CALGARY, Alta. — Is the Leap Manifesto just hard-left mischief, or is it a worthwhile attempt at dialogue on climate change and Canada's future?
This document reveals an irresistible force meeting an immoveable object. It's a challenge not only for the NDP (especially Alberta's), but for everyone.
The irresistible force is the global warming emergency, the solution to which involves radically reduced use of fossil fuels.
The immoveable object is an economy whose main driver seems to be the burning of this energy source. Alberta is legitimately concerned about threats to its energy industry and the many thousands of workers it employs.
There is no happy solution. Premier Rachel Notley maintains that reducing the energy intensity of oilsands production is the best Alberta can do and her much-vaunted climate change strategy will allow a 40 per cent increase in oilsands production.
Fortunately, no such increase will ever happen.
Alberta's problems are twofold: its oilsands have been buried by fracked American oil that is of higher-value and cheaper to produce; and longer term, it faces marginalization in a world committed to weaning itself off carbon.
So another pipeline isn't needed, since oilsands production won't be expanding much in the foreseeable future, if it all.
Notley's government, however, ignores the climate impact of burning the product. In fact, at least two-thirds of known fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground if the world is to avoid climatic catastrophe.
Given the implications for employment and Alberta's economy, Notley's timidity is understandable. Possibly her party's desire to be re-elected has dictated this short-sighted stance.
But the laws of physics do not negotiate. Every year we delay will increase the costs of addressing climate change and the danger. Half-measures mean failure.
All of which brings us to the Leap document. It was shaped by of dozens of people. Its signatories range from former Ontario Chief Justice Roy McMurtry to the head of Canada's Jesuits; from Oxfam to the Council of Canadians to Idle No More; dozens of religious, labour and indigenous leaders. . ..
The document's statistics may be a little aggressive. For example, it says that "85 per cent of reserves in the Canadian oilsands have to stay in the ground." (I thought it was 65 to 75 per cent.) Or "that by 2050 we could have a 100 per cent clean economy." (Completely eliminating fossil fuels in transportation is a pipe dream.)
But the direction is essential if the agreed maximum increase in world temperature is to be met.
I realize that, like Alice in Wonderland, Canadians believe "as many as six impossible things before breakfast," but adults in the real world can hardly accept the temperature limit and oppose the vigorous policies needed to stay under it. (Alberta's Climate Leadership Report admits that even if every jurisdiction in the world adopted its recommendations, global temperatures would still increase by more than 2o Celsius.)
Leap offers 15 specific policy suggestions but I found only a couple to be too extreme. Carrying NIMBY to its logical conclusion, Leap says, "The new iron law of energy development must be: if you wouldn't want it in your backyard, then it doesn't belong in anyone's backyard."
The rest seems to foretell the next generation's policy agenda and, contrary to Alberta's excellent Environment Minister Shannon Phillips, supporting its energy component is not "a betrayal of the people who voted NDP in this province last year." This inflammatory rhetoric is not part of the adult conversation we need to have.
As for the troubling employment issue, I far prefer the remarks of the admirable Stephen Lewis:
"Alberta ... fears the further loss of jobs ... how could it be otherwise? We all heard Premier Notley today. How could you not feel for the human predicament of this province? If and when there is to be a transition, let it be particularly thorough and careful, and the planning must include, through their unions, the thousands of workers whose jobs and homes and families and lives are on the line. We're a socialist party for God's sake; no one can suffer the unceremonious loss of jobs. I say to my trade union colleagues: the workers must never pay a price.
"But as everyone wrestles with these issues, these inescapable issues that are visceral in every way, there is an overriding truth: the move to renewables is the greatest job creation program on the planet. It's a Marshall Plan for employment."
And that is not just hard-left mischief.
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