Keeping Our Cool
Lecture by Andrew Weaver. Tory Lecture Building (Saskatchewan Drive & 113 St). Wed., Nov. 26 (7pm). Free

When University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver thinks of Alberta’s oilsands industry, he doesn’t imagine the environmental harmlessness Premier Ed Stelmach promotes abroad. Nor does he invoke the names of evil lands from fantasy novels. Rather, he sees a metaphor in the struggling auto industry.

Weaver, a lead author for the Nobel Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, notes that Honda and Toyota chose to build compact, fuel-sipping cars while other auto giants stubbornly kept building large and inefficient vehicles. “GM decided that they thought people want to buy big SUVs,” says Weaver. “Well, GM was right for a short period of time.” Now, however, the auto giant is looking for government bailouts. “Rather than positioning itself for tomorrow, it was trying to reap the benefits of today.”

Weaver thinks Alberta is similarly failing to prepare for its future: “Rather than recognizing ‘We’re wealthy now, let’s try to use that wealth to position ourselves for tomorrow’ — which is what a good business plan would do — they’re propping up something that’s going to have to change.”

Weaver notes that Alberta’s oilsands industry is currently a “poster child of environmental degradation.” The Alberta government is spending $25 million to rebrand the massive project, but as Stelmach works to polish Alberta’s image abroad, his message of environmental harmlessness is being challenged by a legion of scientists and writers both inside and outside the province. 

The oilsands are responsible for about five per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the province, but Weaver is unimpressed by that stat. “That’s hardly relevant,” he says, adding that Alberta needs to realize it is “going to have to move, as a global society, away from our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Weaver has harsh words for the province’s climate change plan in his new book, Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World. The province says it will cut projected greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent by 2050, but “projected emissions” are calculated by assuming that emissions will continue to rise. “It’s creative use of statistics to imply reductions that sound all impressive, but are actually not all that impressive at all,” Weaver says, explaining that calculating the reduction using current emissions levels drastically changes the outcome. “When you actually look at it, Alberta’s planning a 14 per cent reduction from 2005 levels by 2050,” he says. “The word ‘shameful’ is probably appropriate.”

The federal government, by contrast, plans to cut emissions by 60 to 70 per cent by 2050. “What would this mean?” Weaver asks. “It would mean that if Canada met the low target, the 60 per cent one, then everyone in Canada would have to cut their emissions by 81 per cent and Alberta would only have to cut theirs by 14 per cent. The disconnect between the Alberta and federal initiatives is staggering.”

Weaver suggests Alberta take a lesson from its western neighbour. B.C.’s Liberal government plans to cut emissions by 33 per cent of 2007 levels by 2020, and at least 80 per cent by 2050. “B.C. has recognized that this is a very serious problem that needs to be dealt with now,” Weaver says. “And it also recognizes that there’s enormous opportunity . . . because the world is going to have to move away from its dependence on fossil fuels and into more renewables.”