Jim Warren is a recovering academic as retired adjunct professor and lecturer in environmental sociology at the University of Regina.
A dragline at the Poplar River Mine on Aug. 27. Photo by Brian Zinchuk
Dealing with challenges like Ottawa’s ten-year war on conventional energy and the Liberals’ economically ruinous, one-size-fits-all climate change policies does get tiresome. The effort becomes especially wearing when there is so little good news mixed in with the bad.
One of the latest bits of uncomfortable news to afflict supporters of energy production in Saskatchewan is the lawsuit filed on July 18 opposing the province’s decision to continue using coal for generating electricity beyond Ottawa’s 2030 deadline.
But wait. When you look a little closer there are a couple of silver nuggets in that dark cloud for supporters of conventional energy.
One of them is Brian Zinchuk’s in-depth reporting on the anti-coal lawsuit. The province is fortunate we have a journalist/publisher prepared to do the digging required to give readers a thorough understanding of the lawsuit and the bizarrely apocalyptic views of some of the plaintiffs.
The other nugget is the government decision which precipitated the lawsuit. On June 18, the provincial government announced that Saskatchewan intends to ignore Ottawa’s December 31, 2029 deadline for ending coal-fired electricity generation.
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Plaudits for extending the life of coal have been earned by Premier Scott Moe and Jeremy Harrison, who is responsible for Crown Investments Corporation and SaskPower. Moe and Harrison made a gutsy, economically responsible decision based on the fact Saskatchewan simply can’t afford to cease using coal until well after 2030—freezing in the dark is not an option.
It was a bold move in support of public safety and economic sustainability that will serve the province well.
Moe and Harrison have joined the ranks of leading advocates of Western interests from history. Their position on coal is reminiscent of other defiant moves by Western Canadian politicians to counter constitutional overreach with respect to natural resources by the federal government. Alberta Premier Peter Loughheed’s decision to cut oil shipments to Eastern Canada by 10% in the spring of 1980 comes to mind.
Lougheed’s actions were intended to get Ottawa’s attention during the culminating phase of a federal-provincial battle over resource revenues that had been underway since 1973 when Pierre Trudeau put a freeze on Canadian oil prices. The fight ended when Ottawa agreed to strengthen the sections of the Constitution guaranteeing provincial control of natural resources and the Government of Alberta grudgingly accepted a slightly modified version of Trudeau’s National Energy Program—the hated NEP.
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Moe and Harrison’s coal decision came in the wake of the ten year (2015-2025) assault on the Western Canadian energy sector by an alliance of climate change alarmists and virtue signaling Liberals like Steven Guilbeault and Gerald Butts. As Alberta Premier Danielle Smith so aptly put it, “Pierre Trudeau only wanted to steal our oil, Justin Trudeau wanted to kill the industry.”
Panic stricken environmentalists who claim the province is unwilling to cut emissions to help save the planet are misinformed and confused. The government plans to use coal as a transitional bridge to ensure security of supply until lower emissions nuclear power plants are developed.
Furthermore, Saskatchewan’s coal-fired power plants will make only a minuscule contribution to the global warming apocalypse predicted by hyper-alarmed activists.
It is probably a mistake to totally discount the capacity of the tree-huggers and whale savers backing the suit to achieve anything of importance. If North America’s environmental movement and the big US foundations that fund their ‘save the planet’ campaigns decided to back them they could become a significant threat rather than a disruptive nuisance.
Between the US foundations and federal government grants environmental groups had access to at least $1.3 billion in funding to back their Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns between 2006 and 2021. Those campaigns paved the way for the Justin Trudeau government’s attack on fossil fuels.
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Another point to keep in mind is the fact Saskatchewan’s environmental activists have achieved considerable success in the past. They have, for example, managed to thwart efforts to build a refinery for processing Saskatchewan’s uranium beyond the yellow-cake stage.
More recently they kicked up a fuss over the plans by a Chinese company to build a solution potash mine west of Southey. While perhaps not a decisive factor, the environmentalists’ complaints undoubtedly contributed to the company’s decision to walk away from the project.
Saskatchewan’s leading environmental activists have had few, if any, qualms in the past about killing projects that would have resulted in hundreds of good paying jobs for Saskatchewan workers. They are clearly hoping to keep the tradition alive by killing the jobs of the thousand plus people working at the mines and power plants at Estevan and Coronach.
It’s hardly reasonable that the rest of the people in Saskatchewan pay the price for activists’ out of control anxiety.
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