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What the Speaker means by “clean energy goals” doesn’t square with the Canadian government spin
By Natural Resources Defense Council | Liz Barratt-Brown
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Read this blog post on the originating site
Read the blog at NRDC’s Switchboard, including links.
Last night, the Premier of Alberta emerged from his dinner with U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with a thumbs-up – claiming it went “better than expected!” You can’t blame the beleaguered Premier to have expected a thrashing based on Alberta’s abysmal performance in regulating the extensive pollution and degradation in the tar sands. But there was something about it that had the air of the rehearsed.
That’s because, believe it or not, the Government of Alberta is working mightily – with the Canadian Federal government – to shoe-horn the tar sands into the U.S. clean energy economy agenda. But the Speaker herself made it clear in her statement – gracious and deferential as it was – that she was not talking about the tar sands when she referred to the millions of jobs that could be created in clean energy on both sides of the border. Instead she said, “Our discussion focused on more than the oil sands issue; we discussed the need for aggressive research and development on renewable energy and conservation technology.” She then continued, “Our mutual clean energy goals will drive innovation and create millions of jobs on both sides of the border.”
The only problem is that there is no agreement on what those “mutual clean energy goals” are. Canada has vastly underspent the U.S. on a per capita basis on investments in renewable energy and efficiency, and it has no regulatory framework for meeting its international commitments to reduce emissions of climate changing greenhouse gases. The provinces, on which most of the responsibility for regulating emissions falls, are at odds with one another. And the Federal government shelved its climate change plans last year, saying it would follow the U.S. lead.
That leaves Alberta on its own and, while it likes to boast that it has the first regulatory commitment to reducing emissions in North America, it is actually busy allowing them to increase – most driven by the tar sands expansion. By 2050, the Province will only have reduced its emissions by 14% from 2005 levels, and that’s only if most of the reductions aren’t offset by contributions to a “technology” fund that may be funneling money back into the tar sands.
There has been some spinning about how expansion of the tar sands is a way to back job creation. But, here again, the Speaker made it clear that the path forward to create jobs is not in expansion of fossil fuels, like the tar sands, but in renewable energy and efficiency strategies that help consumers use less energy for the same performance. Many studies back her up on this. A Berkeley jobs study found that the U.S. could gain 918,000 to 1.9 million jobs, and household income could grow by $488 to $1,176 by 2020 with a comprehensive energy and climate policy.
In fact, along the Canadian border, the study says states could realize 190,000-279,000 clean energy jobs, and along the corridor planned for the next big proposed tar sands pipeline, the Keystone XL, another 70,000-255,000 jobs. Pipeline jobs are largely temporary so these jobs would surely be more welcome. Our opinion research shows that Americans want innovative, homegrown solutions to our energy crisis. And, even though Canada may be our friendly neighbor to the north, Americans still think it’s a better idea to develop our own fuels. The Speaker certainly understands this, and however polite the meetings may have been, at the end of the day, the President and his top policy leaders in Congress are going to pursue permanent jobs in energy sources that are unlimited and under our control so we can truly be more self-sufficient.
We may be, as the Speaker said, “in the same boat” today but at some point, we’ll have to bail out if there are not opportunities for the U.S. to steadfastly work with Canada to do its part in realizing a true clean energy economy.
Tagged with: alberta, pelosi-markey, natural resources defense council, stelmach
