Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz celebrated their return from the COP28 United Nations climate change conference in Dubai by accusing federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault of “treachery against our province” in an unhinged rant published yesterday on the government’s official website. Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz
Continue readingTag: Global Climate Change
Alberta Politics: Layover in Dubai: Who are the ‘hundreds’ of Albertans accompanying Danielle Smith – and who’s paying the freight?
So, about this group of “hundreds” of Albertans who have accompanied Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on her field trip to dusty Dubai for the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference – are they part of an official mission, or just some sort of petrostate posse of uninvited interlopers? International sojourner
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s hard to take Danielle Smith’s hysterical outburst at federal environment minister very seriously
Apparently Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is determined to make the flagging Trudeau Liberals look like the grownups in the room! Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault (Photo: UN Biodiversity, Creative Commons). What other explanation is there for Ms. Smith’s childish official outburst yesterday assailing federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault for his
Continue readingAlberta Politics: With freeze on renewables and vow to ignore federal net-zero rules, Alberta’s on its way to being a three-alarm international dumpster fire!
Whether or not Premier Danielle Smith and her enabler and office manager Rob Anderson carefully planned their freeze on renewable electricity generation last week or just came up with it on a whim, it’s now turning into a three-alarm international dumpster fire. Deputy Premier Nathan Neudorf (Photo: Linked-In). On Wednesday
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney’s ineffective COVID-19 strategy mirrors his failing response to world demand for cleaner energy
Memo to United Conservative Party issues managers: Your boss will need to take some time today away from defending his COVID-19 response to attack the New York State pension fund for its decision to dump all fossil fuel stocks in the next five years and eliminate investments in companies that
Continue readingAlberta Politics: We have met the enemy and he is us — Alberta in the midst of a climate damn emergency
VICTORIA — The world is waking up to the fact the climate emergency is, well, an emergency. This certainly isn’t good news for Alberta, although, perversely, it may be good news in the short term of the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney and governments like his in other
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Think what we could have accomplished if we’d concentrated on climate change like we’re focusing on COVID-19!
“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully,” observed Samuel Johnson, a great wit of the 18th Century. If you doubt the truth of this aphorism, consider the coverage of the greatest news story of the 21st
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Get used to it, Alberta, the world is learning how to talk about climate change
Remember the anger in Alberta in 2016 when some observers connected the dots between the fire that spring in Fort McMurray and the phenomenon known as global warming? Such statements were denounced as outrageous. Also insensitive — and, without doubt, a few of the comments on social media were. But
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Environmental Defence study concludes Canada’s emissions would soar if CAPP’s wish list were granted
Research published this morning by Environmental Defence Canada concludes adoption of the powerful Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers lobby group’s election wish list would increase Canadian greenhouse gas emissions by 116 million tonnes of CO² by 2030. “In that scenario, Canada’s oil and gas sector would be emitting 311 million
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Andrew Scheer’s big National Energy Corridor idea sure sounds a lot like NEP 2.0
Now that we are in the midst of a closely fought federal election campaign, it’s interesting to see the Conservative Party of Canada is open at least to some of the ideas of prime minister Trudeau. I speak, of course, of prime minister Pierre Trudeau and the National Energy Program
Continue readingAlberta Politics: It’s Jason Kenney, not Amnesty International, who’s poking holes in Alberta’s claim we produce the most ‘ethical oil’
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s petulant response yesterday to Amnesty International’s scorching letter about the dangers represented by his United Conservative Party Government’s approach to defending the fossil fuel industry exposes a surprising lack of judgment for a former senior federal cabinet minister. Rather than reassuring people elsewhere in Canada and
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose? Former Postmedia journalist hired by Kenney Government to ‘reset the record’
Energy Minister Sonya Savage announced last night, in the words of her news release, that “award-winning oil and gas journalist Claudia Cattaneo has joined the fight against the lies and myths being spread about Alberta’s energy industry.” Ms. Cattaneo, who retired last year as Postmedia’s Western Canada business columnist, complained
Continue readingAlberta Politics: How will Alberta politicians respond now that groups like Canada’s nurses are demanding action on climate change?
FREDERICTON – On the last day of their national convention in New Brunswick’s capital city today, the approximately 900 delegates of the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on Canadian governments to recognize climate change is a global crisis and a health emergency, and to act
Continue readingAlberta Politics: There’s not much Jason Kenney’s ‘war room’ can do to ease medical concerns about health impacts of climate change
FREDERICTON, N.B. – Whatever will Jason Kenney’s $30-million “war room” do about people like the nurses and physicians around the world growing increasingly troubled by the health impacts of climate change? They are, after all, members of two professions most trusted by the Canadians according to survey after survey going
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Jason Kenney fiddles (with climate policy) while Alberta burns
It is an irony, though not a particularly satisfying one to observe, that while Premier Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party Government moves swiftly to repeal Alberta’s carbon tax, the province is aflame, with more than 5,000 Albertans required to leave homes and communities in imminent danger of destruction. It is
Continue readingAlberta Politics: ‘Foreign funded special interests’ and Jason Kenney’s United Conservative Party: The ‘New Conspiracism’ comes to Alberta
The new conspiracism has come to Alberta! What is the “New Conspiracism,” you ask, and how is it different from the old conspiracism? “‘Classic’ conspiracy theories … arise in response to real events – the assassination of John F. Kennedy, say, or the terrorist attacks of September 11th,” observed Elizabeth Kolbert
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Not a lot of light between UCP and Alberta Party ‘Ministry of Truth’ schemes, or for that matter the NDP approach
Alberta Party Leader Stephen Mandel got a couple of things right about Jason Kenney’s plan to establish a “war room” in the Ministry of Energy to pump out belligerent propaganda attacking environmentalists, other governments and private citizens who fail to support of Alberta’s wishes for endless oilsands expansion with sufficient
Continue readingAlberta Politics: While Albertans panicked about state of the oilsands, the Big Five bitumen-extraction corporations made billions
While Albertans have been in flap over the state of the province’s oilsands industry, the Big Five Oilsands extraction corporations have been raking in billions. “Despite the 2014 oil price crash and the ongoing hand-wringing over pipelines and the price differential, the reality is the Big Five oilsands producers have
Continue readingAlberta Politics: The Day We Burned Ole DC Down? It was today, actually … 204 years ago
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Day We Burned Ole DC Down? It was today, actually. But if this was big news 204 years ago, when the fire was actually lit by the Royal Marines and sundry British Army regiments – revenge for the Americans burning down York, now part of Toronto,
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Guest Post: In a democracy, quiet is rarely a good sign, and Alberta’s relationship with Big Oil is very quiet indeed
PHOTOS: Part of the Jackpine Oilsands Mine north of Fort McMurray, formerly owned by Shell and now operated by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (Photo: Pembina Institute.) Below: Author Kevin Taft. Guest Post by Kevin Taft Kevin Taft is a best-selling author, well-known speaker, and former provincial politician in Alberta. He
Continue reading