tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4804513671389132165.post4881858577001749832..comments2023-07-25T07:08:51.934-06:00Comments on Bill Longstaff: Will Notley get a pipeline built?Bill Longstaffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15883751372039947365noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4804513671389132165.post-34191389956410175422016-04-11T13:00:16.722-06:002016-04-11T13:00:16.722-06:00One other thing. Notley, like her conservative pre...One other thing. Notley, like her conservative predecessors, shows no interest in doing the environmentally responsible thing of fully refining bitumen into crude on site, in Alberta. Why is it that, Tory or NDP, they insist on exporting hazmat oil that no one can clean up when it's inevitably spilled at sea? I churns my stomach to hear them use the word "tidewater." Economists use the term "externality" to describe costs or risks on party pawns off on another, keeping it off their own financial statements. Fouling the atmosphere is one such externality. Transporting bitumen via pipelines and supertankers transiting pristine and vulnerable coastal waters is another. It all comes back to the fact that bitumen isn't really economically viable. To boost the bottom line risks and losses have to be foisted onto others. Notley and her New Democrats are in on that too.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4804513671389132165.post-72610284152941531722016-04-11T11:53:04.510-06:002016-04-11T11:53:04.510-06:00It's a simple question, Bill. Do you accept th...<br />It's a simple question, Bill. Do you accept the powerful and growing scientific consensus that, if we're to have any realistic hope of limiting global warming to 2C, we must leave at least 80% of known fossil energy reserves in the ground, untouched, stranded for all time? If you accept the science if follows that you accept that the world has to shift to the lowest-carbon fossil energy options during the transition to clean energy. High-carbon fossil fuels must be the first stranded. That means coal and bitumen barring some massive investment in costly and inefficient CCS systems that no one, including premier Notley, is advocating.<br /><br />I don't support the fanciful Leap Manifesto for the same reasons as Cliff of "Rusty Idols":<br /><br />"The Leap Manifesto was a masterpiece of high level manipulative communication. Long sections full of stuff that all progressives can find to agree with but inextricably bound with poison pills in every section couched in rhetoric deliberately designed to force 'If you disagree with this that means you also disagree with THIS' false conclusions. I've already had one earnest and slightly hysterical young ND tell me that opposing Leap means 'attacking our environmental and indigenous allies'. Leap and its supporters rhetoric is explicitly designed to result in such nonsense."<br /><br />There's simply way too much of Naomi Klein in that Manifesto. I bought her book "This Changes Everything" and was left very underwhelmed. Sad, really.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.com