The surreallity of life in Alberta

Living in Alberta, I sometimes get the feeling I live in a place shifted a few degrees off centre from reality. For example, in the real world we are faced with the overarching threat of global warming, a crisis we have brought down upon ourselves. But, despite near unanimous agreement of climatologists, including the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that global warming is real and presents an imminent threat, according to recent surveys barely half of Albertans even believe the Earth is heating up.

This is terrifying. The greatest threat humanity has ever faced and half the population doesn't recognize it. In a rational society, quite aside from immediately initiating urgent and forceful action to deal with the crisis, government would initiate a program to alert people to the danger and educate them about the issue. But that isn't what the government of Alberta is doing.

Quite the contrary. It is apparently indifferent to the rampant ignorance of its citizens and has something quite different in mind. It has set up a "war room" to attack any environmentally-concerned folk who speak ill of the oil industry, the major source of greenhouse gasses, the cause of global warming.

The government claims that Alberta's finances are not in good order and it intends to cut back in a number of areas, yet it has budgeted $30-million for the war room. And does the beleaguered oil industry need this taxpayer-funded PR? Hardly. One oil company alone, ExxonMobil, has gross revenue six times that of the Alberta government. The two major bitumen producers combined have revenues equal to the government. This is an industry with very deep pockets, clearly in no need of assistance in defending itself.

So this is my world. My government, while complaining about its debt problem, uses my tax dollars to do PR for one of the richest and most powerful institutions on the planet. And why do they waste my money? To promote the source of humanity's greatest threat. This is perverse. This is irrational. This is life in Alberta.