Premier is not a climate change denier

Opinion

My goodness. Wab Kinew — the most popular premier in Canada — is being denounced as a climate change denier! I guess there are worse things, but I mean …

Tenured academics, true believers, environmentalists and others have worked themselves up to a state of near hysteria by remarks the premier made about the possibility of building a pipeline to transport natural gas, or maybe oil, to the Port of Churchill.

Who knows why he made the remark — perhaps his eye was more on the future of Churchill than a pipeline — but everybody can calm down. That pipeline will never be built. It flounders on some of the same rocks as large-scale water export schemes; economics and terrain. There are also many more attractive alternatives.

An implication the critics also drew from Kinew’s remarks is that the premier believes that we have to, at least in the short term, support Canada’s oil and gas industry. More howls of protest, although he has recently declined to sign on to an Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario agreement to route an export-oriented energy pipeline to Eastern Canada.

I don’t believe the premier is a climate change denier, but I do believe some of his critics are reality deniers.

One very prominent critic — a highly credentialed academic — has stated “the world is rapidly shifting away from fossil fuels.” The data say otherwise.

The “fossil fuels are on the way out” school points out that renewables are now cheaper than fossil, hydro or nuclear power. This is great news, but where these renewables are the predominant source of new electricity it is usually to meet new demand, not replace existing smoke stacks. And the demand, particularly if we hope to electrify all transportation and service the exponential growth of the AI industry — for example, 20 per cent of Ireland’s electric production is consumed by data centres — is about to explode.

In 2023, global energy related greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 40 gigatonnes for the first time ever. In 2024, construction of coal-fired generating stations in China reached an all-time high. World oil consumption continues to hover around 100 million barrels a day. The U.S., having withdrawn from the Paris Accord, has adopted climate change denial as official policy. It is now the largest oil producer in the world, much of it for export — it has just “sold” half a trillion dollars of fossil fuels to the EU — and is cultivating other new markets for its oil and liquified natural gas.

Another uncomfortable reality: however aggressively we reduce our emissions, while the world keeps burning coal, oil and gas, it will have no effect on the trajectory of climate change; nor on our forest fire danger. And while the world keeps burning the stuff, they will get it somewhere even if we completely shutter our oil industry.

This is not an argument for doing nothing. On the contrary, we should think big, being all in on renewable energy, aggressively building as much capacity as we can. In this regard, the premier might consider replacing the unimaginative and lacklustre board of Manitoba Hydro who appear to be good accountants but pathetic strategists. Of course, we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions where feasible and be all-in on climate change adaptation.

A coast-to-coast-to-coast energy grid is a “nation-building” project if ever there was one, and will require an unprecedented degree of intergovernmental collaboration. Being in the exact centre of the country, Manitoba’s involvement — leadership, in fact — will be critical to the enterprise.

None of this can happen without a prosperous economy. Now, let’s not exaggerate the contribution to Canada’s GDP from the oil and gas industry, but it’s not insignificant and is regionally, very significant. And there is considerable room for expansion through new overseas markets.

This is, I confess, a terrible thing to say, in the face of the overarching reality of climate change.

But the short-term reality is this: the world is not rapidly moving away from fossil fuels. Reducing our emissions beyond what’s economically feasible is bad policy. Our economy is under unprecedented threat. We will need every tool in our economic tool box (and a united Canada) to provide the economic wherewithal to prepare us for a carbon-neutral economy, and that includes, for now, a healthy oil and gas sector. If private capital supports expansion, have at it.

Our premier has never suggested pumping public money into the oil and gas business. I believe that he has grasped the short-term urgency to buttress all sectors of our economy and that includes governments facilitating — without compromising the environment or investing public funds — oil and gas industry expansion through improving governments’ own approvals processes.

There are climate change deniers — including the federal government of the United States — but Kinew is not one of them.

» Norman Brandson is the former deputy minister of the Manitoba departments of environment, conservation and water stewardship. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.