Gregory Tobin is the Digital Strategy Director for the Canada Strong & Proud network of pages. Working in graphic design, video editing, social media management and much more. His career has seen him work on numerous political campaigns across the country.
David Suzuki announced he is leaving the Nature of Things on CBC. He’s been hosting the show for 44 years, an impressive achievement. He assured watchers that he’s not retiring, just moving on to do more activism.
But he said something else that was extremely revealing.
“Overall I feel like a failure, being part of a movement that has failed,” Suzuki told the CBC.
I don’t disagree. The eco-radical movement has failed in the modern era. And it failed because it stopped coming up with new ideas a long time ago.
Chants of banning, blocking, cancelling, and taxing were the hip and cool thing back in the 60s and 70s, man. Like the mullet and the 8-track. They had their time, but then society moved on to more advanced technologies. Like decent haircuts and blu-rays.
Unfortunately, we can’t say the same thing about the broader eco-radical movement. They’re still shouting the same slogans, fighting for their same failed ideas, some still wearing the same outfits.
Now to be fair, there were a lot of environmental issues back then that needed addressing. And some of the old-school environmentalists like Suzuki alerted us to important things like maintaining our forests, keeping our oceans clean, and learning to live alongside nature.
But, perhaps ironically, the activism of those like Suzuki ended up forcing the industries they protested against to adapt to a changing world. Rather than shut down, these companies got to work and came up with better, more efficient, cleaner, and more sustainable processes.
To the point where today we boast some of the best, if not the top, industries in the world. From agriculture, natural gas, aluminium, mining, forestry, oil, pipelines, fisheries, and so much more.
But while our industries got so much better at what they did, eco-activists like Suzuki just kept shouting the same things. Demanding our world-class oil and gas industry phase itself out. They refused to see the amazing progress that has been made, and have now become dinosaurs. Outdated, anachronistic, and ultimately unhelpful.
Over the last several years countries all over the world went all-in on the “transition” off of oil and gas. Our own Prime Minister and his CN-tower climbing pal Steven Guilbeault are spearheading the Canadian version.
Blocking all kinds of projects, letting pipelines get cancelled, hampering our essential industries, emissions caps on farmers, taxing the hell out of Canadians. They’ve tried it all – yet it hasn’t done a damn thing to slow down global emissions. And it’s left the world dangerously vulnerable as the invasion of Ukraine has so starkly shown.
Germany shut down all its coal and nuclear power plants, confident they could run their nation on wind and solar. And then the chickens came home to roost, except they got chopped up in the wind turbines on the way there. Now Germany is in the midst of a nation-wide second-guessing experience while they all go out and buy wood stoves.
Across Europe, similar disasters are unfolding for nations who are now realizing their electrical grids can’t rely on energy that goes away when the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing.
For our part here in Canada, with some of the most abundant oil reserves in the world, we’re looking at, in some cases, tripled energy bills. All thanks to hampered industries, red tape, and carbon taxes from the out-dated ideas coming from our own eco-radical leadership.
While we talk of phasing out our industries, dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping continue to ignore every accord, agreement, and UN declaration while making all kinds of obviously empty “green” promises. And we’re watching Putin make a boatload of money selling his fossil fuels to nations desperate for energy.
I can see why Mr. Suzuki feels so melancholic. But what he fails, or downright refuses, to see is that the solution to a lot of these problems is at our fingertips. Canadian oil and gas is a game changer for the globe. We could get so many countries off of burning coal, wood, and other fuels and on to our natural gas – which the EU is labelling as a sustainable energy source, go figure.
And if we utilise that in combination with emerging carbon technologies, we can make it all low-emissions. Working towards actually reducing global carbon dioxide levels, while simultaneously ensuring we and the rest of the globe have reliable, affordable, and safe supplies of energy for the future.
When Prime Minister Trudeau said last month that he questioned the “business case” of helping our German allies to get natural gas, he was rightly and universally ridiculed for it. His ideology has lost the moral high ground. The emperor’s ideas have no clothes.
72% of Canadians agree that we should be working to produce more energy, so we can help ourselves and our allies at the same time.
While police states grow, and liberties slip away for too many around the world – it is the ethical imperative of nations like Canada to step up and do the morally and economically right thing and provide the world with our premier resources. And we’ll grow our GDP at the same time, win-win.
Not doing so would be a failure. And that, dear reader, is just the nature of things.
Gregory Tobin is the Digital Strategy Director for the Canada Strong & Proud network of pages. Working in graphic design, video editing, social media management and much more. His career has seen him work on numerous political campaigns across the country.
