Editor:
The media, oil and gas industry and Conservative MPs pushing for expanding fossil fuels to Europe during this crisis is misguided, dangerous and immoral.
More fossil fuel expansion guarantees more years of climate destruction that will harm us all.
A much better way to help end the criminal terror in Ukraine and help Canadians and Europeans to reduce our dependence on Russian and other home-heating fuels is to use heat pumps to heat and air condition our homes.
Heat pumps are affordable and much more efficient than oil or gas. As Bill McKibbon pointed out: "Europeans can heat their homes with electricity instead of gas. And if we wanted to we could—before next winter comes—help enormously in this task. President Biden should immediately invoke the Defense Production Act to get American manufacturers to start producing electric heat pumps in quantity, so we can ship them to Europe where they can be installed in time to dramatically lessen Putin’s power. The most recent estimates from Europe I’ve seen is that the current electric grid could handle fifty million heat pumps. We’re not going to get that many over there in a year—but any large number hacks away at Putin’s power."
Canadians could also push to mass produce heat pumps to be sold in Europe and Canada.
Glenn Vockeroth, Burnaby
