Dear Editor,
Re: EV mandate will break the bank, Aug. 7
I could not agree more, but the author forgot what it will cost to upgrade all our electric infrastructure from the nuclear power plants to everyone's electrical panel.
Some nations have fully embraced the "sustainable, green, clean" dream by stringing more wires on poles and between buildings, but one suspects that we Canadians would like to bury these wires beneath our sidewalks and paved roadways after we dig them up to replace the failing plumbing and repair that damage.
Other costs include decommissioning and cleaning up and replacing a trillion worth of oil and gas production sites, gas stations, pipelines, processing plants, home heating infrastructure, etc. before they are fully depreciated.
Tens of thousands of high-paying quality jobs will go with the demise of oil and gas as well. Who needs work when accounts balance themselves?
Cost is just no object in the fight to save the planet from Canada's 1.6 per cent of total human-sourced carbon emissions.
By the way, having just travelled from Calgary to Winnipeg and back, I can attest to the fact that Western Canadian farmers will deliver a bumper crop this year. Even the centre of the Palliser Triangle was growing grain aplenty. The bit of hail that landed on Calgary did not make a dent in this year’s potential crop production.
The rain that came with it will fill the ripening grain as this latest storm travelled from Calgary to Winnipeg. Grazing land was growing more grass than cattle herds could eat. Wetlands had water. River flows looked to be above average for this time of year.
All across Canada, noises were coming from the media and various experts about the existential threat of climate change due to above "normal" temperatures: drought, fire, water shortages, the threat to our food supply and assorted horrors real, modelled and imagined.
But physical evidence of the approaching apocalypses was non-existent. Warm temperatures were ripening the crop and creating ideal harvest conditions. The harvest is early this year and well underway.
There are real threats to the Canadian prosperity and food supply like labor unrest and civil disobedience. Ottawa's plans to regulate fertilizer use and usher out fossil fuels will have an impact on Western Canada's future, a very real and massively negative one.
Climate change? Not so much.
Ed Osborne
Foothills County