No matter who forms government, oil and gas has won the Alberta election

CHELSEA, QUE.—Whatever the outcome of today’s cliffhanger Alberta election, there's already one clear winner: the oil and gas industry. With the northern part of the province ablaze and smoke shrouding the skies in Edmonton, Calgary, and elsewhere last week, climate charge was barely mentioned during an intense campaign between Danielle Smith’s United Conservative Party (UPC) and Rachel Notley’s resurgent New Democratic Party. The wildfires intruded, only to prompt a temporary show of concern and solidarity between the rival leaders for the 30,000 northern residents who had to leave their homes. There were a few potshots over the UPC’s earlier $30-million cut to firefighting efforts, but no evident awareness of the urgency and seriousness of what those fires portend. None. While Notley is decidedly more progressive than Smith on many issues, on climate there are only shades of difference. Smith, for example, denounces the federal goal of ending all national emissions from electricity generation by 2035 as ridiculously ambitious, while Notley appears to accept it. Both, however, envision a continued—even expanded—role for the powerful fossil fuel sector, and both lean heavily on reducing emissions without curbing production; neither dare suggest at least halting further expansion, which would seem a reasonable, if limited, start. In the campaign’s only leaders’ debate, Notley extolled the potential economic benefits of the clean energy sector, but added “it's not about reducing production, it’s about reducing emissions.” Smith said the same thing, only more fervently, promising to reduce emissions while having “a robust and vibrant oil and natural gas sector for years to come.” Both are notionally supportive of getting to net zero by 2050—everyone is, even the oil industry —but for Smith, the target is “aspirational." For everyone else, it is so far away it permits many more years of baby steps and fruitless “consultations” with industry. In this, Alberta’s political class is closely allied with the federal government, although Albertans love to hate Justin Trudeau. His prominent ministers—especially Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and his predecessor, Seamus O’Regan—both insist oil isn’t the problem; the problem is the emissions produced by burning it. These advocates—like former prime minister Stephen Harper before them—want it both ways: the tax revenues (30 per cent of Alberta’s total currently) and jobs that come from the industry, however cyclically, along with action to fight climate change. But they are content to leave the heavy lifting until later. They are all, like Harper, counting on technology—some elusive silver bullet—to allow the industry to continue to thrive while emissions are magically reduced. Anything to face what seems obvious: you cannot decouple producing more fossil fuels from increased emissions. If technology was the answer, shouldn’t it have worked by now? Governments and industry have poured billions into carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) over decades, to name one supposed remedy. Emissions per barrel have been reduced, but as production has grown in recent years, those gains have been erased and the oil sands still contribute 30 per cent of our national emissions, and that is before all that fuel is burned in car engines and elsewhere by consumers. Some multinational oil companies have cooled on CCUS, given the huge costs and disappointing results. But Alberta is ploughing on, with federal assistance: a massive $16.5-billion project, including a 400-kilometre pipeline, is in the planning stages north of Edmonton. Whether it is ever completed, whether it succeeds in significantly reducing emissions, whether it becomes a white elephant as the world moves away from oil, whether it is another expensive stalling tactic—all fair questions—were hardly mentioned during the campaign. You’d think they would be. The big CCSU installation, along with 50 other proposed smaller projects across the country, marks a huge expenditure of public money, on a so-far limited remedy, on the brink of another season of devastating fires, floods, heat domes and drought. In the outside world, the news is almost too depressing to bear (which may be why avoidance is so tempting). According to researchers in Northern Ireland, some 48 per cent of the world’s animal species are in decline due to habitat loss and climate change. A UN agency reports that the 1.5 C limit on increases in global temperature, agreed to in the 2015 Paris Accord, will be breached at least once within a couple of years, a sign we’re headed in the wrong direction at increasing speed. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, all political and media oxygen is consumed in character assassination, partisan shouting and what is essentially a process argument: public hearings or public inquiry into attempted Chinese interference in our elections? Compared to the climate crisis, this problem is so fixable—or should be, for the Chinese-Canadians who are directly threatened—and so marginal to everyone else’s daily lives that it is a wasteful distraction. Not that we don’t need distraction. The science makes us despair, and despair leads to paralysis. That is why some long-time environmental campaigners—notably Calgary author Chris Turner, who recently won a prestigious award for his book, How to Be a Climate Optimist—insist on highlighting good news. And there is some. Toronto’s urban Don River is healthy again, after being pronounced dead in 1969. Canada’s auto sector is on the brink of embracing an electric vehicle future with attendant employment and environmental benefits. Quebec is collaborating with Ottawa to protect declining caribou herds. Further away, New York City has banned natural gas stoves and heating in some new buildings. Sweden’s GDP is rising as its emissions are falling. And France has just banned short-haul flights to limit emissions. But despite federal, provincial and municipal investments in green alternatives and initiatives, few Canadian political leaders (except for the inestimable Elizabeth May) are willing to challenge Canada’s still-profitable, immensely powerful oil and gas industry, which is at the heart of our climate challenge. Even suggesting an orderly phase-out of production—which may already be too late—is considered political cyanide. How many people have to lose their homes, their farms, their livelihoods; how many animals have to die in fiery chaos; how many people with respiratory illnesses have to perish in extreme heat before governments start acting to protect us, not an industry throwing fuel on the fires? Susan Riley is a veteran political columnist who writes regularly for The Hill Times. The Hill Times