5 critical reasons Canada cannot, and should not, move off of oil & natural gas

In the past week, several prominent Canadian political figures made public statements declaring Canada should move away from oil & natural gas as power sources. Unsurprisingly, former Green Party leader Elizabeth May was one of these, and Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet was another, stating that Canada should move to divest from the Western Oil Sands. 

Does anyone really believe this is a good idea? I mean, to start divesting from oil at this exact time, with the economy as shaky as it is. That we should make what is an essentially risky investment of our limited resources in unproven ‘Green’ tech? It’s a truly ridiculous sentiment and these people arguing for it should be called out for what they are: dangerous, environmental ideologues. 

To me, it seems like right now we need to kickstart the economy, and fast! What better way to do that than with a proven, cheap source of energy that so much of our infrastructure is already built around

That’s one reason why we shouldn’t move from oil & natural gas, and for the rest of this article, I’m going to provide you with 5 more reasons oil & gas is the best fuel source out there.

Reason #1: Natural Gas is more green than ‘Green’ Energy

While you shouldn’t take everything in it as Biblical truth, the new documentary Planet of the Humans provides one of the freshest arguments for fossil fuels and especially natural gas that I’ve seen in a while. 

You’d expect a Michael Moore-produced documentary to provide a favourable view of environmentalism, but I think most were surprised to find the documentary actually savages ‘Green’ energy. So we’re clear on this: director Jeff Gibb’s point is that all ‘Green’ energy is a scam and in fact worse for the environment than natural gas.

I’d been aware of issues with ethanol before checking out the doc, however I was surprised how it attacked biomass as a ‘Green’ fuel source. Certainly, any self-respecting environmentalist cannot consider biomass a ‘Green’ fuel, as it ultimately represents a return to wood burning as a large scale power source, and that means exactly what you think it means: trees being chopped down as fuel for power plants. 

The documentary doesn’t stop there though, and provides numerous reasons why solar and wind shouldn’t be counted as truly green energy sources either, including issues regarding intermittency, the carbon costs associated with storing energy. The most devastating argument that applies to all of these energy sources, though, and especially solar and wind, is that the power plants themselves require more energy to be fabricated than they can displace during their entire operational lifecycles. 

For all these reasons, and although he doesn’t spell this out explicitly, even the environmentalist director Jeff Gibbs makes the argument when visiting an ultra-modern solar power plant in California: 

‘You use more fossil fuels to [build this power plant] then you’re getting benefit from it. You would’ve been better off just burning the fossil fuels in the first place,’ says Ozzie Zehner in the documentary, author of the book Green Illusions, and that quote seems emblematic of Gibb’s view of all the ‘Green’ energy sources discussed in the film.

Currently China’s electric car industry is in parallel as not only is the poor quality of many of the cars catching up to them, but the now low prices of oil makes the need for cars to get around higher oil import costs needless.

In Scotland a wind turbine farm had to be delayed by three months to reevaluate the planned project as most normal large construction projects continue. It clearly is not due to health concerns with starting the project but whether or not green energy in an economy with cheap oil and has is even viable.

Reason #2: People choose oil and gas in a crisis

If oil and gas was truly a dead industry it would stand to reason that green energy technology purchases would increase on the individual and governmental level, and that trend should be maintained even during tough economic times. The reality on the ground is that growth in green energy has actually slumped.

In large part solar panels sales have plummeted due to families having to constrict their spending and putting off all kinds of home renovations, but for the case of the practicality of green energy that is not a good thing. 

Morgan Stanely projects that in the second quarter of 2020 residential solar installations may fall by 48%, 28% in the third quarter, and 17% in the fourth quarter. 

Solar should be shooting up if oil is truly dead as Elizabeth May says. Buying solar panels being viewed in the same way that getting new hardwood installed is telling of how the general public see solar as an energy source. It is just an expensive frill at the end of the day.

Currently China’s electric car industry is in parallel as not only is the poor quality of many of the cars catching up to them, but the now low prices of oil makes the need for cars to get around higher oil import costs needless.

In Scotland a wind turbine farm had to be delayed by three months to reevaluate the planned project as most normal large construction projects continue. It clearly is not due to health concerns with starting the project but whether or not green energy in an economy with cheap oil and gas is even viable.

Clearly what people want during the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing economic slowdown is for easily accessible, cheap, and reliably energy, which at this time is more than ever oil and gas. 

Reason #3 Canada has a climate that needs oil and gas

Canada has a freezing cold climate, so we need a cheap form of energy with which to heat our homes, and natural gas is the most cost efficient, energy efficient, safest, and easily accessible fuel source to perform this task, for reasons I have already outlined in this article.

Life in Canada would simply be unworkable without oil and gas. Green energy can be used here to provide limited quantities of power, but the cold simply hurts our ability to ever rely completely on green technology.

Even the government of Canada’s website on wind turbines in cold climates details how icing and extreme cold cannot only risk damaging wind turbines, but also reduces their efficiency. Although solar power can work in extremely cold temperatures they will have a limited effect when snow piles up and there are days to weeks of cloudy skies in the winter. 

This clear limitation of ‘Green’ energy’s ability to provide consistent power in Canada’s climate double underlines why ‘Green’ energy can never bear the full energy workload for Canada’s needs, but oil & natural gas have in the past, and are a great option in the future.

Reason #4: Canada cannot be compared to Luxembourg

While it may be cool for tiny European micronations like Luxembourg to pursue a ‘net-carbon neutral’ society, Canada is a country where that is not a practical or worthwhile goal to pursue. 

The Canadian Green Party wants to be at zero carbon emissions by 2050, which may be a realistic goal for a country like Luxembourg, Canada in geographic terms cannot possibly make any green technology work universally.

It will never be practical for most Canadians to use public transit just because of the distances most of us live away from anything, and as for electric vehicles, where do people think the electricity that powers these cars comes from? More and more often, it’s from natural gas power plants.

Those living in rural areas likely would not be happy being told to make further sacrifices to cut back on carbon emissions when they already live in an environment where survival is uncertain without a reliable energy source.

Reason #5: Canada has massive oil reserves 

Canada has some of the largest oil reverses of any country on the planet, so the politicians arguing we should not extract it are simply living in another dimension. The reality is that if we don’t extract oil and gas someone else will, and we probably won’t like who it is. 

One of the most baffling contradictions of the environmentalism movement is their aggressive stances against oil and gas being extracted in Alberta at some of the highest environmental standards in the world, yet Middle Eastern dictatorships never seem to be dinged for their industries’ unclean and unethical practices.

Most things in life are not zero sum games, but the global oil industry is. It’s why further development of Canada’s oil and gas resources is actually good for the environment, our clean resources offset dirty forms of energy.

When we penalize our own industry we are really just enabling worse actors in order to virtue signal how environmentally conscious we are when our actions indirectly cause worse outcomes. 

If someone like Elizabeth May was really serious about reducing carbon emissions now, she should be in favour of more drilling, not less. If developing countries are to ever get off of coal then Canada should not be afraid to utilize its massive reserves to replace coal with oil and gas that emit a fraction of what coal does.

It’s important to keep in mind always in the ‘Green’ vs. oil & natural gas debate to keep facts front and centre. While I think I’ve done a good job bashing ‘Green’ energy, no one is saying a green energy alternative that yields great results might not turn up in the future, or one of these ‘Green’ energy alternatives doesn’t experience a major breakthrough.

It’s important to be logical and open-minded about how we think of oil and gas and energy in general. There is not going to be a one word answer to reducing emissions, and providing everyone adequate energy to everyone all the time, no matter where they are.

All that being said, I think we’ve made a pretty good case for oil & natural gas currently being the best fuel source, and that clearly we should not consider divesting from it right now.