minister taking the floor with Catherine McKenna to proclaims "Canada's back." At the closing Schellnhuber was asked to comment on the new 1.5 C target that had been reached. He said the world's only chance of meeting that target depended on the "induced implosion" of the fossil energy giants. He explained that meant the willingness of governments to join together to shut down the fossil fuelers. Euthenasia.
So, after six years, where are we? There have been some successes to be sure but overall? Has any government "imploded" their fossil energy industry? No? Of course not. They're still stuck on aspirational targets, moving food around on their plates. The TMX pipeline expansion reveals how readily Mr. Trudeau can switch between suck and blow.
As for Horgan and LNG the latest seismic research confirms the dangers fracking poses to that corner of British Columbia, specifically the Site C dam site.
Meanwhile Chevron, the lead partner on the Kitimat LNG terminal, has downed tools on the project. Toward the end of March, Chevron announced there'll be no more money for Kitimat. It was shutting her down. That came slightly more than a year after Chevron took a $2 billion write down on the asset after failing to find a buyer for its half interest. Now it has decided to turn off the lights.
Kitimat's mayor just shrugged and said someone was going to want that gas eventually. https://www.terracestandard.com/news/kitimat-mayor-unfazed-by-chevron-decision-to-bail-on-kitimat-lng/
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Thank you all for reading,
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