Trans Mountain battle will continue despite Trudeau’s ruling
Are you for or against?
That’s the only question that seems to matter in the West when the Trans Mountain pipeline comes up for discussion.
In Alberta, it has become a test of loyalty to the oil industry, still the province’s main economic driver, and to the province itself.
In B.C., it is a test of an individual’s commitment to making sure B.C. is always “Beautiful British Columbia” as the licence plates say and not marred by ugly oil spills and climate disasters.
The question of whether a pipeline should be expanded so it can ship diluted bitumen from Alberta across B.C. to the coast may seem like a peculiarly Canadian problem, but it is not.
It is the quintessential dilemma of our era: In the face of overwhelming evidence about the warming of the planet caused by carbon emissions, how much fossil fuel can a resource-rich country like Canada continue to produce and burn and for how long?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has had to wrestle with that dilemma for a while. And the cabinet decision he reveals this week on the future of that stalled pipeline expansion, a pipeline the government now owns, is not likely to end the furious battle between opposing forces. But then, what would? Both sides are so deeply entrenched in their own ideas of right and wrong, both sides so desperately want to defeat the other, there isn’t much room for compromise.
This is what a woman had to say at an anti-pipeline rally in Vancouver last week: “I’m deeply concerned — that doesn’t even fully describe it — about climate breakdown. I think we want to prevent an increase in the extraction of oil and gas reserves and leave the majority of that oil in the ground.
“I have a little daughter and she trusts me to keep her safe.”
A few days later in Calgary, a woman attending a pro-pipeline rally who had lost her job as an engineer and has a son to support had a much different view:
“I am not a politician, but I think some of the messaging about global warming is skewed. I’ve been driving Uber Eats to pay the bills, but I would like to be doing something that will make a difference for all Albertans.”
For opponents in B.C., it doesn’t seem to matter how much serious consultation with Indigenous groups is undertaken, how much money is spent on ensuring marine safety, or what the oil industry is doing to lower carbon emissions, it is never enough.
In Alberta, even if the pipeline goes ahead, the oil industry (which now seems synonymous with Jason Kenney’s government) will want more assurances from the federal government that their projects won’t be encumbered by laws and regulations that they see as impediments to investment.
It is particularly enraged about Bill C-69, an overhaul of the federal environmental-assessment process for major resource projects, including pipelines, and will continue to fiercely lobby against it.
In the end, is stopping one pipeline in a world awash in oil going to significantly reduce carbon emissions? Since it looks like we will be driving gasoline powered vehicles for at least another decade, even in B.C., whoever needs the oil destined for that pipeline will get it from somewhere else. When the demand for fossil fuels drops, and it will eventually, so will the need for pipelines.
As for the oil industry and the Albertans who depend on it: it’s not 1952 anymore, the year construction began on the original Trans Mountain pipeline. The pressure to reduce global carbon emissions will continue: get used to it.
Pointing to predictions about the global demand for oil rising over the next decades as solid proof of future profit is a fool’s game. Five years before the shale oil boom, who would have predicted that the U.S. would become energy self-sufficient?
Things are changing at a rapid pace. Nothing seems stable anymore.
So, rather than continuing to look in the rear view mirror, Albertans need to figure out how they are going to move forward in a world that will eventually kick its addiction to oil.