It’s August. Surely we should be sitting on patios sipping cool beverages and enjoying the good weather. The only strategy I want to think about is how to avoid the neighbour wandering up and down the street clutching an armful of improbably large zucchini, looking for her next
On one level, its all wonderful. Albertans tend to be slow learners, but if we didn't know before whose interests Smith serves.....and what the old rip and ship business as usual crowd would do to protect their fracked gas and in situ bitumen production from the very real threat renewables pose to their economic dominance.........we know now.
Hopefull, those wild fires......and climate rains bringing massive flooding all over the planet will also instruct us how late it is in the survival game.....and convince us we must all ACT NOW.
Wringing our hands......or posting learned objections might be fun....but what Alberta needs more than political punditry is ACTION. If any of us can solarize our roofs, now is the time to do it. Have a home that could get off gas with a heat pump.....now is the time to do it.
And let's keep informed..........when I read the comments on feeds like the Calgary Herald, I'm shocked by how many climate ignoramuses there are in Calgary. Do some actual research.
We have solar panels......and an electric vehicle. Everything works well.......and has for a few years now. Be more than a little sceptical of experts concerned with the climate cost of renewables......the contaminated land across Alberta hasn't brought them out in any number, so it should be obvious:
Concern for the climate effects of wind, solar, geothermal is bogus....Take BackAlberta None Sense.
Sometimes I wonder if citizens count anymore? Natural Gas losing market share, oops can't have that so let's change the entry to the grid rules! And my ( Smith speaking) government will make sure we cannot make the 2035 goal, reality. Welcome to world of lobbyists.
When Smith said "of course I listen to oil and gas companies executives " we knew she wasn't kidding. When Markum had his captured Province Energi Talks podcast a few weeks, he and guest sure hit the nail on the head ! Oh let's blame Ottawa too! And how about the China, they aren't doing anthing! WRONG! China installed 180 gw of renewables in 2022, more than rest of world combined, and more in one year than exists in the US of A. Canada, well we r in the top ten per capita and per country creator of CO2 but we r just alittle country that produces more CO2 than the 190 countries who produce less than us
Beyond the particulars of this announcement, I see another campaign promise-of-sorts being kept. The Premier said she liked what DeSantis is doing in Florida; I read this as an escalation of TBAs culture war and expect it to only get hotter. This is a signal to Albertans that whatever the costs - money, jobs or business reputation - this government will focus on whatever their base is whipped up about that week, regardless of any logic or strategy for prosperity.
I am buckling up for a very expensive and exasperating 4 years.
Surely this will at least finally lay to rest the last myth about conservatism--that their strong suit is the economy? Which leaves them with zero credentials for governance. Which raises the question of just how much more gross incompetence we'll be able to tolerate, especially after what we've already experienced during the pandemic (remember how helpless and horrible that felt with these idiots in charge) AND in the continued context of the other even more serious emergency with climate. It's a similar feeling to how Putin makes us feel, except it was VOTED FOR here by all the cultish conservatives bent on making Alberta "Alberduh," the laughingstock of the country.
AND speaking of cults, have you noticed how often progressives are vehemently disparaged for following "ideology?" This from the people described as the RELIGIOUS right, religious doctrine being definitively ideological. It's just that some ideas are better than others, clearly. So in the context of religious doctrine, our ideas being contrary to theirs is what causes the vehemence and avidity, making us heretics and "devils" even. This is what has happened to politics and is the heart of the unbridgeable chasm, introducing religion to it.
But a cult doesn't have to be strictly god-based either. When you consider how it was rural Alberta that voted the basket of deplorables that the UCP is into power again, champions of big oil, even when big oil had been allowed to shaft the rural municipalities on taxes, what else explains such knee-jerk irrationality? It's pure tribal identity, which is always human beings at their stupidest. And they have inflicted this on us at a time when we simply can NOT afford it any more.
The unprecedented is the realm created by this insane right wing because it works, but there can also be unprecedented retaliation whereby the citizens run the government out on a rail so to speak. What would that look like? Desperate times do call for desperate measures after all.....
Maybe it's time for a class action suit? She's preventing us from getting affordable energy and contributing to the build up of greenhouse gases. Also, making all Albertans look stupid!
Heavens to Betsy, no royalty on the Sun and wind! End of the world. That's why we pay the highest electricity rates in Canada for delivered electricity. Yet wind and solar is the least expensive way to generate. Even Hydro Quebec can figure that out. It is the 5th largest hydro electricity generator in the world! Yet is developing its renewable solar and wind as they are far less expensive than dams. And saving the water behind those dams to use as batteries.
Perhaps no royalties to provincial cultures..........but for the average Albertan........cheaper electricity rates, rebates to solarize/go EV....would be a profitable change. Any fool should be able to tell that the green revolutions is going to be distributed, decentralized and far more run be citizens, not entre proners.
If the fossil fools could figure out a way to own the sun and the wind..........earth and air, and fire and water hey???............they'd be turning solar and wind into private property. Until then, they spread lies about the cheapness, cleanness, and populist nature of green energies....
We might not make it, but if we can pull of the transition.......the Possible Future is quite possibly truly democratic.
Mrs. Smith is yet another incompetent Conservative leader helping get Trudeau re-elected. Frigging Conservatives at every level keep making him look like the grown-up in the room.
For crying out loud, it is a seven month pause. Not a moratorium, no more, no way, but a pause.
I accept at face value the government's explanation that the industry has been terrifically active in Alberta and it is necessary to ensure that our various rules, regulations, etc. are appropriate.
Various and sundry of the rural folks have noted that all these projects seem to take good farmland out of production and there are, as a result, issues there.
So, a pause to ensure that our rules are appropriate is sensible. You might remember the orphan well problem wherein ever so many oil and gas wells have not been cleaned up. Many of the original owners went out of business and, as a result, there is no one to look to in order to get those wells remediated. Clearly, at that time, rules and regulations were inadequate. As I understand matters, now bonds and / or security deposits are required to secure the ultimate cleanup costs of new wells. It is sensible to ensure that appropriate bonds and / or security deposits are required for new solar and wind projects. Clearly, these projects cost a lot to set up in the first place. Similarly, it will cost a fair bit to dismantle them at the end of their useful life. Remember, many of the aspects of the solar and wind equipment are toxic and are not good items for our landfills so it is wise to ensure that we have appropriate rules to ensure ultimate cleanup.
Having worked for a fertilizer company for 13 years, and spent a fair bit of time looking at crop yield and soil type maps of Alberta, let me point out that the one solar site I've checked out recently is near CFB Suffield. There's a reason a major weapons test range was put there: its because it ain't prime farm land. So show me where ALL of the solar and wind projects propose to take prime farmland. Bet you can't.
Furthermore, with this government, their track record strongly suggests that the pause will be come massively extended and nearly permanent.
Comparing well clean ups to solar recycling is insultingly stupid garbage. Wells dry up. Solar doesn't. You don't refill an oil well, but you replace solar panes and wind turbines - you don't dismantle them and turn the land over to something else. There is nowhere near the volume of those even planned that would seriously be a land fill issue, even if recycling research weren't well under way for those expensive to produce composites.
Its further infuriatingly insulting and ludicrous to compare the building block components of solar and wind installation in their final, INERT form to the openly toxic and dangerous drilling fluids used in oil well drilling and production. These chemicals are NOT in an inert form, and they destroy a lot of actual good farmland when they are left to leach into the aquifer when a well is abandoned without clean up.
If you were actually concerned about any of these issues, you'd be investigating how large oil companies like Imperial Oil and Shell get away with selling off their 90% depleted wells to shadowy foreign companies with no tangible assets here other than the wells, who promptly dissolve and disappear once the well is depleted - having done no cleanup of any kind whatsoever. One of the reasons that we have a couple hundred billion dollars worth of wells to clean up is that practice. That is a far more serious problem than any wind or solar installation. And the current government is doing absolutely nothing about it.
Well said! And urban expansion takes up more ag land than anything else. The County Strathcona Bremner project a good example of super prime ag land being paved over
Having installed solar panels over 10 years ago....and purchased an ev in 2019......you'd be surprised how much ignorant and sudden 'concern for the environment' is generated by folks with investments in unconventional oil and gas. We hear it all the time.
We're also amazed by how many rural people have stories of wells that weren't closed; they were buried. Oil and gas know it alls figure out of sight, out of mind......but recently we attended the opening of a 750 kilowatt solar installation near Taber. It was put up on contaminated land that couldn't be used for agriculture.
What shocked us was the company president claimed they'd taken the top soil off that 2 hectare piece of earth, TWICE...and tried to clean it, but oil soaked earth kept turning up. Suggested to me that most of us don't know how bad the mess is on many pieces of the best arable land on earth.
AND NOT ONE INFORMED COMPLAINT FROM OUR CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS. This land hadn't been fracked or subjected to bitumen production....it was earth left unfit for farming during the conventional boom of 40 odd years ago.
Concern for the Rules and Regulations??!! What a crock. But if more of us get talking...sharing what we know about the Green Transition, perhaps DS has done us a favour.
Probably cost Alberta a nbillion dollars in lost investment and 2000 jobs. Look at queue. Almost all international, they don't wait, once in a lifetime opportunity, so let's invest somewhere else
On one level, its all wonderful. Albertans tend to be slow learners, but if we didn't know before whose interests Smith serves.....and what the old rip and ship business as usual crowd would do to protect their fracked gas and in situ bitumen production from the very real threat renewables pose to their economic dominance.........we know now.
Hopefull, those wild fires......and climate rains bringing massive flooding all over the planet will also instruct us how late it is in the survival game.....and convince us we must all ACT NOW.
Wringing our hands......or posting learned objections might be fun....but what Alberta needs more than political punditry is ACTION. If any of us can solarize our roofs, now is the time to do it. Have a home that could get off gas with a heat pump.....now is the time to do it.
And let's keep informed..........when I read the comments on feeds like the Calgary Herald, I'm shocked by how many climate ignoramuses there are in Calgary. Do some actual research.
We have solar panels......and an electric vehicle. Everything works well.......and has for a few years now. Be more than a little sceptical of experts concerned with the climate cost of renewables......the contaminated land across Alberta hasn't brought them out in any number, so it should be obvious:
Concern for the climate effects of wind, solar, geothermal is bogus....Take BackAlberta None Sense.
Slow Learners, love that phrase
Sometimes I wonder if citizens count anymore? Natural Gas losing market share, oops can't have that so let's change the entry to the grid rules! And my ( Smith speaking) government will make sure we cannot make the 2035 goal, reality. Welcome to world of lobbyists.
When Smith said "of course I listen to oil and gas companies executives " we knew she wasn't kidding. When Markum had his captured Province Energi Talks podcast a few weeks, he and guest sure hit the nail on the head ! Oh let's blame Ottawa too! And how about the China, they aren't doing anthing! WRONG! China installed 180 gw of renewables in 2022, more than rest of world combined, and more in one year than exists in the US of A. Canada, well we r in the top ten per capita and per country creator of CO2 but we r just alittle country that produces more CO2 than the 190 countries who produce less than us
Beyond the particulars of this announcement, I see another campaign promise-of-sorts being kept. The Premier said she liked what DeSantis is doing in Florida; I read this as an escalation of TBAs culture war and expect it to only get hotter. This is a signal to Albertans that whatever the costs - money, jobs or business reputation - this government will focus on whatever their base is whipped up about that week, regardless of any logic or strategy for prosperity.
I am buckling up for a very expensive and exasperating 4 years.
Surely this will at least finally lay to rest the last myth about conservatism--that their strong suit is the economy? Which leaves them with zero credentials for governance. Which raises the question of just how much more gross incompetence we'll be able to tolerate, especially after what we've already experienced during the pandemic (remember how helpless and horrible that felt with these idiots in charge) AND in the continued context of the other even more serious emergency with climate. It's a similar feeling to how Putin makes us feel, except it was VOTED FOR here by all the cultish conservatives bent on making Alberta "Alberduh," the laughingstock of the country.
AND speaking of cults, have you noticed how often progressives are vehemently disparaged for following "ideology?" This from the people described as the RELIGIOUS right, religious doctrine being definitively ideological. It's just that some ideas are better than others, clearly. So in the context of religious doctrine, our ideas being contrary to theirs is what causes the vehemence and avidity, making us heretics and "devils" even. This is what has happened to politics and is the heart of the unbridgeable chasm, introducing religion to it.
But a cult doesn't have to be strictly god-based either. When you consider how it was rural Alberta that voted the basket of deplorables that the UCP is into power again, champions of big oil, even when big oil had been allowed to shaft the rural municipalities on taxes, what else explains such knee-jerk irrationality? It's pure tribal identity, which is always human beings at their stupidest. And they have inflicted this on us at a time when we simply can NOT afford it any more.
The unprecedented is the realm created by this insane right wing because it works, but there can also be unprecedented retaliation whereby the citizens run the government out on a rail so to speak. What would that look like? Desperate times do call for desperate measures after all.....
I think we'll need to
Sign me up for those I ❤️AB 🌬️& 🌞 yard signs, bumper stickers and T shirts! Hey NDP - great fund raising idea!
Maybe it's time for a class action suit? She's preventing us from getting affordable energy and contributing to the build up of greenhouse gases. Also, making all Albertans look stupid!
Your missing a point the renewable energy sector contributes no royalties to the provincial coffers.;
We must have a balanced budget according to UCP, so why give up revenue.
Heavens to Betsy, no royalty on the Sun and wind! End of the world. That's why we pay the highest electricity rates in Canada for delivered electricity. Yet wind and solar is the least expensive way to generate. Even Hydro Quebec can figure that out. It is the 5th largest hydro electricity generator in the world! Yet is developing its renewable solar and wind as they are far less expensive than dams. And saving the water behind those dams to use as batteries.
Perhaps no royalties to provincial cultures..........but for the average Albertan........cheaper electricity rates, rebates to solarize/go EV....would be a profitable change. Any fool should be able to tell that the green revolutions is going to be distributed, decentralized and far more run be citizens, not entre proners.
If the fossil fools could figure out a way to own the sun and the wind..........earth and air, and fire and water hey???............they'd be turning solar and wind into private property. Until then, they spread lies about the cheapness, cleanness, and populist nature of green energies....
We might not make it, but if we can pull of the transition.......the Possible Future is quite possibly truly democratic.
It does supply tax revenue to the municipalities it's in though, tax revenue gone missing from oil companies in several cases apparently....
Mrs. Smith is yet another incompetent Conservative leader helping get Trudeau re-elected. Frigging Conservatives at every level keep making him look like the grown-up in the room.
For crying out loud, it is a seven month pause. Not a moratorium, no more, no way, but a pause.
I accept at face value the government's explanation that the industry has been terrifically active in Alberta and it is necessary to ensure that our various rules, regulations, etc. are appropriate.
Various and sundry of the rural folks have noted that all these projects seem to take good farmland out of production and there are, as a result, issues there.
So, a pause to ensure that our rules are appropriate is sensible. You might remember the orphan well problem wherein ever so many oil and gas wells have not been cleaned up. Many of the original owners went out of business and, as a result, there is no one to look to in order to get those wells remediated. Clearly, at that time, rules and regulations were inadequate. As I understand matters, now bonds and / or security deposits are required to secure the ultimate cleanup costs of new wells. It is sensible to ensure that appropriate bonds and / or security deposits are required for new solar and wind projects. Clearly, these projects cost a lot to set up in the first place. Similarly, it will cost a fair bit to dismantle them at the end of their useful life. Remember, many of the aspects of the solar and wind equipment are toxic and are not good items for our landfills so it is wise to ensure that we have appropriate rules to ensure ultimate cleanup.
In a word, bullshit.
Having worked for a fertilizer company for 13 years, and spent a fair bit of time looking at crop yield and soil type maps of Alberta, let me point out that the one solar site I've checked out recently is near CFB Suffield. There's a reason a major weapons test range was put there: its because it ain't prime farm land. So show me where ALL of the solar and wind projects propose to take prime farmland. Bet you can't.
Furthermore, with this government, their track record strongly suggests that the pause will be come massively extended and nearly permanent.
Comparing well clean ups to solar recycling is insultingly stupid garbage. Wells dry up. Solar doesn't. You don't refill an oil well, but you replace solar panes and wind turbines - you don't dismantle them and turn the land over to something else. There is nowhere near the volume of those even planned that would seriously be a land fill issue, even if recycling research weren't well under way for those expensive to produce composites.
Its further infuriatingly insulting and ludicrous to compare the building block components of solar and wind installation in their final, INERT form to the openly toxic and dangerous drilling fluids used in oil well drilling and production. These chemicals are NOT in an inert form, and they destroy a lot of actual good farmland when they are left to leach into the aquifer when a well is abandoned without clean up.
If you were actually concerned about any of these issues, you'd be investigating how large oil companies like Imperial Oil and Shell get away with selling off their 90% depleted wells to shadowy foreign companies with no tangible assets here other than the wells, who promptly dissolve and disappear once the well is depleted - having done no cleanup of any kind whatsoever. One of the reasons that we have a couple hundred billion dollars worth of wells to clean up is that practice. That is a far more serious problem than any wind or solar installation. And the current government is doing absolutely nothing about it.
Well said! And urban expansion takes up more ag land than anything else. The County Strathcona Bremner project a good example of super prime ag land being paved over
Thx Sandy, for the clear and well articulated response to the barnyard droppings above. What on Earth are these people doing for thinking?
They're defending their vote.
Having installed solar panels over 10 years ago....and purchased an ev in 2019......you'd be surprised how much ignorant and sudden 'concern for the environment' is generated by folks with investments in unconventional oil and gas. We hear it all the time.
We're also amazed by how many rural people have stories of wells that weren't closed; they were buried. Oil and gas know it alls figure out of sight, out of mind......but recently we attended the opening of a 750 kilowatt solar installation near Taber. It was put up on contaminated land that couldn't be used for agriculture.
What shocked us was the company president claimed they'd taken the top soil off that 2 hectare piece of earth, TWICE...and tried to clean it, but oil soaked earth kept turning up. Suggested to me that most of us don't know how bad the mess is on many pieces of the best arable land on earth.
AND NOT ONE INFORMED COMPLAINT FROM OUR CONSERVATIVE GOVERNMENTS OVER THE LAST 40 YEARS. This land hadn't been fracked or subjected to bitumen production....it was earth left unfit for farming during the conventional boom of 40 odd years ago.
Concern for the Rules and Regulations??!! What a crock. But if more of us get talking...sharing what we know about the Green Transition, perhaps DS has done us a favour.
Probably cost Alberta a nbillion dollars in lost investment and 2000 jobs. Look at queue. Almost all international, they don't wait, once in a lifetime opportunity, so let's invest somewhere else
Let's hope. Because every hard lesson Alberta gets........more people get where we are.
They don't care about Alberta or Albertans. They're all oil and gas share holders, protecting their investment.
I imagine the gun manufacturers have the same determination to preserve the status quo: Endless War; People dying somewhere all the time.
Good for business.