LETTER

LETTRE

We must allow our oil and gas industries to flourish

 

Mr. Périès (Bulletin editorialist) is doubtless aware of the 70’s, when prophets-of-doom discovered black holes in the sky, and warned of a new ice-age. Then, came the 90’s and many of the same soothsayers harried us about rising temperatures and sea-levels. Global-warming had to be reversed, by the year 2000. Now, it’s: do this by 2028, to attain that by 2050. Or else. Apocalyptic warnings don’t scare people into doing the unpleasant.
    Even if a big polluter, like the US, were to cut its carbon dioxide emissions to zero tomorrow, it would take decades before it had a noticeable impact on global warming. So, what impact would it have on that problem were we Canadians to cut our so-much-smaller carbon dioxide emissions to zero?
    Climate changed often between the big bang and the arrival of man-the-polluter. Is it changing faster now than it did then? Maybe. Must we cease to pollute as much as we do? Certainly, but not in an atmosphere of dread. We aren’t going to achieve our goals by government decree. If we want people to buy-in, they have to be motivated to find ways of cleaning the environment that involve something smarter than destroying energy industries that have provided us with a standard of living we’d be foolish to scrap, before we have cleaner alternatives.
    As it stands, clean energy provides less than what we need to maintain our economy at the present level, let alone helping it grow, which we absolutely need to do. A stronger economy means more tax revenue, the money we’ll need to further help those who are struggling to keep up. Strangling our oil and gas industries, at the very moment when we need them for ourselves and to help our European friends, would be counter-productive.
    We must allow our oil and gas industries to flourish. while, simultaneously, we stand aside and free entrepreneurs-of-genius to work at at finding new renewable sources of energy and perfecting those we have already. Ultimately, all of our energy should come from renewable non-polluting sources.
Ron Lefebvre
Aylmer