Notley makes silk purse from Trump’s sow’s ear?

When President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris agreement on climate change this week, I’m pretty sure he didn’t give a moment’s thought to the proposed expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline from Alberta to the West Coast.

But his decision promises to create more problems for the already troubled project.

The incoming NDP-Green coalition government in British Columbia will no doubt feel energized to fight even harder against the expansion.

And in Alberta, critics of the Rachel Notley government will argue even harder for the premier to scrap her Climate Leadership plan — with its carbon tax — so that Alberta’s policies are more in line with those in the U.S.

Even before Trump’s actions, Notley was caught in a vice between left-wing B.C. politicians (who think she’s not doing enough on climate change) and right-wing Alberta politicians (who think she’s doing too much).

Trump is inadvertently helping tighten the vise. But that might yet work to Notley’s advantage.

She is not changing Alberta’s climate policies, either to appease politicians across the Rockies or placate politicians across the aisle.

By taking the middle road — by standing up to “extreme” positions from the left and right — Notley can position herself as the reasonable politician trying to balance the economy with the environment.

It’s a position being taken by leaders across the U.S., where governors, mayors and business figures have condemned Trump’s move as they pledge to continue their own fight against climate change.

Notley is already winning some applause from conservative observers for her “Mark my words, that pipeline will be built” comments Tuesday.

If you didn’t know those defiant comments were from Alberta’s first NDP premier, you’d swear they were from a Progressive Conservative premier of the past.

As for her conservative critics in the legislature, they had better be careful how closely they parrot the Trump administration on climate change.

On Friday, American journalists pressed Trump’s officials on whether the president still thinks man-made climate change is a “hoax.” The officials refused to give an answer, while trying to recast the question in terms of the economy rather than the environment.

Their problem is that if Trump’s opposition to the Paris agreement is based upon a belief that man-made climate change is a fraud, he would become an even larger laughing-stock globally, as if that was possible.

Similar reasoning seems to dribble out of the Wildrose caucus from time to time. Even though leader Brian Jean has in the past declared, “Manmade climate change is real and we need to tackle it head-on,” some of his caucus mates have let loose a drivel of ill-informed climate-change denial comments that would make Trump proud.

Notley, of course, hopes that never stops. She’d like members of the Wildrose and the PCs, as they consider merging themselves into the United Conservative Party, to continue making comments that paint themselves as extreme and unreasonable.

In a fundraising speech Thursday night, she reached out to “progressive” conservatives who “are feeling like they no longer have a political home.” “I ask you to take another look at our government, our party and our record,” she said.

Trump’s walk away from the Paris agreement might very well make life more difficult for Notley on the pipeline front.

But if her opponents at home and in B.C. overplay their hand, she might yet be able to work it to her political advantage.