By Brian Lee
As we chew on issues swirling around the upcoming election, there is one that is no longer up for debate — global warming is real, it’s a dire economic threat and is caused by humans.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, nine of the 10 hottest months on record have occurred since 2005. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of 1,300 independent scientists from 195 countries, concluded there’s more than a 90 per cent probability that human activities over the past 250 years have warmed our planet.
Since 1880, world temperatures increased by 0.8 degrees Celsius and scientists predict another half- to a full-degree of warming is yet to come from the carbon we’ve already burned. The IPCC predicts anything greater than a 2-degrees-Celsius rise would overwhelm our capacity to adjust. In this context, "adjust" refers to trillions lost in fisheries and agriculture or spent trying to build flood walls and repair weather damage.
Equated to levels of carbon in our atmosphere, that "point of no return" is 450 parts per million. The burning of coal and oil have raised atmospheric CO2 levels from 280 PPM (where it’s been for 10,000 years) to 379 PPM in only 150 years. The IPCC concludes we can’t afford to emit more than 2,900 gigatonnes of CO2 without catastrophe. We’ve already emitted 1,900 GT so, at our current rate, we have 27 years — except our emission rate is still growing at one percent per year.
That should offer some perspective to the Canadian oil sands debate. So when NDP candidate Linda McQuaig said recently that we have to leave the remaining oilsands undeveloped, she was absolutely right. But she received no support from the leaders of the three main political parties who are terrified of startling voters.
In The Carbon Bubble: What Happens to Us When it Bursts, author Jeff Rubin writes that opting out of oil and coal is Canada’s best bet for a prosperous future. Western Canadian Select (oilsands bitumen) is the world’s most expensive fuel to extract, requiring prices between $65 to $100 per barrel just to break even. That makes it incredibly vulnerable to recession and competition. It is currently priced at $36.70/barrel.
The intended destination for Alberta’s oil — U.S. refineries — have all but evaporated with fracking and the discovery of their own shale oil and gas deposits. China is touted as an alternative but Russia recently secured much of that market with a natural gas pipeline. As the former chief economist at CIBC World Markets, Rubin argues the long-term market for oil will continue to be weak as leaders confront economic imperatives guiding them towards cleaner sources of energy.
And Canada is falling way behind. In 2013, even China installed 12.9 gigawatts of solar electricity generation — the most ever by one country in a year.
There is a bright future for Canada’s economy — but it’s in food, not oil. Thanks to those warming temperatures and Canada’s envied water supply, Rubin says corn will be the new oil. The U.S. is currently the world’s largest producer of its most important food crop but they are depleting their water resources at an unsustainable rate. Due to our short growing season, farmers on the southern prairies have only recently been able to grow corn.
As climate change opens up the rest of Canada’s bread basket, it’s projected we could become one of the top four food producing countries in the world. Rubin refers to it as the "value-added export of water" in the form of food.
Despite Mr. Harper’s blind obsession with petroleum, it is increasingly obvious our planet’s future energy needs can’t be met by fossil fuels. And simple economics makes it especially certain that those needs won’t be met by Canada’s bitumen.