Obvious is obvious.
No long-term future in tar sands, says Alberta's premier
The leader of Canada’s biggest oil-producing province has declared she sees no long-term future in fossil fuels, predicting Alberta would wean itself off dirty energy within a century.
In an early reveal of her forthcoming new energy policy, Alberta’s Rachel Notley said she would fight climate change by cleaning up the tar sands, shutting down coal-fired power plants, and converting to wind and solar power.
Notley also forecast an eventual future beyond fossil fuels – a dramatic change for Alberta - and a track that has put her on a collision course with Canada’s conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper.
The Alberta leader is due to unveil the new policy ahead of the international UN climate conference in Paris this December.
The province sits atop the world’s third-biggest known carbon reserves in the tar sands, and has rapidly ramped up production to some 2 m barrels of crude a day. By 2020, the province will account for more than a third of Canada’s total carbon pollution, according to government figures.
Notley, whose election last May broke the Conservatives’ 44-year lock on power in the province, said she intends that to change. “I don’t think we are defined by energy. Certainly in the short to medium term that is an asset that we have, so we have to look at how we develop it carefully and responsibly because of the obligation we have to the people employed in the industry,” she told the Guardian.
She went on: “Do I see that as our reason for being 100 years from now? Well, I hope we will have learned a lesson of diversification by then.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...erm-future-in-tar-sands-alberta-rachel-notley
No long-term future in tar sands, says Alberta's premier
The leader of Canada’s biggest oil-producing province has declared she sees no long-term future in fossil fuels, predicting Alberta would wean itself off dirty energy within a century.
In an early reveal of her forthcoming new energy policy, Alberta’s Rachel Notley said she would fight climate change by cleaning up the tar sands, shutting down coal-fired power plants, and converting to wind and solar power.
Notley also forecast an eventual future beyond fossil fuels – a dramatic change for Alberta - and a track that has put her on a collision course with Canada’s conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper.
The Alberta leader is due to unveil the new policy ahead of the international UN climate conference in Paris this December.
The province sits atop the world’s third-biggest known carbon reserves in the tar sands, and has rapidly ramped up production to some 2 m barrels of crude a day. By 2020, the province will account for more than a third of Canada’s total carbon pollution, according to government figures.
Notley, whose election last May broke the Conservatives’ 44-year lock on power in the province, said she intends that to change. “I don’t think we are defined by energy. Certainly in the short to medium term that is an asset that we have, so we have to look at how we develop it carefully and responsibly because of the obligation we have to the people employed in the industry,” she told the Guardian.
She went on: “Do I see that as our reason for being 100 years from now? Well, I hope we will have learned a lesson of diversification by then.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environm...erm-future-in-tar-sands-alberta-rachel-notley
