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The climate movement in North America has been very good at preventing things from getting built over the last few decades, whether it’s oil and gas pipelines, LNG terminals, or other forms of energy infrastructure. But now, if it wants to protect the progress it’s made from politicians like Donald Trump and Pierre Poilievre, it needs to trade in its pickets and placards for something even more revolutionary: a pro-growth economic agenda.
That’s because for all of the scientifically justified calls for more urgent climate action, the issue keeps feeling less urgent for many Canadians by the day. As Abacus Data CEO David Coletto noted on social media, only 16 per cent of Canadians under the age of 44 rated climate change as one of their top three issues. The rising cost of living, housing affordability, and the economy all received at least double that level of support.
This does make a certain amount of sense. Even if you believe that climate change poses an existential threat to humanity, as I’m sure many of the younger survey respondents do, it still has to take a back seat to more immediate material concerns. If you can’t afford your rent, much less a down payment on a home, the longer-term impacts of climate change just aren’t going to feel that pressing.
Climate advocates and their political backers need to reckon with this reality. They also have to reckon with the political landscape that returned Donald Trump to power and seems poised to give Poilievre the biggest mandate Conservatives in Canada have enjoyed in more than 40 years. Unless and until climate policy becomes economic policy, one that reduces costs rather than raising them, it’s unlikely that any of this will change for the better. That means climate-concerned progressives have to embrace building — and reducing the obstacles that stand in the way of it — in a way they never have before.
That’s not just my prescription. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Arnab Datta, a director at the Institute for Progress and managing director at Employ America, makes a compelling case for why climate advocates in America need to learn the language of jobs and growth. “When decarbonization becomes good business,” he writes, “it becomes harder to dismantle climate progress.”
That means supporting the elimination of regulatory red tape that can slow the construction of clean energy projects and refusing to support the sort of environmental NIMBYism that tries to kill them outright. It means broadening the coalition of people who benefit from clean energy development to include those who might not necessarily otherwise support climate action, whether that’s farmers with land that can generate more revenue for them or those concerned about national security who will back the mineral projects needed to supply domestic battery factories.
Above all — and as I’ve argued for years — it means focusing our energies more deliberately on increasing the demand for renewable technologies rather than suppressing the supply of fossil fuels. “Attempts to punish the fossil fuel industry by limiting leases or permits for export facilities or blocking projects often backfire, creating price spikes with political backlash and price crashes that slow the clean energy transition,” Datta writes. In a global oil market where OPEC is deliberately holding back millions of barrels per day in spare capacity, and can return them in the face of any supply shortage elsewhere, expending political capital in order to constrain Canadian oil production is like lighting money on fire.
It will be tempting, especially in the face of a probable Poilievre government, to allocate more political capital to efforts aimed at keeping Canada’s oil and gas “in the ground.” This sort of resistance may not necessarily be futile for the organizations pushing it, but it is plainly self-defeating for climate-concerned progressives as a whole. Instead, they — we — must focus on a vision of clean energy abundance, one in which Canada can and should play a meaningful role.
As Matt Yglesias noted on his Slow Boring Substack, this won’t be an easy pivot for some climate activists to make. After spending years of their professional lives learning how to fight against development, they will need to start fighting for it. They will need to campaign against regulatory restrictions rather than support them, and embrace the economic and political upside associated with energy abundance.
Yes, the moral purity associated with refusing to entertain economic concerns might be irresistible for some in the climate community, but it’s clearly not a path to lasting political success. Instead, as Yglesias argues, progressives have to start treating energy as “an actual cornerstone of economic well-being” rather than just a source of potential jobs. “Energy policy, more than anything else, makes the idea of a GOP that is simultaneously working class and pro-business seem plausible, because abundant energy really is good for workers and business alike.”
This might also explain Poilievre’s unusual appeal among working class voters in Canada, especially when his politics are contrasted against the federal NDP’s almost allergic reaction to ideas like economic growth and energy production. “The path to lasting climate progress lies not in oil and gas antagonism,” Datta writes, “but in transforming our opponents into stakeholders in a clean energy future.” If progressives want to turn climate change back into a winning issue, that work has to start now.
Comments
We need to get away from Mega Projects of all types and focus on decentralized incremental sources. Imagine every flat roof, parking lot and hydro corridor with a solar array; every cell, wind, and hydro tower and roadside pole with RV sized panels plus those small light mobius-style wind turbines. Phased in, replaceable, interchangeable, environmentaly neutral, safer from hacking, terrorism, and damage due to localized weather events etc. etc.
Well said. Decentralized is the way to go. Mega-projects are things of the past.
Fawcett: "The climate movement in North America has been very good at preventing things from getting built over the last few decades, whether it’s oil and gas pipelines, LNG terminals, or other forms of energy infrastructure."
Dubious premise. Canada's O&G industry is enjoying record profits on record production.
The USA is now the world's biggest oil producer. And by far the largest producer of fossil gas in the world, representing nearly a quarter of global natural gas production.
How many LNG terminals have B.C. climate activists blocked?
"The USA is now the world's biggest oil producer. And by far the largest producer of fossil gas in the world, representing nearly a quarter of global natural gas production."
That is true at present. The spike in fracking in shale formations caused US production to spike and it is now on a wavering plateau. If you're familiar with the work of Canadian geoscientist David Hughes, you'll know that fracking has a big problem: Fast depletion. In his 'Drill Baby Drill' report a few years back he documented the peak of production in two of the five US shale formations. Drilling faster to maintain production is called the Red Queen, one day this finite, hard to produce resource stops short, and off the cliff they go. They're probably in decline now.
Also, fracked oil is expensive, way more expensive than Saudi Arabia's massive conventional Ghawar field (the largest body of oil ever discovered). SA often holds its cheap oil back from the markets in order to create an artificial shortage and therein cause the world price to increase. Release their stores of crude at once and the world price drops, which is exactly what they did in 2014, causing a recession in more expensive unconventional oil producing jurisdictions, like Alberta and fracked US states where shale drilling companies also hold a huge amount of debt. The shale bubble will burst in time. The IEA's latest projection places a world peak in oil demand sometime in the early 2030s with renewables ready to take their place with no sympathy or apology.
"How many LNG terminals have B.C. climate activists blocked?" None, of course. But given the stiff competition in their targeted export markets and the advances in cheap, dependable renewables and battery storage, they probably won't export LNG for long before they go bankrupt.
Fawcett: "Unless and until climate policy becomes economic policy, one that reduces costs rather than raising them, it’s unlikely that any of this will change for the better."
Contrary to Poilievre's advertising, most households in Canada come out ahead with federal carbon pricing after rebate.
"There's now a Bank of Canada number for carbon tax's impact on inflation. It's small" (CBC, Sep 08, 2023)
Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem: 0.15 percentage points of the inflation increase can be attributed to the carbon tax.
The primary causes of (food) inflation have been identified: the pandemic, Putin's war on Ukraine, the spike in global fossil-fuel prices, supply-chain issues, and extreme weather (climate change).
Trevor Tombe and Jennifer Winter, "Don't Blame Carbon Pricing for Affordability Challenges" (Policy Options, Dec 7, 2023)
"The 'carbon tax' isn't causing inflation. No matter what politicians say" (The Narwhal, Dec. 13, 2023)
You're right, however the general public want something simple to blame and really don't understand how it is all connected.
The premise to do a shift from obstruction to clean/cheap economic growth is well past due. This is the way we get the message across. Not only will we have cleaner air, water and land but things will be cheaper because our energy isn't being hijacked by oil companies. No longer will we have spiking energy costs when the economy heats up.
Arnab Datta: “When decarbonization becomes good business, it becomes harder to dismantle climate progress.”
Fawcett: "Above all — and as I’ve argued for years — it means focusing our energies more deliberately on increasing the demand for renewable technologies rather than suppressing the supply of fossil fuels."
If total energy demand increases — and both fossil fuel and renewable energy production/consumption also increase — that does not solve our climate problem. Under this current scenario, our unsustainable global carbon/ecological footprint continues to grow.
Global warming represents the greatest market failure in history. The price drivers pay at the pump excludes most of the climate, environmental, and health costs of production and consumption. Fossil fuel producers and consumers use the sky as a free dump. Producers and consumers externalize or download the environmental and health costs to the public purse, the environment, and future generations.
Renewables need to play on a level playing field with fossil fuels.
Can we really hope to slow global warming without solving the market failure?
We operate in a market economy. Price signals govern consumer behavior. If price signals are distorted due to artificially cheap fossil fuels, there is little hope of ending the dominance of oil & gas in time. As we can see for ourselves: Canada's O&G industry is enjoying record profits on record production. The USA is now the world's biggest oil and fossil-gas producer.
Alberta's UCP government has found other ways to put its thumbs on the scale. Restrictions that apply to renewables that do not apply to fossil fuels.
A portfolio of supply-side and demand-side policies is effective in other policy areas (e.g., curbing tobacco use). No reason not to use both arms of the scissors. We need to use all levers at our disposal to reduce emissions.
"It's time to think seriously about cutting off the supply of fossil fuels" (Vox)
We must reduce fossil-fuel supply and demand at the same time. Carbon pricing depresses supply and demand at the same time -- and makes cheaper alternatives more appealing. A realistic carbon price works at both ends. Carbon pricing is both a supply- and demand-side solution. Making it more expensive to produce fossil fuels and to consume them. Making renewables the preferred option that much sooner. Accelerating the shift.
Datta: “The path to lasting climate progress lies not in oil and gas antagonism, but in transforming our opponents into stakeholders in a clean energy future.”
If Datta and Fawcett are counting on turning O&G companies into renewable energy companies, they will wait a long time. Probably forever.
O&G companies will never voluntarily cede market share, reduce profits, or sideline their main business.
The fossil-fuel industry "wins" merely by slowing the energy shift down. As 350.org's Bill McKibben puts it, winning slowly is the same as losing.
"If total energy demand increases — and both fossil fuel and renewable energy production/consumption also increase — that does not solve our climate problem. Under this current scenario, our unsustainable global carbon/ecological footprint continues to grow."
An interesting assumption. However, global investments in renewables is increasing very quickly to the point where is now exceeds the same in fossil fuels. Lower prices is one of the biggest accelerators of solar and wind, which is now outcompeting coal and gas economically in many jurisdictions, like Australia, China and Europe. Building out infrastructure will always lag behind, but it's on its way. The IEA has clearly illustrated that solar is catching up fast from behind.
Despite almost ten years of the Paris Agreement, and 30 of COPs, emissions are not going down. What does this tell us? We cannot grow our way out of this mess. Every energy project done in the name of renewables has to replace a fossil fuel energy source, not simply be added to the mix. We have to power down if the climate is to be maintained. Yet who is saying this? At least environmentalists who blockaded fossil energy projects had the welfare of the climate and Earth in mind.
The election of Trump DOES feel to many I'm sure, that whatever a probable majority of us think, powers-that-be and world geopolitics generally are flexing and shifting right now, so until focus and blame shifts from governments to big corporations being the actual culprits behind the affordability crisis, I think there's a general feeling of fine, just let 'er rip then, do your worst, go for broke you destructive, greedy idiots.....
Trump will run headlong into two unassailable walls, the laws of physics and the base principles of economics. The effects of arbitrary tariffs, climate-related disasters and cheap renewables are too big, even for Trump to conquer.
Nature bats last and we've already pushed too far against her limits. The mantra should be consume less and waste less.
Meanwhile, the world wide energy analysis done by the IEA has clearly shown that solar power is on a rocket trajectory in growth. Investments in renewables, with solar in the lead, has just recently surpassed all investments in fossil fuels.
Though this trend hasn't manifested itself within Canada yet, it poses a serious threat to oil demand in Canada's export markets in the near-term future. The pace of transition in this country is the only thing that will be affected by either anti-growth/capitalism sentiments or Build Baby Build pro-renewable efforts -- slower with the former, faster with the latter. But a transition will happen regardless.
These are bad signs for fossilizers. It's a matter of time before that new invesrment money manifests itself in tangible infrastructure that catches up with oil industry assets.
The beauty of renewables like solar and batteries is that they are cheaper and able to shapeshift between small decentralized forms, like individual arrays of rooftop PV panels and larger centralized facilities like wind farms and grid scale banks of batteries. It's even possible to have closed loop geothermal plants like those proposed by Alberta's Eavor coupled with banks of batteries, all hidden under one roof in the middle of a city's industrial or warehouse district, bringing substantial clean power generation within metres of customers.
Then you've got technical advancements in batteries and PV panels, all of which are perfectly recyclable. Tariffs will not stop China's BYD from releasing its brand new sodium battery to the world. Ditto the UK's new peroskevite (sp?) PV technology. Salt is orders of magnitude more abundant than lithium, and batteries made with it are lighter,
have excellent mobility range, comparable energy storage capacity and superior cold weather performance compared to lithium. Moreover, it's not just faster rates of overall growth, but R&D-originated fast tech change in renewables that is moving ever faster than the pace of lump of coal and barrel of oil growth, which has been static or slow for several years.
Those who have done the research are projecting a peak in world fossil fuel demand around 2030, with renewables racing ahead even faster.
Pro-oil or anti-oil activism will likely not influence the upward trajectory of renewables at all scales and the plateau and decline in fossil fuel demand very much at all. What really matters is that things like solar power are cheaper than gas and oil and come with better quality and simpler equipment. Today's PV panels are warranted for 25 years but are expected to last 30 or more based on last generation's panel performance. PV panels have no moving parts and their owners do not pay for sunlight. Throw in conservation and energy efficiency (especially walkable urbanism) and future generations will wonder what all the angst was about as they will have exemplary tools by which to stabilize and lower emissions and bring global warming to a very long halt.
The folly of tackling the climate crisis without simultaneously tackling the biodiversity crisis is on full display in this article. Those pesky regulations often exist to protect the diversity of life. Without healthy ecosystems we are all toast. No, this is not convenient politically but it is the truth. We are already in ecological overshoot in most of the key areas of this planet’s self-regulating systems. Here’s another inconvenient truth: we have no right to treat the planet as ours to exploit and destroy. Wise human cultures have always warned of the consequences of greed and selfishness. Only our cancerous capitalist system has ever declared ‘Greed is good.’
This article proposes a joyful capitulation to that nihilistic proposition. Think again. We are going to have to do something far more difficult than building more. We are going to have to start caring more about each other and all our non-human relations. How? I really don’t know. Change is coming. It is probable that it will be terrible, possible that it will be beautiful.
Agreed. And there are other critical ecological crises as well that aren't being addressed in any useful way. I'm curious, for example, what will be done about fresh water and soil over the next 15 years.
What we see, amongst the all-hands-on-deck handwringing-in-place-of-action on even climate, is an obvious scramble to prioritize the survival of capitalism-as-practiced above all else.
It's not clear to me how the world will come together to address any of these issues in an impactful way. It seems to me that Canada, to be useful, could develop a template that others could then follow. Without such a path of possibility, well, choose your favourite post-apocalyptic novel.
@Nina Newington
I didn't read the article as "more is better" but as a path to DISPLACE black economies with green. We have the tools to do so for the better part (solar, wind, conservation, habitat rehabilitation, car-free communities, lifespan recycling .......). The only things holding us back are vested interests and the politicians they have bought to do their bidding.
Why must all activists tow the same line? Surely there is both need and room for some activists to promote building and reducing the obstacles that stand in the way of it and other activists to continue to seek to restrain and reduce fossil fuel production. Both are necessary. If additional alternative energy production only goes to meet additional energy demand, for instance for AI, and existing levels of fossil fuel production and consumption are not reduced, what is the point? We might as well party until the ship goes down. It might be time for activism to become more sophisticated, but that speaks against uniformity.