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.
I imagine little Swiss, German, and other European children will be acting naughty on purpose this year in the hopes Santa brings them some coal so they can power their homes.
Canada has been watching from across the ocean as an energy crisis rages across Europe. And while a majority of Canadians agree we need to be doing more to be energy sufficient for ourselves and our allies, there are many who still seem unconvinced – particularly our political leaders.
Let me give a few examples of the dystopian nightmare taking place over there.
The country of Switzerland recently announced it will ask its people to turn off their video games in an effort to help fight the energy shortages.
Let’s pause and think about this for a second. We’re talking about Switzerland. A fully developed European nation doesn’t have enough power to let teenagers play Fortnite.
On top of banning the playing of video games, Switzerland has also said it may ask people to stop driving electric vehicles (EVs) because they’re sucking up too much juice when they charge. (Remember when politicians told us to just buy an EV if the carbon tax made gas too expensive for us?)
And they’re prepared to shut down sports stadiums and leisure businesses if the energy crunch gets too bad.
Over in France they’re cancelling short-haul flights.
Volkswagen in Germany is having trouble keeping the lights on at its manufacturing plants.
In Poland, people are digging up coal in their backyards – apparently it’s a thing that can be done, but is illegal – in order to heat their homes.
And across the continent people are being told to leave that thermostat alone.
This headline from The New York Times pretty well sums it up: “Bundle up, and get ready for outages.”
We’re talking about some of the most advanced nations on earth heading for a very cold and very dark winter.
You can imagine scenes of kids having to wear coats to bed to prevent them from freezing. I picture mothers using candles to warm up formula bottles in the middle of the night. I picture fathers spending their time after work going out and desperately searching for things to burn.
Makes you wonder if there’s a business case to sell these countries some energy, eh?
It’s a disaster. Yet it’s a disaster that many have been warning would happen for a while now.
The so-called transition off of oil and gas and over to supplemental energy sources was always going to result in chaos. And Europe is now living through it.
Wind turbines and solar panels serve a purpose. But they have the highest material input needs of any energy source, and they don’t provide steady energy.
In the United States, where they unleashed fracking, they reduced their emissions by some 20% – and that’s with no carbon tax either, mind you.
We in Canada have been transforming our energy supplies from coal, over to liquid natural gas, and it helped us reduce domestic emissions.
If we could ramp up production for ourselves, and utilize our huge energy reserves to displace coal, wood, and dung burning in developing nations, imagine the global emissions we could slash.
Yet in the province of Quebec, which is running out of energy, its Premier, Francois Legault, banned energy exploration in his province in the name of the climate. Talk about missing the obvious solution.
It doesn’t have to be the case that dealing with environmental issues means you let families freeze in their homes and just give up on having civilization.
We can have reliable, affordable, sustainable energy like natural gas and nuclear, and use carbon technologies to keep emissions low. And no one has to burn garbage to keep their kids from freezing – it’s really a win-win.
Germany just signed a 15-year deal with Qatar to supply LNG. Why the hell wasn’t it Canada signing that deal?
We have to let go of the failed eco-radical ideologies of the past that are still holding us back.
Most Canadians rightly see the bounty of resources we have here as an opportunity (and a business case) rather than something to be left in the ground. Will our political leaders sit up and notice the European crisis, and change course to avoid the same dystopia happening here?
In the 20th century, Canada created a great name for itself as a peacekeeper. Let’s make the 21st century the one where we’re known as leaders in ethical and responsible resource production for the free world.
In the meantime, let us hope and pray the toll this winter takes on Europe is as minimal as possible.
