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As governments bicker over the inevitability of climate change and carbon emissions reduction targets, we North Americans have it in within ourselves to set a global standard for a revisionist energy policy that could encourage other “dirty energy” nations to follow suit.
The International Energy Agency has cited two statistics that are either frightening or encouraging, depending on which side your support lies. They predict that the global renewable energy capacity “will rise 50 per cent in five years.” Oil production will plateau by 2030, weakening thereafter.
Somehow, in the midst of a doom-and-gloom scenario convincingly argued by environmentalists, scientists and Greta Thunberg types, the possibility of resorting to cleaner energy could be the fulcrum needed to spare humanity and global ecosystems from two centuries of human mismanagement.
Financiers and banks appeared to have listened to the forecast of our impending doom and have moved something like “48 trillion US dollars” into the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative’s Principles for Responsible Banking — a commitment to endorse business policy with the Paris Climate Agreement. Vast sums are being marshaled to help humanity transition from dirty energy to green energy projects.
This is where Canada and America can step up to the plate.
A concerted shift to renewable energy projects in Canada and the G20 nations could offset some of the industrial pollutants emitted in dirty energy countries like India, which has 10 of the world’s most polluted cities within its borders.
If the richer nations were cleaner, then that would leave the dirtier economies producing the worst of the emissions. Canada could offer to help these economies by outfitting them with green energy technologies or funding to help with their transition.
Negotiations with and encouragement of these countries might create an environmental change on a global scale that would reduce the greenhouse gases warming our climate. Minimal levels of oil production should remain for the essentials like the military.
Christopher Mansour
Barrie
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