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Sorry, folks, it’s time again for the voice crying in the wilderness. But I’m not prophesying anything good. The only sure bet at the moment is that we’re going to have a horrible time with wildfires this summer. El Nino, low snow packs, everything points towards it.
What is unfortunately also true is that Nicole Smith will go blithely ahead doing as much as a provincial premier can do to keep global warming on track to destroy our society in fifty years or less.
And all because of greed.
Albertans were lucky to find oil under their land. They didn’t win it; they didn’t earn it. But some bad luck came with it. No route to market. They don’t have the right to bully their neighbour who was lucky enough to have sea ports.
And now their luck is running out. It turns out that global warming is closing the door on fossil fuels. But still they keep obeying the tenet that the bottom line must rise by three percent or the world as we know it will end. Well, it’s going to end all right, but they’re counting on their wads of cash to insulate them from the effects.
Those who think they would make more money as an independent country ought to consider how difficult it would be on their own when the economy crashes due to global warming.
There is no specific reason for the three percent growth target. One might suspect it’s the amount of greed the general public will countenance before they start to rebel.
It is a commonly supported tenet of social scientists that the more money human beings have, the more they feel entitled to it, and the more they want. Alberta, whose population makes the highest wages in Canada already, wants more. Especially when it will come at the expense of British Columbia and a bunch of whales.
The Bottom Line
I’m still hoping that Carney is playing for time, letting Albertans get the independence burr (and perhaps Danielle Smith) out from under their saddle blankets and then letting the oil pipeline follow its natural course, squashed under the weight of the environment, which our real problem at the moment.