andrewmcintyre.ca

A bird is mired in oil on the beach at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on Thursday, June 3, 2010. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, via The Big Picture)

This is what the end of the oil age looks like. The cheap, easy petroleum is gone; from now on, we will pay steadily more and more for what we put in our gas tanks—more not just in dollars, but in lives and health, in a failed foreign policy that spawns foreign wars and military occupations, and in the lost integrity of the biological systems that sustain life on this planet.

Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute on what the ongoing BP oil spill disaster means for humanity’s need for energy.

Are Albertans getting a fair royalty rate for the resources we own?

It’s a reasonable question and one that has dogged Ed Stelmach since 2007 when he “initiated a public review of the province’s royalty and tax regime to ensure Albertans are receiving a fair share from energy development through royalties, taxes and fees.”

An important reason why Ed seems to be hated by much of Calgary’s oil and gas sector is the conventional wisdom (a.k.a. convenient myth, for some opportunists) that this royalty review drove away investment from the province and is primarily responsible for our continued economic woes.  The real blow to Alberta’s “one sector economy” occurred not long after the review when the global market for oil became extremely volatile and the price fell from $142 to $34 abarrel as the global finance industry melted down in the fall of 2008. The price eventually stabilized around $65-75 after the stock market began to recover last March.

It was unlucky political timing for a new Premier having difficulty articulating a vision for Alberta’s future, but even worse for the thousands of Albertans that lost their jobs as a result.

Brent barrel petroleum spot prices, May 1987 – March 2009

Last year’s tough economic times affected Alberta’s entire economy and this year’s $4.7 billion deficit is strong evidence that these circumstances endure. But even with the price volatility ushered in by the greatest financial collapse in 70 years, the question of whether Albertans are getting their fair share for the resources we own remains a reasonable, albeit limiting, one. I would prefer to see us asking how our government can act as more responsible and effective steward of our natural resources, our climate and Alberta’s environment. We also need to look at how to reduce the province’s ridiculous over-reliance on variable resource revenues and make large strategic investments to our post-secondary education system to help diversify our economy, (the exact opposite approach of the 2.7 per cent cut we saw in budget 2010).

Bearing all this in mind, yesterday the Edmonton Journal reported that:

Alberta least competitive in oil and gas: U of C report

EDMONTON — Alberta is dead last in terms of competitiveness for oil and gas development and should drop its current royalty regime, says a University of Calgary professor.

Jack Mintz, director of the School for Public Policy, ranked five provinces plus Texas for the ability of their tax and royalty structures to attract investment, and found Alberta’s current royalty regime “creates a burden on investment that is twice as high on oil and gas” compared with other sectors in the economy.

Interesting findings. Here’s the PDF.

Although the comment is now removed from edmontonjournal.com website, the following was pasted from a Forbes.com database of board of directors’ compensation disclosed by publicly traded companies:

Director Imperial Oil

57 Years Old

Jack M. Mintz, Palmer Chair in Public Policy for the University of Calgary. President and chief executive officer, The C.D. Howe Institute (public policy institute) and professor, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Director Compensation (Imperial Oil) for 2008

Fees earned or paid in cash	$69,000.00
Stock awards	$138,200.00
Option awards (in $)	$0.00
Non-equity incentive plan compensation	$0.00
Change in pension value and nondisqualified compensation earnings	$0.00
All other compensation	$0.00
Total Compensation	$207,200.00

Serving on Imperial Oil’s board of directors, Mr. Mintz has a direct financial stake in the success of a subsidiary of the largest oil company in the world that just happens to have billions invested in projects in Alberta.

The introduction to Jack Mintz’s research states that:

it is crucial to know just how much government tax and royalty policies affect the investment decisions the oil and gas industry makes relative to those of other sectors of the economy.”

If the conflict of interest couldn’t be more glaringly obvious, look no further than imperialoil.ca where you find them crowing: Imperial Oil Foundation gives $1 million to the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

Ridicule is the only appropriate response to this mockery of “public policy research. ”

For the record, I agree it is important to ask how much do “government tax and royalty policies affect the investment decisions the oil and gas industry?”

Without independently funded studies, free of direct financial conflicts of interest on the part of the researcher and the university department undertaking the study, I have little faith in our ability to get a straight answer to this important question… which is another compelling reason for the government to properly fund our post-secondary researchers.

The Journal took some flack on this in the comments for churning out a preliminary story on this naked and seemingly effective, attempt to grab headlines. There are 70 (AHHH!!!) related articles and it looks like most are  churnalism.

Ok. Deep breath.

Can we please all work together and put in a little more effort to ensure that we aren’t being spoon fed bullshit?

K thx.

The difference between science and ideology is that science tries to explain all known observations, whereas ideology selects only those observations that support a preconceived notion. As world leaders negotiate this week in Copenhagen, let’s hope science, not ideology, guides their discussions.

Thomas Homer-Dixon and Andrew Weaver in today’s Globe and Mail debunking four common nonsensical statements about climate change.

I was inspired to sign up and write a post on climate change for Blog Action Day 2009 after reading Alex Abboud‘s excellent post entitled “Embracing Post-Modernism.”

My first consideration of the risks of resource depletion, overpopulation and the need for long term thinking and sustainable practices was over a decade ago in grade 10 high school science class. The problem seemed almost as intuitive, even obvious, as it is today.  But for a middle-class 16 year-old eager to begin driving a car, while living in a resource laden country, the problems never seemed as tangible as they are today.

Looking back, it was as clear then as it is now that exponential  population growth in conjunction with an increasing,  resource gobbling,  standard living were leading us down a dangerous road. Advances in technology, medicine and even in social system systems -  the ascendancy of globalized capitalism and its recent failure, for example – are leading us ever closer to a precipice where tough decisions are necessary.

Some are even likening the willful blindness towards living within our means, or more accurately the lack of action taken to rectify our recent collective awakening to accelerating climate degradation, to a massive global ponzi scheme.

I worry most about the cost of inaction, of maintaining the status quo, given the huge uncertainties and potentially destabilizing global security risks we’re all facing as a result of anthropogenic climate change, which is only one of the environmental threats to our continued security and prosperity.

Last night I heard the latest news in what seems to be a perpetual parade of disconcerting stories about the rapid changes in our climate. CBC is reporting that climate researchers now believe we will have ice free summers at the North Pole in only 10 years.  This will have enormous consequences.

So what can we do?

For starters, myopic sloganeering about “local food” as the panacea for addressing climate change is not the magic cure all some make it out to be – though I wish it were.

I recognize that the growing chasm being awareness and action is the real issue here. Most people now accept that climate change is happening and that it is a major problem but few people seem to have changed their behaviour and lifestyles to minimize their impact. As a human being, I am not without fault here either, but I am trying.

So I agree that lifestyle changes are important. When aggregated they can really make an enormous difference. However,  much of the massive change needed to address our climate bankruptcy can only come from new rules, laws and policies on a systemic level.  To put it another way: this is a problem that governments at all levels, from around the world, must immediately work together to address.

A new age of cooperation is required. Right now. Will the COP15 United Nations climate change conference this December be the turning point?

For the sake future generations, let’s all hope so.

The National Intelligence Council, which produces government-wide intelligence analyses, finished the first assessment of the national security implications of climate change just last year.

It concluded that climate change by itself would have significant geopolitical impacts around the world and would contribute to a host of problems, including poverty, environmental degradation and the weakening of national governments.

The assessment warned that the storms, droughts and food shortages that might result from a warming planet in coming decades would create numerous relief emergencies.

The New York Times: “Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security“

Our wealth, our society, our being is driven by oil and carbon. And when we say we have to make a shift, that is extremely difficult. It’s intellectually dishonest to somehow say we can get some lightbulbs, or you know, get a Prius and we’re all done. No. This is going to take massive technological innovation. It’s going to take changes in the way we live and work. And it’s going to take cooperation of unprecedented degrees among business and* government and among countries.

That’s where we are. There’s no other word except daunting. I’m hopeful. I’m cautiously optimistic. But I would have to say one has to approach this with great humility.

Jerry Brown, California Attorney General in the PBS FRONTLINE documentary “Heat“

Reading talkingpointsmemo.com, one of my favorite American news and politics blogs, I came across both this controversial comment made by New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin discussing the General Motors bankruptcy on MSNBC’s Morning Joe: 

“Name a successful unionized company. Think. You’re going to go to [commercial] break before you come up with one. And that’s the problem.”

Perusing the instantly crowdsourced  long and obvious list of profitable unionized companies, I found this issue particularly thought provoking, especially in light of current economic and financial circumstances.

I have always been fairly luke warm in my support for unions. Although, I have long recognized their important historical role in raising the wages, living standards (even of non-union employees), and in addressing issues like health and safety concerns for your average Joe (or Josephine), I also grew up to have a healthy dose of skepticism regarding union leadership’s motives given their propensity towards corruption and their potential defense of lazy and/or incompetent “good ol’ boys,” (i.e. the very sort of conventional wisdom expressed by Sorkin). 

Given my nuanced “double edged sword” view of this issue, I was incredibly impressed with the insightfulness of a TPM reader’s response, eviscerating much of this conventional wisdom: 

Sorkin’s comments on media bias are one component of a reigning narrative about economic policy in America that we’ve been stuck with for a very long time that has always betrayed a very specific class bias among journalists. It’s a story that many of us have heard from our upper middle class baby boomer Dads over and over again and inevitably goes something like this:

Liberalism in the 60′s and ’70s were well-intentioned and of course the civil rights movement was necessary, but “interest groups” (read: unions and minorities) “went too far” and the government tried to do “too much.” Government over-regulated and over-taxed and spent too much on programs that didn’t work. Unions choked our competitiveness. Liberals didn’t properly account for unintended consequences of government programs and the degree to which the government would interfere with the free market and it screwed up the economy. Plus, the social programs alienated “mainstream Americans” (read: white Christians). It turned out we needed Reagan to cut taxes, break the unions (ie air traffic controllers), and deregulate to fix things again.

Whether some of that is true or not is beside the point (based on my recent reading of Matusow’s “Unraveling of America,” its not all untrue). But I was seven in 1980, Sorkin was three. This view of the world is frozen in an era that’s been gone for three decades. Its as if nothing has happened since, like a major opening in the wealth inequality gap, the rise in competition from heavily unionized Western Europe, the failure of supply side economics, or the shift in the economy from heavy manufacturing of goods to the provision of services.

To marry yourself to this narrative for all time no matter what happens in the world seems to be, well, pretty bad journalism for starters. It was kind of understandable, if not excusable, when it resulted from the fact that mainstream journalists themselves came of age through the era of the ’60s and ’70s that manifested this narrative. But when it results from their privileged children recycling the narrative, it makes me wonder why those children, who are supposed to be journalists, aren’t formulating their own views of the world based on the three decades since the ’70s in which they themselves have lived.

What does the New York Times pay Andrew Ross Sorkin for if he hasn’t formed a view of unions in America based on events that have occurred in his lifetime? Couldn’t we just keep paying Cokie Roberts to come on morning shows if all we wanted was recycled, conventional baby boomers wisdom devoid of any observation or original thought?

We’re in the midst of a vicious war of ideas on many issues. With politics, finance, business, media, the environment and climate change, it is the positions advanced by camps defending the conventional wisdom that often seem to be holding back real change and progress needed to create the type sustainable, permanent future we need. And it looks like we have just stumbled across another clear articulation of a piece of conventional wisdom destined for the scrap heap… that is, until these worn out ideas are recycled by future generations.

On that  note, perhaps my own jaded cynicism needs some rethinking too.