Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
If you want renewable energy and oil and gas to be on the same playing field, shouldn't the costs associated with oil and gas development like CO2 emissions be incorporated into the profitability of oil and gas extraction?
We have a system now that externalizes all those costs onto society, effectively underwriting oil and gas extraction at the expense of renewable development.
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I don't want them on the same playing field. I want to reap the benefits of oil & gas now and use them to eventually transition to a better fuel source down the road. Whether that be before or after I'm dead doesn't matter. I just want it to happen simply because it has to eventually (regardless of whether you define the cutoff date with an environmental threshold or a physical supply of oil threshold).
I'm willing to accept the CO2 emmissions being externalized onto me as an investment in eventually having something better because I accept the fact that it is impossible to change to something better tomorrow.
...well crap, there I go writing fluffy feel good words without substance. To be more succinct: Pump that oil, accept the resulting CO2 impacts, skim some profits through royalties and invest it towards something better. "Invest it" being the trickiest part of all because that's where the rubber really hits the road. If we don't know what to do with it right away, then at least invest it financially so we have more dollars later to do something with or to buy someone else's sweet perpetual motion machine with.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. The biggest failure of the Alberta PC's was bringing royalties into general revenue, and the biggest failure of Albertans was continuing to accept the fact that we were doing so because it meant we could buy trucks instead of pay more taxes. Prentice was spot on with his proposed changes and at pointing the finger right back at me and all of you for being partiallty responsible for where we ended up. Sadly no one wanted to hear it.
In attempt to steer back on topic, that last paragraph brings up an interesting question...if resources and royalties lie with the provinces, what role or mandate does the federal government actually have in transitioning us away from fossil fuels and towards something else? Funding research and grants from the general tax revenue?
/end rampling thoughts on a topic I love to talk about far too much.