According to Margaret Wente, or at least what she heard from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, Athabasca bitumen is a godsend for the poorest, most vulnerable people of the world.
Well, oil is not the devil. In fact, oil and other energy resources are the salvation for billions of impoverished people in developing nations. You can’t have human development without energy. And without energy – which, for the next few decades, mostly means fossil fuels – they will continue to lead miserable, degrading lives. So the next time you hear someone argue that we should leave our oil in the ground, give a thought to the people sleeping in the streets of Calcutta. It would be nice if they could cook their food with solar energy. But that day is still a long way off.
The biggest demand for energy no longer comes from the developed nations, where carbon emissions are actually in decline. It’s coming from India, China and the rest of the developing world, which now account for the majority of global emissions every year. China now emits as much CO2 per person as the European Union. This dramatic shift in global emissions makes the Kyoto Protocol – which is based on the global distribution of emissions in 1990 – hopelessly obsolete.
I won't go on. In fact I'm just going to close this off now before I'm tempted to say what I think.
If you're not going to respond to her nonsense directly, why bother giving her yet another platform and directing traffic (and thus advertising dollars) to her employer's website? They're not going to return the favour.
ReplyDeleteFair point. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAu contraire Anonymous - by posting her nonsense for us to read here, many clicks to the Gob and Flail's site have been avoided. Possibly a fine way to avoid encouraging the nitwits.
ReplyDelete.. Wente blabbers n drools on .. I ignore her ignorance.. surely she 'studied' under Tom Flanagan and was inoculated against reality along with Harper, Kenney etc
ReplyDeleteCompletely in a different Universe from Patrick Lane
Any real Canadian understands the difference ..
Harper, Novak, Baird, Perrin, Clement, Oliver. Poilievre et al will keep shooting at the sun
http://www.timescolonist.com/patrick-lane-an-open-letter-to-all-the-wild-creatures-of-the-earth-1.717669
How in hell do these poor people she speaks of improve thier situation? How do they afford to pay for oil? And on it goes. No comment from you MOS about Obama's speech yesterday regarding the raising of minimum wages in the US. How does one continue on with enough energy to fight against these kinds of idiotic mind sets. Its like Peter Taylor writing an article in McCleans magazine about all the wealthy retired baby boomers in this country receiving discounts because they are over 65 and it ought to be curtailed. At the moment, there are 5 million retired people in this country and most of them are not baby boomers and living way below the proverty line. Mr. Taylor's article skews the truth of what is happening to retired people, most of them women. The Baby Boom generation began in 1946 and ended in 1968 if I remember correctly. So, what is going on with people like Wente? Are these people paid to write and say what they do? Or are they plainly people characterized by or proceeding from mental dullness. The poorer people are, the less time they have to think about the environment or anything else except where their next meal is coming from. Wente needs to think about that.
ReplyDelete