Fossil fuels will continue to play a vital role

By Letter to the Editor on March 11, 2020.

We must save the people on our planet from people who insist on “saving the planet” from climate catastrophe predicted for decades but never realized. Global mortality from all natural disasters has decreased by 99 per cent since 1920 while the world’s population trebled thanks to improved economies and technologies provided by our modern industrialized world.

Production of safe food and calorie input per capita continues to improve around the world because of the real green revolution involving use of commercial fertilizers, improved seed varieties, pesticides and increased CO2 fertilization from our atmosphere.

If the world actually stopped using fossil fuels tomorrow most of us would die within a short period of time. We would suddenly have no food, no heat, no transportation, no clothes or medical care except what was available in medieval times! That appears to be an exaggeration unless you understand that all industry and technology which give us our modern lifestyle only exist because of the availability of affordable, abundant, reliable energy provided by hydrocarbons. Even the next most important power sources, hydro and nuclear, not to mention the almost irrelevant “renewable” efforts, cannot be created or maintained without coal, gas or oil. The alarmists say that we must phase out fossil fuels over the next 10 or 20 years. Those naive, uninformed ultimatums assume that we have an alternative replacement energy structure waiting in the wings to simply replace fossil fuels but nothing could be further from the truth.

And there-in lies the real problem. Idealistic know-nothings dream that we can snap our fingers and create new utopian renewable energy forms that don’t even exist now or likely in the near future. Wind and solar energy are intermittent sources that always need back-up power from reliable power sources like coal, nuclear and natural gas to keep the lights on, keep our homes heated, and our factories, schools and hospitals running. The truth is, the physics of wind and solar energy render 100 per cent renewable energy nothing more than a myth.

Canada should never undertake an impossible “noble” energy sacrifice to help the world when the world does not intend to follow. Absolutely nothing that Canadians do will reduce the legitimate growing demand by the poor of the world for modern energy services and better standards of living based on increased use of plentiful and inexpensive fossil fuels.

Lynn Thacker

Bow Island