Justin Trudeau’s government did not consult Canada’s First Nation people about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oil pipeline extension, which ended up being a major fuck up. A good fuck up for people who want a future for humanity, because this fuck up allowed a court to strike down the expansion of the pipeline.
The court decision was important, because the Canadian government was willing to “purchase the project for $4.5 billion when Kinder Morgan struggled to fund the expansion.”
Allow me to steal an idea from environmentalist, and author Derrick Jensen for a moment. If a government is going to use tax payer money to destroy the environment further in the name of jobs. Why not just pay those who would’ve used that tax payer money to destroy the environment, and pay them to rehabilitate the environment?
Unfortunately, our culture is based on exploitation, and not cooperation.
From a civilization-empire point of view. The Canadian court decision coincides with a report that claims that, “Fighting climate change could generate more than 65 million new low-carbon jobs, avoid more than 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution and add $26 trillion to the global economy all by 2030,” writes EcoWatch.
This new report doesn’t grab me really, because it’s still a part of the cultures dominate mantra of growth. You need to extract the resources to create this clean energy. This means if people have what you want lying beneath their feet, but they’re not going to willingly let you destroy their environment for those resources. What will civilization do?
Having said that, renewables is better than what we have right now. And Trump wants to make things even worse.
In August, the Trump administration announced the Affordable Clean Energy Rule would replace the Clean Power Plan . The Affordable Clean Energy Rules is of course, completely Orwellian. Trump’s plan to resuscitate the coal industry will add another 1,400 premature deaths a year, further destroy the environment, and increase the amount of pollutants into the atmosphere. On top of the environmental problems that Trump’s policy brings. It also means that taxpayer money will be used to revive the coal industry. Using taxes to make things affordable is an interesting idea to be deployed by a supposed conservative.
Derrick Jensen has once made the argument that if subsidies for commercial fishing is larger than its profits. Why not just pay them to stay home?
“Whether we like it or not, a federal bailout is already coming their way,” writes Carla Skandier of the fossil fuel industry. This is because the fossil fuel industry has a “bubble” inside the financial market, just as the financiers did that led to the 2008 economic crash.
Carla Skandier of Truthout writes:
Like the financial industry, the fossil fuel industry has also created (and continues to expand) a toxic “bubble” inside the financial market. This “carbon bubble” takes the shape of massive fossil fuel reserves and infrastructure that will no longer be needed if we act to avoid the worst effects of climate change. That means fossil fuels won’t provide the financial returns investors expect.
And:
With an estimate of up to $4 trillion in global wealth already constrained by the rise of low-carbon technologies deployed as a result of past policies and investment decisions, fossil fuel-exporter nations like the United States will be the biggest financial losers.
In many ways, we can already see how by looking at the US coal mining industry. Since 2010, this sector has been facing a significant decline, with 271 coal-fired power plants (more than half of the country’s fleet) retired or scheduled to retire. But coal is far from the only industry affected. Even the fracking industry, which has brought US once again to the list of top oil and gas producers, is accumulating a loss of $280 billion since 2007.
Carla concludes:
A straightforward answer to the climate and financial challenges facing the nation is a federal buyout aimed at winding down, not propping up, the fossil fuel industry. By using the same monetary tool we used in the past, quantitative easing, the federal government can create the needed money to once again prevent the country from entering an economic depression. The difference is, instead of a bailout in which fossil fuel companies can continue concentrating wealth and power, the federal government would acquire the majority of fossil fuel companies’ shares and, most importantly, secure control and decision-making power over the future of the noxious assets already in those companies’ hands. By giving intervention a new purpose, the government would secure for citizens — not the fossil fuel industry — a floor below which we cannot fall and a foundation upon which we can build a more sustainable green economy.
Although I’m cynical about the idea working. It doesn’t mean that it’s a bad idea, nor that we should not try and implement it. Unfortunately, economics has to be part of the discussion of dealing with climate change, because of the dominant culture whose insane god is constant growth on a finite planet.
And although I can be cynical. The victory by the Canadian indigenous people does give me hope, because we need a way of living that grows and sustains the earth. Not the economy.
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