The Federal and Provincial Governments are selling more fossil fuel development (pipelines, production, and gas-powered power plants for AI data centres) without environmental impact assessments and without accounting for past investment failures. For example, our $35 billion Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline investment will never be paid back as users are lobbying for toll reductions.
Seems timely to revisit Bob Morrison and I’s interview from last September with Dr. Brad Stelfox (who also appeared in The Harms of Coal Mining), a zoologist and land-use scientist who has spent over 35 years developing cumulative effects models that integrate overlapping land uses—such as roads, agriculture, oil and gas, and forestry—to show how they reshape landscapes in Alberta and beyond. His work focuses on linking social, economic, and environmental dimensions, quantifying benefits like jobs and royalties alongside impacts on natural capital, including biodiversity, soil carbon, and water quality and quantity. Stelfox argues that most models used by industry and government chase “win‑win‑win” scenarios and fail to honestly represent trade‑offs, leading to a narrative that Alberta can expand all land uses without compromising water or biodiversity—something he says has never been achieved anywhere. He points to evidence of profound losses in natural capital since Alberta became a province, with rapid ongoing degradation of water, biodiversity, and soil carbon.
In other words, Alberta and Canada need to adopt a “Less i$ more” economic model: where more land (water, air, and biodiversity) is restored rather than developed.
Brad, Bob, and I discuss how Alberta’s growing population and sharply increased per‑capita resource use have driven extensive externalization of natural capital, meaning environmental costs are left out of economic and political decision‑making.He explains that humans and land use inevitably consume water, carbon, and biodiversity, and that Alberta is no longer just drawing on “interest” from these systems but is cutting deeply into the ecological “capital.” Using native mammals as an example, he estimates that pre‑European times they made up about 99.2% of biomass, whereas today Alberta has perhaps only 4% of its pre‑European native mammal biodiversity, with most biomass now in humans, livestock, and pets. Water quality and quantity have also deteriorated, with many prairie creeks ploughed over or converted to irrigation canals and parents reluctant to let children play in creeks due to health risks, especially in southern Alberta. He characterizes Alberta’s prevailing mindset as “me here now,” focused on short‑term economic growth and local interests rather than long‑term landscape health or the well‑being of future generations.
The discussion then zooms in on southern Alberta’s landscapes and water. Stelfox describes a west‑to‑east gradient where eastern lowlands have already lost most of their biodiversity and water quality, leaving little remaining natural capital to lose, while foothills and mountains—especially the eastern slopes—are now at greatest risk. These high‑elevation areas function as “water towers,” accumulating snow and releasing critical spring flows that support fish, wildlife, and all downstream land uses, including logging, agriculture, mining, oil and gas, transportation, and residential development. He estimates that Alberta receives roughly 700–800 billion cubic meters of precipitation annually, with about three‑quarters evaporating and 130–150 billion cubic meters flowing through rivers and aquifers, forming the basis of all land uses. Yet these headwaters are being incrementally eroded by expanding acreages, roads, recreation, cattle, and especially intensive logging, which alters hydrology, increases sediment, reduces soil organics, and undermines aquifer recharge. He argues that current forestry practices diverge from best management practices on paper and are not adequately enforced, and he questions why mining, off‑highway vehicles, and riparian residential development are allowed in such critical headwater zones.
Finally, the conversation turns to policy, economics, and the difficulty of change. Stelfox notes that the Alberta Land Stewardship Act was intended to sit above other legislation and force explicit trade‑off discussions about limits on water withdrawals, timber harvests, fossil fuel extraction, livestock numbers, and even population growth, but these ideas became politically unpalatable once industry and government realized they implied constraints on economic expansion. He observes that all major land‑use sectors—forestry, energy, agriculture, transportation, residential, recreation—have experienced exponential growth yet still see their current scale as “unacceptably too small,” planning for further expansion under a growth‑driven economic model that systematically depletes natural capital. I connect biodiversity loss to Indigenous community impacts and Species At Risk (such as caribou and trout), arguing that these are indicators of ecological and ultimately human risk, and I highlight how extensive piped‑water systems around Lethbridge and Edmonton show that society is already overdrawing its “water bank account.”
A Less i$ more economy is needed, where industrial sites and access ways no longer serving us are re-naturalized for ecosystem function at scale across so-called Alberta and Canada.
You need to help Brad, Bob, and me create the political will for the polluter to finally pay.
