July 19, 2022

Options to cap and cut oil and gas sector greenhouse gas emissions to achieve 2030 goals and net-zero by 2050 – discussion document

• Addressing emissions from the oil and gas sector—the largest source of GHG emissions in Canada—is critical to the achievement of Canada’s climate goals and international commitments, and vital to the sustainability and competitiveness of Canada’s energy industry. https://www.canada.ca/en/services/environment/weather/climatechange/climate-plan/oil-gas-emissions-cap/options-discussion-paper.html

The entire document is about how good the tar sands companies are doing reducing the "intensity" of their emissions from producing oil from the dirtiest substance ever to come out of the ground.

The report is nonsense. Reading between the lines, the report outlines that even with implementing all the technologies (including fairy dust carbon capture and storage), the industry can only be as "clean" as the dirtiest version of oil extraction in other countries.

Also, the only program that works to reduce emissions of oil and gas is missing: "reduce demand".

Billions of dollars will be spent on supporting the "transition" of the tar sands industry into a slightly smaller environmental and climate disaster.

One has to ask the obvious question:

Why bother spending all that money to make the production process more efficient of a product we know is killing us?

You have to give it to the oil lobby. They have found a meaningless measure to make their graphs have a downward slope:

Here is the greenhouse gas emissions for Canada. Notice the rather tiny fluke reduction that happened when everything shutdown in 2020:

Now, look with the added "intensity" line. See, so much better looking.

Too bad the intensity line means nothing at all when the line that matters (total emissions) does not move.

Net zero means that line has to start the decent down to below that 1990's line about 10 years ago. The only downward movement—one that needed to be happening already—is only caused by a massive global health crisis where we shut down the machines for months.

Efficiency cannot get us there and it is ridiculous to pretend that it will. This also does not include the burning of a significant amount of the oil and gas we extract since we do not count the burning of export.

It is not just the creation of tar sands by-product that is driving the greenhouse gas production in Canada. The country is not investing in significant alternatives that will bring down our emission in all other areas either:

All the easy transition away from the worst offenders of GHG production (over the previous 20 years) is not close to the path we need to find.

Industrial production—even with the massive subsidies around "ESG"—have barely moved in their emissions.

We are a small country. The only way that these things can change is if we collectively invest in transitioning to new technologies for production, shift production, and actively reduce the demand for goods that cause climate change.

Unfortunately, that is not on the agenda.

These are the hottest days of a Tory election campaign ever.

Do you think that climate change is on the agenda? Of course not. The question being discussed is who is more aligned with their climate and economy destroying ideology.

London Braces for Hottest Night Ever Amid ‘Insane’ Heat Wave

Temperatures will remain above 30°C through the evening Worsening heat wave is set to break London temperature record

• Spain: 2 day heatwave earlier in July has killed 360
• Italy: 11 people were killed earlier this month by a collapse glacier. 40 degree heat will hit this week. Rivers are drying up.
• Portugal: 200 more deaths from heat and fires.

Everything is an emergency these days in the USA as it seems that only through declaring an emergency can anything happen there.

Senate Democrats Urge Biden to Declare a ‘Climate Emergency’

Merkley calls prospects for congressional action ‘dead’ Biden could gain sweeping authority to promote clean energy (BN)

While the country has committed to reduce its emissions by 50 to 52 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, recent research by Rhodium Group shows that without further policy action, the US is on track for a reduction of just 24 to 35 per cent. (FT)

It is hard to argue that we are not in a climate emergency. But, too little, too late is what has created this situation in the first place.

The global impact of the USA not evening living up to its own rhetoric means that other countries are less likely to as well.

The Defense Production Act has been used to "force" companies to expand production in some areas, but money for those companies to do that is in the bill that is scuppered.

The issue facing democrats that want an emergency declared is that it is an acknowledgement that they have been beaten on the democracy front.

The debate around spending and inflation have fed into this narrative too. Manchin (and his supporters which include the entire Republican Party) is using inflation as a reason to vote against the severely curtailed "Green New Deal" of "climate spending", tax breaks for electric cars, and income tax increases.

The bill that is blocked by the Republicans for no other reason than inane (anti-social, anti-science, anti-most things) party politics and right-wing democrats is not as ambitious as some are writing.

The package did contain some significant money amounts, but the money was mostly profit subsidies. So, in some weird way—as in not because Manchin understands inflation—Manchin is not wrong that the bill would likely cause more inflation.

The problem for the people on this planet is the alternative. The USA will likely swing back to "voting" in people who think that inflation is caused by too many bankers in a bad mood and poor people.

So, the option in the USA is between the corporate party that wants to return to 15 years ago and one that wants to return to 215 years ago. It is not a hard choice to make, but one that is depressing.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on how to cut greenhouse gas emissions found that without immediate action, the world was on track for a 3.2C rise in temperatures by the end of the century. The definitive report compiled by 278 scientists and 195 countries is the final in a series of three over the past year. (FT)

Productivity growth in the advanced capitalist countries is a major concern. And, contrary to many who believe we do better in person:

In a new paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gordon of Northwestern University and Princeton University’s Hassan Sayed estimate productivity in work-from-home services businesses, which includes information and finance, grew 3.3% between the beginning of 2020 and early 2022.

Meantime, growth in the goods sector, in jobs like construction and mining, was unchanged and services industries that required in-person contact contracted by 2.6%, according to the paper. (BN)

Also, along these lines is a new report looking at robot prices and automation:

• https://www.frbsf.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/wp2022-05.pdf