Taking a punch to save a bullet (clean coal?)

It's ten days before the Alberta Youth Environmental Summit in Kannanaskis and in a couple hours I'm going to be heading out to the legislature in Edmonton to meet some NDP'ers who are going to be attending as well.

I've been trying to gather issues to bring up when I'm there between the 11-13 but of course one issue will dominate whatever time I have for my agenda and that will be peak oil. This week I was talking to my poli sci teacher about what I was going to miss while I was away and during the course of the discussion we ended up talking about Alberta and clean coal. At first I was asking Dave if he could think of a retort to the argument that individual communities should be taking initiatives to become less dependant on fossil fuels because when global oil and gas production peak, other than rising inflation, a by product will be a switch to coal as a primary energy source which will of course worsen global warming. I figured I might as well throw this to Dave to get an idea of how others at the summit might respond to it. However, from this question Dave pointed out, apparently based on an opinion peice written by Red Deer MP Bob Mills (one of the few environmental conservative MPs in this country) that within the next 5-10 years China is planning to bring online over 500 coal fired plants to provide electricity to their citizens who are becoming less poor as time goes on. What does any of this have to do with Alberta's environment you ask? Well, because Alberta has vast coal reserves and obviously vast amounts of unconventional oil in the tar sands, we're going to reap a lot of money as hydrocarbon prices begin to rise, leaving us with the task of where to divert this cash flow too. Dave thinks that because the federal conservatives know they are vaunrable on the environment, they're going to announce a plan to invest in clean coal technology, with numerous research grants going to the U of A to research the technology. The onus being if we could actually create the technology we could make up for failing to meet our Kyoto targets by migitating the effect China's 500 coal fired plants are going to have on the environment and perhaps even dampen inflation when it rears its ugly head again.

Of course the question then remains though, what happens if we spend all of this money on trying to develop the technology and we fail?

Not really a black and white issue. Then again what is these days?

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Other food for thought:

Back in the summer, provincial NDP energy critic David Eggan commented on Micheal Ignatieff's campaign pledge to create a carbon tax for consumers saying it was a horrible idea because Albertan's are alrady taxed enough on fuel consumption as it is. Given that Mr Eggan had come to speak almost a year earlier at a screening of "The End Of Suburbia" in the Red Deer College I was suprised to hear such a statement coming from him; not to mention since he represents the NDP in Alberta here. A couple weeks ago Jeff Sloychuck, former president of The Red Deer College Political Science Society, and a current assistant to provincial NDP leader Brian Mason, contacted me through e-mail inquiring as to whether or not I was aware of the youth environmental summit coming up and whether or not I had contacted my local MLA to see if I could participate . I replied back informing him that I was already going as a delegate for my riding of Ponoka-Lacombe. I also however took the time to bring up the Eggan's comment and to ask him whether it was representative of the NDP is general. This is what he replied back with:

Hello again Daniel, sorry for the delay.

I just got off the phone with Mr. Eggen, and here's the short answer to your query:

A carbon tax is unpalatable to the NDP because it puts a disproportionate amount of onus on the consumer, rather than the producer of the industrial waste. Ignatieff, as well as Al Gore, would like nothing more than to leave the question of environmental change up to each isolated individual. After all, that's the church of liberalism
(good ol' political science, eh?). While there is no question that each individual has a role to play, in the vast sea of production, it is a drop in the bucket. The real producers are Celanese Canada, Syncrude,Suncor, etc., etc., the list goes on!

In social democracy's continued emphasis on 'working people', the 'working class', or whatever the rhetoric of the day is, a carbon tax based directly on whatever means they use to get to work to pay their steadily increasing bills and cost of living with the steadily declining purchasing power and the provisions of the welfare state is unfair, and unrealistic.

The regulatory onus must be put square on the polluters who contribute to the lion's share of global warming. In the meantime, more emphasis should be put on urban planning and public transportation by policy makers who want to ease a person's reliance upon the automobile. Cities should receive a larger portion of the federal gas tax in order to achieve their goals in expanded bus routes and extended light rail transit (a federal issue). Tax incentives are helpful in a bid to lessen
the middle classes' reliance upon their vehicles in getting to work, but increasing the tax burden on working families by the means of a flat, regressive carbon tax is ignoring the real environmental enemies - the world's largest polluters are corporations!

Of course, Mr. Eggen could have never explained that in two lines of newspaper text. I have an opinion piece of his that he wrote for the Journal not too long ago, but it is in paper form and I need to track down an electronic source (online Journal costs money). We also have several substantial position papers ranging from Kyoto to the Green Fund to creating Green jobs, also in paper form, as well as a mountain of party policy that would have to be requested from ericab@shaw.ca...

Like I said, just somethings to think about.