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Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan
I teach people the subject matter and the problems associated, I don't offer solutions because if I had any good ones I'd be writing about them as we speak. I teach the science, the facts, and let students (particularly our social entrepreneurship students) work on solutions. At the moment there aren't great ones, but I try to inspire my students to come up with solutions to the problems while remaining realistic.
I think that you, like most Albertans, are especially touchy around the subject of oil and gas because of how closely the local economy is tied to it. The fact remains, we cannot continue to burn carbon-based fuels and expect everything to turn out okay. There will be a severe reckoning in our future if we don't make significant changes in both our energy consumption and production, even if those changes aren't easy to do. There is no doubt that significant costs will impact economies over the short term, and I personally believe the tipping point of when we decide to actually take these steps happens after there are events of mass starvation or natural resource depletion. I hope that it doesn't come to that, but I'm skeptical of human nature.
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By cutting off Canadian oil, you're not reducing world consumption, you're just ensuring that the supply of it for world consumption elsewhere comes from other places than Canada. Places where there are no regulations, and there is no desire to ever have regulations. This makes Canadians and Albertans poorer and it empowers places like Russia and Saudi Arabia. West coast/Quebec activism blocking Alberta pipelines does absolutely nothing for the environment and might even harm it longer term. By expanding oil production here, you prevent further expansion elsewhere. If you care about the environment, you would much rather deal with people like me who respect the rule of law, abide by the regulations of the land, and respect human rights rather than the Saudi Royal Family, Vladimir Putin, or the Chinese.
As for solving the problem, it doesn't come from the supply side. We need there to be a way to do what we do where the low carbon option is actually more cost effective and a better way of doing things without government subsidies or mandate. You do that, and even the places the don't give a crap about ever signing onto a UN pact, let alone actually abide by it will start lowering emissions and the supply side quite honestly solves itself. I get it, the rebuttal to that is 'we don't have time for innovation, we need a carbon diet now to avoid 'x arbitrary goalpost.' Quite frankly that's no answer anyway. You can't tell the world's poorest and developing people who honestly live day to day that their aspirations of a better life have to be shelved because climate models say 'x'. Also you can't tell the people of the first world that "Hey you need to move backwards on the slope of human development because our climate models say x." Where the rubber hits the road and people's livelihoods are threatened, they aren't going to choose the option of being poorer. Look no further than the yellow vest protests in France. If the French can't do it, China, India, and Africa sure as $**t aren't going to do it either.