What will we tell our grandchildren, indeed.
By Jenny Yeremiy and Roger Gagne
To seek answers on water quality concerns, Jenny attended the Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation’s Town Hall with Premier Smith. An Okotoks local took his 30 seconds to ask the critical question: “Does [the Government of Alberta (GOA] support the science that climate change is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels?” Their responses are instructive; they seek to obscure the urgency and severity of the climate crisis by focusing on a 1,000-year-scale rather than the fossil fuel-burning window of the last 150 years.
Let’s remind ourselves of what's up, both locally and globally.
Locally, there is evidence of harmful pollution in our air, water, snowpack, and most notably in aquatic species, which impacts human consumption. Alberta’s oilsands emissions show a 143% increase since 2005. Premier Smith omits the early warning signs that Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) expansion is not worth the risk, she fails to mention the seven fold underestimation of emission from idle wells across the producing province. She says nothing of the GOA lifting flaring regulations meant to safeguard Albertans, ensuring our resource revenue is maintained and oil and gas reserves are preserved. While Premier Smith harps on about federal overreach, the Alberta Energy Regulator’s central mandate is being violated, as is the rule of law.
Premier Smith demands new pipelines be built to double Alberta’s oil and gas production using her Rube Goldberg “decarbonization” machine which includes carbon capture and storage (CCS), direct air capture (DAC), and transport rail to pipeline emission offset fantasies. The $34.9 billion Canadian-taxpayer Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline investment is already facing a “very tight North American heavy market”. Even if annual cash flow were to exceed $1 billion, TMX would not pay out for more than 30 years. In 2024, it was $712 million.
Globally, fossil fuel markets are displaying fragility. The Indonesian coal industry is risking a tough transition as demand declines. The LNG shipping sector is under pressure as nearly 60 carriers sit idle. China is highlighting that LNG trucking may play a minimal role in driving LNG imports. Underperformance visible in the S&P500. Pakistan is selling excess LNG amid supply glut. And just this week, both oil and gas storage surprises in the United States signal a bearish dynamic in both markets.
What could Alberta do instead? Dr. Tricia Stadnyk of the University of Calgary says it best: clean water should be the central focus of all decision-making. Instead of increasing Alberta’s annual freshwater contamination at a rate of about 270 million m3 per year or 4.65 million barrels per day, we should be restoring it. A doubling of oil sands production would contaminate more than 9 million barrels of freshwater per day. Premier Smith, is it acceptable to pollute 9 million barrels a day of Alberta’s water on a going forward basis? It is not.
Focusing first on Alberta’s water would kickstart a multi-decadal $260+ billion restoration economy. It would clean up both the conventional and oilsands industries, supported by Polluter Pay, which was the foundational principle in the development of our regulatory framework, and which continues to be strengthened by the work of scientists and researchers.
In this scenario, rather than build out new developments, polluting industries clean-up and restore lands to meet Species at Risk objectives. In 2022, the GOA itself wrote these very objectives into provincial law with precedent-setting sub regional plans, enabled through land stewardship legislation.
A water focus would limit financial exposure and climate damages. It would also allow us to stop the malpractice of clearcut logging and reckless gravel mining of our vital waterways and natural water filtration systems.
Instead, the GOA and their business-as-usual backers are hurtling the province towards financial and ecological collapse. With all the data at their disposal, they are revising or, worse, abandoning our country’s goals and commitments by villainizing climate policies, rather than to suck it up and deal. They hobble the renewable energy industry by requiring the kind of financial deposits that legacy industries are not being asked for, and continue to bail out bad businesses at the expense of companies in good standing, by illegally prioritizing solvency ahead of liability.
In Okotoks, Jenny was brought to tears when a grandmother asked this question of the Premier and Minister: “What are we going to tell our kids and grandkids when we have no clean water left and cannot undo what you’ve done?” We know today that Albertans want genuine responsible development, yet to Premier Smith and her government, “responsible development” is just a sales pitch and a smokescreen for their single-minded devotion to the self-serving fossil fuel industry which is entering its sunset years, and refuses to go quietly.
What will we tell our grandkids, indeed.
Jenny Yeremiy is a Geophysicist and oil and gas liability expert who hosts The Gravity Well podcast to share the stories of the people looking out for our home.
Roger Gagne, founder of the Climate Plan Alberta initiative, has been working at fostering neglected conversations around climate change for over a decade.