The one of National Post Wednesday said a lot about the mistrust that reigns in Steven Guilbeault in Western Canada. The conservative newspaper has chosen to juxtapose two photos of the former activist of Greenpeace and Équiterre. The first showed Mr. Guilbeault at the time of his arrest in 2001, after he climbed the CN Tower in Toronto to unfurl a banner denouncing the climate inaction of the Canadian and American governments.
The second showed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mr. Guilbeault when the latter was sworn in as Minister of the Environment. The newspaper’s message was clear: the one who not so long ago defied the law in the name of his green ideology is now in the driver’s seat of Canadian environmental policy.
While Quebecers are familiar with Mr. Guilbeault’s past, English Canadians are only beginning to familiarize themselves with the career of the new Minister of the Environment. And in many parts of the country, people don’t like what they see. Trudeau’s decision to appoint this former Greenpeace activist as his government prepares to accelerate efforts to meet its greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets is seen as an affront by many. Albertans.
Petroleum industry
According to them, Mr. Guilbeault’s fierce opposition to oil pipelines and the exploitation of the tar sands would not make him a trusted interlocutor in the eyes of those for whom the oil industry remains essential to the prosperity of the country. Crude oil exports totaled nearly $ 85 billion in 2019. With the recent rise in the price of oil, the value of these exports could reach a record high in 2021, boosting not only the Government of Alberta’s coffers, but those of the government as well. Mr. Trudeau’s federal government.
The meteoric rise in fossil fuel prices will be the real elephant in the room at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) which opens Sunday in Glasgow, Scotland. The current inability of renewables to close the gap between energy supply and demand, as the economic recovery accelerates, is causing many oil, natural gas and coal importing countries to question the good. -based environmental policies that restrict investments supporting the production of fossil fuels.
They fear that too rapid an energy transition could act as a barrier to economic growth, especially for the poorest countries on the planet. The probable absence of Chinese President Xi Jinping at COP26 would not be unrelated to his country’s desire, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to avoid raising its GHG reduction targets while the China is currently facing a severe coal shortage that threatens its economic growth and social peace.
Rising fossil fuel prices
We already knew that the energy transition would not go smoothly. But the rise in fossil fuel prices in recent weeks will have oriented reflections in the West around the dangers of too much dependence on OPEC countries and Russia. However, Mr. Guilbeault promises to soon impose a cap on GHG emissions from the Canadian energy sector and to reduce this cap each year in order to achieve carbon neutrality in 2050.
In 2019, emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector totaled 191 million tonnes, or 26% of the national total. Thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue would evaporate if Mr. Guilbeault’s plan forced the oil and gas industry to cut production.
For Mr. Guilbeault’s former comrades in the environmental movement, this is an essential step for Canada to achieve its own targets for reducing GHGs, from 40% to 45% by 2030 compared to at 2005 level.
If neither Mr. Trudeau nor Mr. Guilbeault for the moment wanted to make an explicit commitment to stop the growth of oil production, the industry fears that the straitjacket that the new Minister of the Environment is about to impose on it. does not condemn it to end its activities.
After all, was not that the goal of Mr. Guilbeault, as an environmental activist for three decades, before launching into federal politics in 2019, while he stepped up his interventions against the “dirty” oil of the United States. Oil sands and Energy East, Trans Mountain and Keystone XL pipelines?
Someone who has described himself as a “pragmatic radical” has often shown compromise in the past. Now that he is in a position of power, however, the expectations of him from his former comrades are greater than ever. It cannot answer them without declaring war on the Canadian oil and gas industry.