Created with Gemini AI
There are two ways to make a fortune in business. The first method is invention. You come up with a new idea, a new product, or an improvement on an old method. The other technique is to make it as easy and as cheap as possible to market your goods and services. A successful business will do both of these to some extent. However, it’s a sliding scale, and given the present political and geological climate, governments have to be very careful which type of business they are supporting. In the energy business, the entrepreneurs are forging ahead, creating the new tech that’s going to solve the energy crisis. The scavengers are finding the fix, taking the easy way, and often skirting the rules and the law and sliding into criminal behaviour.
An Example
One of the many times the government has bought Bombardier out of a hole people were asking, “If the company had to ask the government for help, why did the executive officers get big bonuses?”
Andrew Coyne answered succinctly. “Bombardier is not a company that needs government grants to make airplanes. It’s a company that uses airplanes to get government grants. The execs got the grants; they did their job.”
In the Oil Patch
Back in the day when Canada didn’t have huge oil reserves, the companies that were inventing tar sands production were the leading edge, and they needed government backing to do so. Unfortunately, the oil they produced is the dirtiest and most expensive in the world. The latest new tech they found was fracking, and we know where that’s going.
That Was Then
Now tar sands production is supposedly profitable. But more profit could be made by producing more oil. To do this, they need pipelines, preferably funded by the government.
And now we come to the main point. Oil production is no longer so desirable. The true innovators are spending their time and effort on renewables.
Big Oil has slipped from innovators to scavengers, needing government help to increase production and make more money, to no advantage for the rest of Canada. Only about 35% of our oil shares are owned by Canadians, so even the profit motive is debatable.
The Bottom Line
Only 22% of the members of the members of the Progressive Conservative Party see any connection between global warming and the recent wildfires. One of them was quoted last week in the media expressing profound confusion how a Liberal could see any connection at all between a new pipeline and the wildfires that are destroying the world.
Are we allowing the scavengers to set the agenda?
PS
Remember, Natural Gas is also a fossil fuel. It just isn’t black and icky, and a spill just evaporates so you can’t see the greenhouse gases filtering up into the atmosphere.