Alberta's Leadership on Eco Solutions

This column was publish in French in LaPresse on the weekend under the headlines:

"Egoistes, les Albertains?
Non, on manifeste dans l'Ouest une grande Volonte d'etre a l'avant-garde des solutions Pour assurer la perennite de la planete"

which roughly translates as:

The Albertans, self-centred?
No, there's an expression in the West
Of a great desire to be in the avant-garde Of solutions that assure the sustainability of the planet.

Here is the English text:

Alberta’s Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Guy Boutilier played the caricature Albertan when he declared this province to be the “bad boy” of Confederation a few weeks ago.

Boutilier’s posturing made serious people cringe and brought an extraordinary public rebuke from a noted academic who once served as a senior federal bureaucrat. Just like the real climate, the political climate in Alberta is changing. Like other Canadians, Albertans want a meaningful response to global warming, and they will punish politicians who persist in silly confrontation. Far from being the “bad boy,” Alberta demonstrates a strong will to lead the solutions for a sustainable planet.

Last October, our firm sounded Albertans on the subjects that animate them. We used conjoint analysis to get a clear idea of the depth of citizens’ attachment to the matters they considered most important. Environment clearly emerged as the Number One concern in Albertans’ minds – a result we detected three months earlier that the recent national surveys. Clearly then, Albertans are of a mind with other Canadians. Indeed our analysis suggested that environmental sustainability is not merely an issue. It has become a core value – like democracy, freedom of speech and the rule of law.

It will be necessary for our compatriots in Quebec to keep this perspective in mind in the coming weeks, as a parade of caricature Albertans clamour for attention in national media. Like you, we know that our economic prosperity goes hand in hand with environmental sustainability. In fact, influential Albertans see climate change as a business opportunity and some interesting business ideas are under development.

Large energy companies are willing to invest in carbon-capture technologies and the clean energy economy -- as long as government takes the lead in setting out the rules. In the absence of government policy leadership, what profit minded market based enterprise would be the first to undertake the risk in developing the means to slash greenhouse gas emissions, if its competitors are not required to follow suit?

Carbon capture is one such technology. We know that in Alberta, it will cost about $7.5 billion to build a capture and distribution network for CO2 sequestration. This would enable the capture of oil sands and other heavy emitter’s CO2 s, and inject it into aging conventional oil fields. As a result, oil that was not accessible by the old technology will be produced and the CO2 will replace the displaced oil. The initial price tag seems large, but it must be put in the perspective of the $100 billion being invested in developing oil sands extraction.

Oil sands should be considered as more than a petroleum source. This is the largest deposit of hydrocarbons on the planet. The oil sands could be the transition between the petroleum economy of today and the hydrogen economy of tomorrow. Bitumen coke a by-product of oil sands production is a low-cost source of hydrogen.

Hydrogen and synthetic natural gas can also be produced from Alberta's vast coal deposits -- a huge plant is being built to do just that. At the end of 2008, Honda is going to introduce a commercially-available hydrogen car. Initial plans are to install home converters that will extract hydrogen from natural gas, and fuel the car for up to a 500-km range. The emission that comes out of hydrogen combustion is water. Almost all Alberta homes are heated by natural gas and that would facilitate a conversion to a hydrogen car.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers is on record asking for a clear set of regulated standards for the energy industry so that its members can plan the investment they need to address climate change. The leaders among them know it will take hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development in emerging technologies to succeed in slashing greenhouse gas emissions. With this investment, they can not only meet the Kyoto targets, they can go even farther with successful carbon capture They will invest that money, if everyone has to play by the same rules and achieve the same goals.

Albertans will eagerly embrace the economic opportunities inherent in environmental stewardship, because we know full well the consequences of failure and inaction.

Satya Das et Ken Chapman
Les auteurs dirigent Cambridge Strategies Inc., groupe-conseil albertain en politique publique.

Dion's Doings and a Rebutal of the Cons Attack Ads.

Readers of my blog will know I seem to gravitate to longer posts. Well I have found a kindred spirit in longer form blogging.

This blogger, "politiquevert" provides some serious factual evidence to rebut the Harper Cons rhetoric that Dion has done nothing while in Cabinet.

Quality research and a powerful posting. Give it a read. Here is the link: http://politiquevert.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/dions-environmental-footprint-on-the-government-of-canada-website/

Another update on Dion's environmental doings...check out the video clip on this site: http://whiletheearthburns.blogspot.com/2007/02/dions-environmental-cred-video.html

Props to Nicole Martel for posting it and bringing it to my attention.

Old Time Alberta Cons Still Angst over NEP and Threaten Separation

Lorne Gunter’s tirade in the Edmonton Journal today is so far out of whack with the current realities Alberta is facing. We are working to design ways to balance growth with enhanced environmental protection and provide the social infrastructure needed to ensure a quality of life for our citizens. We have to do this all at the same time with an accelerating sense of urgency on all fronts and in appreciation of the serious consequences if we fail.

The old Reform/Alliance angst of an oppressed Alberta still causes them to trot out the NEP mantra that “Ottawa is out to get us” every time they sense a slight. It is a tired and inaccurate rant. Give it up Lorne. Alberta has grown up, matured politically - and has moved on. The old-time religion types who see an Alberta being oppressed by Ottawa at every turn, have clearly not yet moved on with the rest of the province. There are as many people revisiting the NEP in Alberta today as there are Elvis sightings in the province…and they are usually the same people.

Todd Babiak’s blog posting today, in the same newspaper, has a more realistic take on the sense and sentiment of the challenges Alberta is facing today. They are being addressed and revolve around concerns for balancing sustainable economic growth in the face of mitigating climate change and other serious ecological concerns. The short shrift that the social side of Alberta life has experienced as of late is just now coming on the political radar screen. We have insufficient resources invested in public infrastructure and the resulting decline in capacity that has befallen providers in our social services sector adds to the challenges of Alberta's growth.

There is an emerging alternative Alberta reaction to the “Ottawa is out to get us” mentality. That is the extortion mentality of Alberta separation. There is a latent 10% voter support for Albertans to "hold our breath" until we get our way - or we will taking our energy football “home” and leave Canada…so there!

Neil Waugh in the Edmonton Sun today pays homage to that sentiment in a nod to the fact there is always the Clarity Act after all. Alberta could use it if we don’t like how the world (meaning Ottawa) is bowing to our interests. None of this helping much to sustain Alberta political support for the suddenly Quebec friendly and Green Conversion of Prime Minister Harper. He signed the infamous Alberta Firewall letter, so I guess he deserves some heat from that front too.

In the mean time we have some genuine efforts and initiatives being pursued by the Alberta government and in our industrial sectors trying to catch up and get ahead of the curve on all of this. Our monthly LaPresse column outlines some of the positive efforts being made in that regard in Alberta that need recognition and encouragement.

I will post the LaPresse piece in this Blog on Monday to show what I mean.

Prediction: Al Gore Wins a Nobel and an Oscar in 2007

I have been wondering about the evolution of the greening of our collective consciousness. I am no expert but there are some politically significant signposts that I believe have helped define our collective direction and delineate our sense of the shared consequences. I wonder how we got to where we are and where in the world we are going. What it is we have to be doing now to respond to the issues of climate change?

My personal environmental awareness, such as it is, started in the early ‘60s with Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring. I next recall the impact of the report of The Club of Rome on limits to growth. Then we had the mid 70’s oil crisis that showed how vulnerable we were on energy sustainability. The next time frame was a long hiatus of any significant actions, at least in my awareness, until the UN meetings in Rio de Janeiro and the breakthrough Kyoto Accord.

The developed world then went into a period of unprecedented wealth generation, including the “dot com bubble.” That diverted our attention into such an intense narcissism in the developed, mostly western world, not seen since the days when we believed in the “Divine Rights of Kings.” The result, in part, was some monumental corporate breaches of trust, with personal examples of hubris and excess that have filled court rooms, and added to prison populations, all over the world.

The galvanizing event, to my mind, that raised the collective consciousness of the reality of climate change, was Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it wrought on the people of New Orleans. There have been greater weather induced disasters, before and since. None of them have had the kind of 24 hour “carpet bombing” world-wide, news-cycle coverage of Katrina.

Now we have the release of the “Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The Physical Science Basis.” It accumulates 6 more years of data and analysis from intensive research by hundreds of scientist from all over the planet. It states, as unequivocally as science will allow itself, that global warming is real and has increased markedly from pre-industrial days due mainly to human activity.

The post-industrial “flat-earthers” and climate change “deniers” are officially debunked. We now have the quintessential and incontrovertible wake up call for humanity. We have heard the catch up call too, especialy for all the politicians and corporate “masters of the universe types!”

We cannot afford the luxury of hitting the “snooze button” one more time on these issues. We can no longer afford to fall back to sleep, yet again. We have to wake up and get up to speed. We have come face to face with a day of reckoning on how we are impacting the health of the planet.


The next significant, and still on-going, political event is the phenomenon of Al Gore’s book and film“An Inconvenient Truth.” I have seen it and heard Al Gore’s presentation live last May. It is impressive but what I saw was basically a PowerPoint presentation. That is a good thing because it is making the issues, concerns and the consequences very accessible to everyday people. Gore shows that this stuff can no longer be ignored or dismissed as some complex rocket science that is beyond the grasp of the average citizen.

I would not be surprised in the least, if Al Gore, this “failed” Presidential candidate, actually won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar this year. It is entirely possible. Nobel’s are very prestigious but if Gore wins an Oscar, then that will make a huge difference. It will make climate change populist. It will become a top of mind concern for many more people. It will enable the changes needed in our personal habits and behaviours to reduce and adapt to global warming become reality.

Climate Change 2007

If you see yourself as a citizen of the world and as an independent as well as interdependent free agent with a personal role and a responsibility for the health of the planet, you will want to bookmark this site and return to it often.

It is no longer a question of them and us or them versus us. It is now about all of us!

It is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change site. Heavy reading but worth the slog!