It’s a little like reading tea leaves. Tea leaves in oil.
Last week the federal government gave its stamp of approval to a $36 billion LNG plant on Lelu Island near Prince Rupert. As a grim-faced federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna tried to put a positive spin on it, B.C. environmentalists who had thrown their support behind the Liberals were feeling like suckers.
Had Justin Trudeau not proclaimed things would be different? That climate change would be a major consideration in decisions and projects that were clearly not moving the country towards alternative energy would not be given priority? Had he not pledged this nation’s word at the Paris climate change talks that this country would take a leadership role in battling climate change?
And yet a project that would be equivalent to adding 200 million cars to the nation’s roads received approval. A project that will add 5.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. Yes, McKenna will say that there are 190 environmental conditions placed on the project, but the end result will be the same – there will be a huge complex producing exactly what the planet does not need more of, in monstrous amounts.
And it’s not even as if it’s going to create a lot of jobs. Upon completion there may be 330 jobs created. Compare that with tourism. If you were to put an equivalent effort into preserving and developing eco-tourism in B.C., a much higher number of jobs would be created.
Now, perhaps Trudeau is playing a little environmental roulette. LNG prices are dropping and, in fact, soon after the approval it was revealed that Petronas, the Malaysian company involved in the project, might just be trying to sell the whole shebang. Many pundits doubt that the plant will ever be up and running given the international competition it would face with a product that is becoming less and less valuable.
Could Trudeau have approved a project that has little chance of being built? Could the approval be a cynical way of keeping the energy sector placated and Christy Clark onside, with a little side nudge, nudge, wink, wink, to the environmentalists.
If that was the idea – it isn’t working. Environmentalists are outraged. NDPers and Greens who voted for the Liberals in hopes that their support would carry some weight are angry, and the average voter is saying this just proves, yet again, that it’s business as usual in the government.
But perhaps Trudeau felt he had to approve at least one gargantuan project so that he could say no to others? Perhaps, Burnaby’s Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion will now be denied?
If McKenna turns up here to approve the pipeline, she might as well change her title to Energy puppet and kind-of-once-in-awhile Environment Minister.
