The gospel on climate change has been that, first and foremost, fossil fuels must go. Coal, oil, gas (liquefied or otherwise)… out, out out. Close the oilsands, cancel the pipelines, end the fracking, get rid of the nuclear plants while you’re at it.
The imperative is all about ridding the world of supply, getting us off our existing addictions, whether or not there was an alternative available to take its place.
It was taken for granted … or on blind faith … that the alternatives would be there. Technology would advance, innovation would flourish. Just get rid of the bad stuff and we’ll worry about supplying the good stuff later. It’ll work, I promise you. We can do this! No more coal! No more coal!
It made for great demonstrations. Excellent chants. And the politicians listened. So here we are in a world desperate for more energy, and it’s not available. Whoops. The crises crowding us on several fronts have much to do with policies that put popularity ahead of pragmatism.
For the rest of this column: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-the-wests-clean-energy-push-empowered-russia-and-china