Request to shut down oil industry is misguided

By Letter to the Editor on May 16, 2020.

Seems some faculty and universities besides Lethbridge have departed from reality. How misinformed that group of staff who submitted to an equally misinformed prime minister a request for him to shut down Alberta’s oil industry. Universities live on government grants and in Alberta, over the years, energy royalties have been the greatest source of those revenues. In fact, it was oil money that built the University of Lethbridge, way back when. How else could a city of 60,000 even dream of a university? In better times, energy revenues funded all your extra infrastructure and salaries.

So you want to put the final stab into Alberta’s energy industries already hollowed out by our PM and his intervention to block a pipeline already approved by the National Energy Board. Kinder Morgan would have been built by private capital and running for better off-shore prices. Your hypocrisy is stunning.

Where do you think aviation fuels come from? Or bunker fuel for various ocean liners, making trade possible? What about diesel fuel for semis, farming, construction, hydraulics? Without those trucks and drivers, for example, during this pandemic, the North American food chain would have floundered.

Want a quick trip to starvation and a Third World standard of living? Shut down oil, absolutely essential to any kind of global recovery. We will need it for decades. Canada is quite pristine, only bettered by Iceland and Switzerland.

What about all the petroleum derivatives s that surround you? Plastics in everything – meds and cosmetics, the roof over your head and the asphalt roads you all drive on. How can you be so gullible and way misinformed? A black eye for U of L.

You are making it easier for your president. Staff cuts are surely ahead and your group should top the list for first out the door. At the same institution, are you learning anything, or want to, from science-based and management faculties?

I am surprised by some of the names on your list. Happy job hunting.

John Calpas

Lethbridge