I only just came across it, but back in January CBC News asked a bold question: can the oil sands be phased out?
Related:
- Objections: cash, jobs, and taxes
- Re-training
- This is your adjustment time
- ‘Shut down the oil sands’ is not an extreme position
- Two things Canada’s oil industry needs to understand
- Climate change, Alberta politics, and hydrocarbon producers unwilling to act
- American unconventional oil and the economic viability of the oil sands
- Peak oil and climate change
The CBC piece reaches a fatalistic conclusion:
“The phase-out of the oilsands will be driven by global geopolitics, markets and technology,” said Johnston. “And governments, whether they be in Edmonton or Ottawa, will be a marginal player in that story.”
If this sort of reasoning is sound, governments in general can’t do much to determine what the future will be like, making activism and advocacy pointless.