Dear Editor:
Western farmers are concerned that rail cars are being co-opted to move oil, rather than grain, and are faulting the federal government. They would do better to blame St. Suzuki and the environmentalists in Canada and the United States for a no-holds-barred campaign to shut down oil pipelines and the fracking revolution.
Oddly, the environmentalists never mention that record exports of coal are going to the Far East, which has 60% of the world's carbon pollution emissions, compared to Canada's modest 3%. Why not begin tackling emissions, not by bankrupting Canada, but by shipping cheap oil and natural gas to China, Indonesia and India? That would be a global solution to a global problem (see The Economist, Feb 15 "Saudi America"). An emissions reduction of 5% to 10% in Asia would be huge. But Saint Suzuki prefers to save mankind one country at a time, beginning with North America, because we can then blame only mankind for global warming and begin a Big Government Green revolution.
Clearly, reducing emissions is secondary to a political revolution, but Suzuki does not want to let us know that wind and solar power will not make up even 20% of climate change for decades. The main thrust will come through reducing our own carbon footprint through conservation, a process so drastic that some greens (e.g., the Sierra Club) think that democratic government may have to be replaced by committees of scientists for the time being. He cannot imagine that improved technology and cheap, less polluting fossil fuels, can make a climate change revolution unnecessary.
In the meantime, the vultures are circling: Putin knows that England, France and Germany will not challenge his seizure of the Crimea because they are too dependent on Russian fossil energy. North America could easily force Russia to back off by competing for Putin's markets in these countries.
Iran's sponsorship of terrorism has evoked fear of a world energy price crisis if we push back and Iran tries to intimidate us by closing the Straits of Hormuz. North American oil and natural gas could be used if needed to undermine the mullahs, and persuade China to be less tolerant of the monsters in North Korea.
But Obama is currently cutting U.S. military capacity to pre-World War II strength, under the threat of U.S. debt, and, like Justin Trudeau, thinks that it is we who are to blame for making the world of Islam so hostile. It is the same disastrous policy pursued by Britain after WorId War I. In the end, blocking the new oil and gas revolution will prevent the recovery of the North American economy, and eco-fascists will not only fail to change the climate, but will succeed in endangering the survival of democracy.
We need to show that fossil fuels, even if they are part of the problem, are also part of the solution.
Lance Irvine
Yorkton, SK.
