Alberta took home a coveted Fossil of the Day award, Quebec became co-president of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, and the Saskatchewan government faced a blistering hometown parody of its $764,000 COP28 pavilion as the first week of make-or-break climate negotiations in Dubai drew to a close.
Since 1999, civil society groups attending the annual United Nations climate conference have issued the daily fossil award to the country or negotiating bloc that has done the most to obstruct meaningful progress on emission reductions and climate adaptation. It’s rarely bestowed on anyone who isn’t a party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), so provincial and state governments aren’t usually eligible.
But “today’s winner managed to outshine their peers and earn the rare honour, or should we say dishonour, of being a subnational government getting a fossil of the day,” organizers said in a release. “The province of Alberta, Canada has come to COP with one mission, to sabotage the negotiations.”
“I don’t think we could have won this award without being the deadliest death economy in all of the world, in all of Canada,” said Dr. Angele Alook of York University, Nehiyaw Iskwew and member of Bigstone Cree Nation in Treaty 8 territory, who accepted the award on Alberta’s behalf. “We like to poison the water, kill the forests, and violate Indigenous Peoples’ rights.”
The release cites Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who arrived at the COP last Friday in the company of a reported [pdf] 100 fossil industry delegates, as a politician whose “previous work as a fossil fuel lobbyist was good experience for disrupting Canada’s stance on the fossil fuel phaseout debate at COP. But she can’t take all the credit, she had the support of an extensive delegation of oil and gas representatives.”
CBC adds that the award was partly a response to Alberta’s decision to slap a seven-month moratorium on new solar and wind development earlier this year. The announcement sidestepped the concerns of some rural municipalities and cost the province an estimated C$33 billion in economic activity and 24,000 jobs, at a moment when Alberta was leading the country in renewable energy deployment.
“Alberta, we don’t want you to end up like your namesake, the long-extinct Albertosaurus,” Climate Action Network-International says in the release. “Listen to what people in your own province want—a plan to transition from dependency on volatile fossil fuels to the opportunities of clean energy, in a way that protects workers—or you’ll get left behind.”
As this story went to virtual press, Invest Alberta had not responded to emailed questions about whether the fossil award would help or hinder the province’s search for international investors, or set it back when the United States, the European Union, and Canada’s federal government are laying out massive incentives for renewable energy investment. Earlier in the COP, 118 countries including Canada signed a pledge to triple global renewable energy deployment and double the pace of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
On Thursday, Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) and Environmental Defence Canada rallied against Smith’s presence at the COP.
“Time and time again, we have been told to trust that the Alberta government and that government and industry have our best interests in mind,” said ICA Executive Director Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, a member of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation. “Not only do they continually fail to protect our lands and honour our rights, but they actively put all of the people of Alberta at risk by undermining a just and equitable transition within our province. It’s always profits before people in the tar sands and it’s our communities that pay the ultimate price.”
On Friday, Environmental Defence said climate hawks disrupted a panel discussion that included Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schultz and Kendall Dilling, president of the Pathways Alliance, whose six members account for about 95% or Alberta’s oil sands production.
And on Friday, as well, 350.org launched a parody of Alberta’s widely-panned TellTheFeds campaign, an $8-million effort placing ads as far away as Nova Scotia to raise fears about the federal government’s Clean Electricity Regulations.
“Danielle Smith’s attempts at COP28 to rebrand herself as a climate leader are almost beyond parody,” Canada Team Lead Amara Possian said in a release. “We launched ShowTheFeds.ca to counter the fear and misinformation she is spreading about climate action and affordability, and to invite people across the country to push back.”
While Alberta is making the biggest splash at the conference among Canadian province, it hasn’t been alone. On Thursday, Quebec Environment and Climate Minister Benoit Charette announced the province will become co-president of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance (BOGA), which formed at the 2021 UN climate change conference to take on the then “verboten” topic of ending the global expansion of oil and gas infrastructure.
Quebec’s specific role with BOGA will be to promote a global energy transition with sub-national governments.
“This new position comes with new responsibilities,” Climate Action Network-Canada said in a release. “Quebec must now scale up its efforts to fill the gaps in its current plans at the provincial level, while taking on a more proactive role both within the Canadian federation and on the international stage.”
And at the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, digital opinion editor Phil Tank imagined a “possible conversation” between Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and one of his staff at the province’s $764,000 pavilion at the conference in Dubai. Given a choice between banner themes like “I don’t care”, “Growth that works for everyone”, or “Just watch me”, Moe’s response to the federal carbon tax, the staffer suggests: “What about telling the story of Saskatchewan while ignoring the whole issue of climate change?”
Folks like Alberta’s premier will probably not stop their support of fossil fuel extraction until legally obliged to. These folks just don’t seem to have a meaningful grasp of the dire circumstances the world faces due to continued reliance on fossil fuels. They are like criminals who justify their actions despite the clear evidence and victim impact statements of the pain and suffering they have caused. Alberta’s premier and her ilk will be very poorly viewed by history, and I believe it will be necessary to legally remove such resolutely climate change defiant folks from decision making roles as world temperatures climb. Otherwise these folks will find continued ways of justifying their inaction to support a near zero fossil fuel future even while the certainty of climate disaster is in their face. How can one reconcile the fires this past summer in Alberta and the stance of the Alberta government at COP28? They are the cigarette company executives of the past, but now they are working for the carbon based energy industry.
Will it be easy on the economy of Alberta to go in a new direction, will it be simple to transition to net zero GHG emissions technologies, of course not. But if it’s not clear to the premier and the province’s energy industry executives, it is certainly clear to millions of scientifically and economically skilled people, that we absolutely must attain a near net zero GHG economy, and pumping GHGs underground is a diversion at best, and likely criminal at worst.
Congratulations Alberta! To win the Fossil of the Day from as prestigious an organization as the UN, you’ve really put a lot of effort into ensuring that your fossil fuel corporations are kept happy. And it takes real dedication and courage to endure the outrage that will result from the loss of jobs and money in the renewable energy field, outrage that could very well cost your government dearly at the polls. Keep telling your populace and even your own families that climate change isn’t real or imminent and that their health or economic well-being won’t suffer – after all, what they don’t know can’t hurt them. Can it?