Now is not the time for more pipelines

No war was ever started because a country built too many wind turbines. No leader was ever kidnapped because solar panels produced too much cheap energy. Western economies have never been brought to their knees by renewable energy cartels. Quite the opposite.

Clean, renewable energy brings stability and affordability. The technology already exists to free ourselves from the stranglehold of fossil fuels. What, then, stands in the way of the renewable energy transition?

The all-powerful fossil fuel cartel.

It is oil, gas, coal and pipeline companies that provide almost unlimited funding for lobby groups to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about the benefits of clean renewable energy. Those same lobby groups execute a full court press on our political class, using their deep pockets to purchase influence. Their aim?

To prevent the inevitable renewable energy transition.

Instead, we’re told we need to pour tens of billions more into public subsidies for expanded tar sands production, new pipelines in every direction, and the fig leaf of carbon capture so Big Oil can pretend to care about the planet.

The fossil fuel cartel is more than just oil, gas and coal. It includes North America’s legacy car makers, Ford, GM, Stellantis, who oppose clean tech. They decided to commit economic suicide by abandoning electric vehicles, choosing to die on the hill of bloated SUVs and behemoth pickup trucks powered by internal combustion engines. Vehicles the rest of the world doesn’t want.

They claim cheap foreign EVs will wreck the Ontario car industry. How can we compete with the lower costs and far superior technology of our Chinese and Korean competitors, they say.

Want to know how BYD and Geely can produce EVs at a price as low as gas vehicles? Automation. Robotics and AI. That’s the future of all car manufacturing. Those Ontario car jobs were destined to be replaced by robots on automated production lines already.

Who else belongs to the all-powerful fossil fuel lobby? The shills for nuclear power.

There was a time when the fossil fuel industry viewed nuclear power as a potential competitor. But no more. The nuclear lobbyists are now the useful idiots for Big Oil.

With decades-long build out times and guaranteed massive cost overruns to produce high-cost electricity, the proposed nuclear plants are the best friend oil and gas ever had. Just look at staggering cost (over $20 billion) of the nuclear plants Ontario is building. Massive taxpayer subsidies are already required in Ontario to hide the real cost of nuclear power to ratepayers.

The oil and gas cartel couldn’t be happier. They get to pay lip service to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We want a clean environment, too, they say! But while we wait (a decade or more) for nuclear to come online, we can burn methane (natural gas). It’s our ‘transitional’ fuel, nearly as dirty and planet-heating as coal. But by the way, in the meantime we’ll need to get rid of all those pesky rules about methane emissions.

And now Big Oil is war profiteering. While there’s no shortage of oil and gas in North America (we export a healthy surplus), pump prices soar. That all-powerful lobby has recruited prominent politicians, including all three prairie premiers and the leaders of the federal government and opposition, to demand even more massive public subsidies for fossil fuels. Look at the Strait of Hormuz they say. It’s closed to tankers, so we need more pipelines, even really dumb ones like a part-time-pipeline to Hudson Bay!

It is the height of absurdity.

Once the war ends, supply bottlenecks will clear. We’ll return to a world with a growing oil glut, falling demand and collapsing prices. And a Europe replacing natural gas with renewables. But long before then, we’ll enter another oil-fueled economic recession with rising inflation.

It’s time to end the boom-and-bust cycles.

In the 1970’s, OPEC brought western economies to their knees by turning off the oil taps.

We now face a similar challenge. We do have the advantage of one reliable indicator of the right path. If Trump is for it, we should head in the opposite direction. As fast as possible.

That direction is to wean ourselves from our fossil fuel addiction. Pull the plug on oil and gas. Replace it — aggressively — with cheap, clean, firm renewable energy. Rapidly electrify and decarbonize the economy.

It will be a win for consumers who will enjoy lower prices; for the environment by reducing the greenhouse gas emissions burning the planet; and for economy as we remove the crazy economic risks of relying on fossil fuels.

Cheap, clean, predictable. A win-win-win solution.

Scott Forbes is an ecologist at the University of Winnipeg. The opinions here are his own.