Imagine a World Without Us

Since a large slice of humanity went into hibernation to dodge the coronavirus, the world outside our habitats has changed. There is much less noise. Birdsong can be heard. The air is cleaner, more breathable. The skies are bluer. It is as if by sequestering us, the world is being purified. It is as if nature could apply a bleach that sanitized it against us, it would be whole again.

And indeed it would. We do pollute it. We do foul the water, the land and the air. We do commit holocausts upon entire species. We do make a lot of noise. We are, in many ways, a plague upon nature, a pandemic upon the rest of life. It isn't difficult to conceive of the world without us—a cleaner, quieter place where almost every other species could thrive without fear of an ultimate predator.

A place where oceans weren't acidifying, warming and filling up with plastic. A place where forests weren't disappearing. A place where species weren't being systematically driven into extinction. A place where water was clean, the skies were blue and you could always hear birds sing when the sun shone.

Imagine!

Conservatives Struggle with Science

When conservatives talk about "the elites," and they talk about them a lot, it isn't always clear who they are talking about. They certainly aren't referring to the rich, who many of us think of as the elites, because conservatives are the party of the rich, the party of privilege. One group they generally include are experts, people who really know what they are talking about, particularly scientists. University of Toronto philosopher Joseph Heath once wrote that, “Hostility to expertise in all of its forms is the closest thing that Canadian conservatives have to a unifying ideology.”

We certainly saw that with the Harper government. Harper's “war on science,” as it was not unfairly called, included such measures as the cancellation of the long-form census, widespread butchery of environmental law, the reconfiguration of government-funded research away from pure research toward commercial, and in effect making the National Research Council a “concierge” to industry.

Jason Kenney brought much of that anti-expert agenda to Alberta, particularly as it pertains to the environment. Environmental groups are demonized as foreign-funded pawns of a “radical ideological agenda” and subjected to assault by the infamous “war room.”

Nationally, on energy and the environment at least, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer seems little more than a Kenney puppet. Like their provincial counterparts, the federal Conservatives apparently see government's first priority as enabling the rapid extraction of natural resources. We see conservatives elsewhere in the world reflecting that attitude, including the Trump administration in the United States and the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil where the Amazon is now under increasing commercial assault. Both Trump and Bolsonaro reject climate science utterly. Bolsonaro rejects also the seriousness of COVID-19. Both see such concerns as arising from the insidious influence of "the elites."

The reason for the hostility isn't hard to adduce. Experts, particularly scientists, often undo conservative dogma. Experts insist “tough on crime” legislation generally fails to make people safer. Experts point to increasing evidence that unequal societies are unhealthy societies. Experts warn that use of fossil fuels has brought a climate crisis upon us. Experts tell us that meat, particularly beef, is a terribly inefficient and environmentally destructive way to provide ourselves with protein. Messages unwelcome to conservative ears simply won't stop.

One way to make them stop, of course, is to cut off the source of information that enables them. Consider, for example, Stephen Harper's disdain of sociology and the way its conclusions frequently conflict with neo-liberal dogma, including the idea that unequal societies are unhealthy societies. If you don't want to see the results of sociological studies on issues such as inequality, starve them of the necessary data, i.e. the long-form census.

Science is the only method we have of properly understanding the physical world. Without that understanding, faced with global warming, species extinction and resource exhaustion, humanity is in grave danger. We are disarmed in the face of our gravest threats. Politicians who struggle with science are not only unfit to govern in this modern age, but are outright dangerous.

Albertans Want off the Oil Train ... Eventually

A common opinion about Albertans is that when it comes to energy they are about oil and nothing but oil. Like most generalizations this contains some truth, but also like most generalizations it isn't quite true. A CBC News poll, taken just before the pandemic changed everything, reported that 79 percent of Albertans believe the province should transition toward renewable energy. Over 90 percent think the government should do more to encourage the technology sector.

But that doesn't mean Albertans are prepared to abandon oil just yet. While about half want the province to transition away from oil and gas, the other half don't. The opinion varies greatly between town and country. The strongest support for abandoning oil, not surprisingly, is in Edmonton or as it is sometimes known, Redmonton. Nonetheless, most Calgarians agree (55 percent to Edmonton's 58). Outside of the two major cities, however, support for kicking the oil habit drops to 37 percent. This is important. The countryside belongs to the UCP.

So what exactly does overwhelming support for transitioning to renewables modified by 50/50 support on transitioning off oil mean? I suggest it sends a clear message. Albertans are ready to move from where we are—highly dependent on oil and gas—to where we need to be—in a low carbon economy—but they have to feed their families on the journey. And that still means oil.

It's an encouraging message. It means Albertans know we have to go green, but they have to be convinced we can do it humanely. They have been providing the life blood of modern society for generations; they don't want to be human sacrifices to the new age, even while they recognize the new age must come. This is fair and Canada must meet the challenge.

Unfortunately, our own government is less than helpful. Our premier knows the transition must occur. In his own words, “I have a firm grasp of the obvious. There is no reasonable person that can deny that in the decades to come we will see a gradual shift from hydrocarbon-based energy to other forms of energy.” Yet in his policies and, except in these weaker moments, in his words, he appears to be always doubling down on oil, desperately clinging to the past.

Perhaps the combination of the oil price collapse and the pandemic (and, oh yes, the Keystone pipeline is back in legal limbo) will shock him and his government free of their obsession with crude and shake loose some policies to get the province on the right track. Most of his people are waiting.

Oil Industry Disses the Free Market

The free market, who needs it. Not the oil industry obviously. Not the industry nor the governments that depend on its largesse for royalties and taxes. We just had a taste of it and it horrified all parties concerned.

OPEC and its erstwhile collaborators recently fell out and instead of limiting production to maintain price, as they had been doing, they engaged in all-out competition. That, of course, is the point of the free market. Unrestrained competition drives prices down toward the level of the most efficient producer's costs. And the lowest lowest price is what the consumer wants. But the lowest price is not what the producer wants, nor what royalty and tax-collecting governments want.

So while the recent price-busting skirmish was a bonanza for consumers of oil products, it was not happy-making for oil companies and their governments. So they have made an unprecedented pact to constrain production in order to drive oil prices back up. They have decided to rig the market. They find a price-fixed market much more appealing than a free market.

The OPEC cartel and other oil producers, including Russia, the U.S., Mexico and Norway, agreed Sunday to cut crude production by a tenth of global supply to "stabilize" the market. This is the largest cut to oil output ever. Canada is not part of the pact as our production is under provincial jurisdiction. Nonetheless, Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage was "cautiously pleased" by the deal. 

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not criticizing the move. I'm not opposed to government interference in the market place. Quite the contrary. During this COVID shock, a lot of unprecedented policies have become necessary. What does annoy me is the support among certain politicians and business people for free markets as a veritable answer to all problems. And the oil industry is replete with such believers. I am one Albertan, and there aren't a lot of us, who recognizes that the wealth of this province derives primarily not from a free market but rather from government interference in the market, specifically by the OPEC cartel, i.e. from a monopoly, the very antithesis of a free market. OPEC's antics over the years have made an Alberta oil industry profitable, and a tar sands industry possible.

No one philosophy has all the wisdom. Free markets are a wonderful economic instrument. Indeed they must be the foundation of a healthy economy, but in some areas and at some times, they are less than the best, sometimes much less, and therefore should be considered on their merits for a particular activity, time and place and not as an economic panacea. It appears that virtually the entire oil industry and its political acolytes currently agree. If perhaps unwittingly.

The Vatican's Lady Problem

The Vatican just doesn't seem able to get past its misogyny. Once again it is debating whether or not to allow women some role in the Church hierarchy. The Pope has created a commission of experts to examine whether women can be deacons, the bottom rung of the ecclesiastical ladder. In at least one concession to the fair sex, the commission includes equal numbers of men and women. Some of the fustiest clergy are upset that the idea is even being considered at all, insisting that allowing women to be deacons would become a slippery slope toward ordaining women as priests. And who knows what mischief women priests might get up to.

Not that the Pope has any intention of allowing women any power over men. He hews to tradition on that point, affirming that only men can become priests and referencing an ecclesiastical letter written by Pope John Paul II in which that pontiff declared “that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.” So there, ladies.

The Church has long based its prejudice on the fact that Christ chose only men for his apostles.This argument overlooks the fact that Christ also chose only Jews for his apostles. So how did all those Italian guys get into the act? Indeed, I understand that the first Christians debated over whether Gentiles should even be baptized and allowed into the Church.

And it isn't as if the institution can't change its mind. At one time it accepted abortion. Now it doesn't. At one time it rejected evolution. Now it doesn't. Were all the popes before these changes wrong, or all the ones after? So much for papal infallibility.

Although the Pope's commission includes women, it is still under the stern stewardship of men. Its president is the archbishop of the Italian city of L'Aquila and second in command is an official from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Church's KGB. Both needless to say, are male.

Here in the 21st century what other institution would need a commission to deliberate upon whether or not women can be allowed, not to hold power of any sort, but just to enter the lowest level of the hierarchy. The entire exercise serves to illustrate nothing more than just how deeply misogyny remains entrenched in the Catholic psyche.

I'm Becoming an Oil Baron

For those who complain there's nothing in the news but COVID these days, try the Alberta section. Lots going on. For example, our government just laid off 26,000 school support staff while shelling out $1.5 billion, plus a $6-billion loan guarantee, to buy us a piece of the Keystone XL pipeline.

I'm already part owner of the Trans Mountain pipeline which the federal government kindly bought for us for $4.5 billion in 2018. And then there's the investments that Alberta crown corporation Alberta Investment Management Corp. has made in various pipelines. That's the group that our premier has decided will manage my government pension. I am practically an oil baron.

I once worked in the oil industry. It was good to me and I quite appreciated it, but that was long before the product I was proud to help produce became commonly recognized as the major contributor to global warming. I have recognized the need to downsize fossil fuels for years and yet here I am becoming increasingly invested in producing more of the stuff. I think it's called irony,

Sinking the public's dollars into pipelines may seem foolish at a time when oil prices have collapsed and investors are becoming increasingly wary of the industry, but Alberta has a premier who seems to consider the oil industry more a religious institution than a mere economic one. And he is a man of faith. The evidence that governments in this country are serious about global warming gets thinner and thinner. If they were, I wouldn't be becoming an owner of ever more pipelines, i.e. increasingly becoming an enabler of greenhouse gas emissions.

All hope is not lost however. On April 1st—this is not a joke—the federal carbon tax ramped up from from $20 to $30 a tonne. An action to reduce emissions can't help but be appreciated in these days of respiratory pandemic.