Quote:
Originally Posted by Table 5
I generally put climate-change deniers in the same group as the anti-vax crowd, or the anti-evolution crowd... people I just don't need to waste time associating with.
But with a lot of Albertans, usually people are smart enough to know better, but don't want to disrupt the sweet paycheck so I think everyone here just tries to ignore it. Which I can understand from a practical level.
However, I always keep hoping Alberta will find a way to use all that amazingly smart and educated workforce and try to channel it into building up next-wave energy tech of the future. I'd love to see us slowly become the Silicon Valley of energy, and maybe in a generation or two, be able to phase out oil without much of a blip.
Clearly there's just too much easy money in the traditional fields to make it worthwhile right now. There has to be some more positive incentive...but it doesn't seem like it will ever come from the provincial government.
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We don't need to raise taxes to control our environmental footprint. The company I'm at now actually takes off-gas from upgraders and turns it into usable spec products. In a few years most of all that carbon coming off oil sands upgraders will be turned into plastic removing it completly from the atmosphere. To me this is a better way to do things responsibly than all the "raise gas tax to make people use less oil" crowd.
Oil companies now always talk about having a "social licence" to operate because nobody wants to be the ones getting flack and losing money because of spills or neglegence.
What you said about the Silicon Valley of energy is correct. If we can utilize new technologies to take emmisions out of the air and turn them into usable products Alberta will lead the way for the industry and could export its expertise elsewhere.