Well... at least they're being honest about it, this time...

Full disclosure: I live in Alberta. Yes, this does go some way to explaining my love of meat, but I should also mention that, like many Albertans, I work for a company that prospers when the price of oil is high. I don't work in the oil industry itself, but it's a six degrees of separation kinda thing -- you don't have to go too many degrees down the chain before your job connects to the oil business in some way.

That said, like many other Albertans, I've been frustrated for decades by right-wing governments whose sole concern seemed to be filling the coffers of the oil companies at taxpayer expense. There's a reason why the NDP were voted into government a few years ago; they were only voted out because the economy was stubbornly still not bouncing back... because the price of oil was not bouncing back... because Saudia Arabia were essentially dumping oil into the market in a bid to drive other producers (like Alberta) out of business.

Well, guess what: that's working. You see, Alberta oil isn't so much an oil well business anymore as an oils sands business, and oil sands bitumen is more expensive to extract, transport, and refine than Saudi Arabia's exported product. When oil was $140 a barrel, that wasn't a big deal, but the price of a barrel of oil is nearly zero, at the moment (when it isn't below zero), and bitumen extraction just isn't profitable when the extracted product is essentially worthless.

Alberta's problem is not a lack of pipelines to carry our filthy, filthy tar to market; the problem is that nobody wants our tar at any price right now, so there essentially is no market. So, what's a recently elected right-wing/oil-friendly government to do when your province's entire economy is basically fuelled by oil revenues at a time when there are no oil revenues... and when COVID-19 expenses are pushing your balance sheet well into the red at the same time?

Well.. you could start working to transition your economy off oil. It would take years, but it's possible for a city like Calgary (which is where all those oil companies have their head offices, by the way) to become a clean energy capitol in as little as ten years.

Or, you can do what Alberta's Conservative government apparently is doing, and try to take advantage of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders to ram through unpopular oilsands pipeline projects at a time when people are unable to congregate in order to protest your bullshit. Yes, really.

From Vice.com:

On a recent podcast appearance, Alberta’s energy minister decided to say the quiet part loud.

“Now is a great time to be building a pipeline because you can’t have protests of more than 15 people,” Sonya Savage said to the hosts of the CAODC Podcast. “Let’s get it built.”

Seriously, what the actual fuck?

Remember, I live in Alberta; I generally prosper when the oil industry prospers, and this shit is making even my blood boil. Beyond. The. Pale.

Greta Thunberg's response was succinct:

Climate activist Greta Thunberg commented on the statements on Twitter Tuesday morning, writing, “well, at least we are seeing some honesty for once... Unfortunately this (is) how large parts of the world are run.”

She's not wrong about that, either. This, people, is why climate change policy is such a mess in most of the world's biggest carbon emitter countries.

This, people, is why we can't have nice things.