Alberta’s “fossil fools” squandered taxpayer dollars
By Letter to the Editor on January 27, 2021.
“You’ve got me singing, even though the news is bad.” This line from a Leonard Cohen song is how I feel about Alberta right now. While it’s true the province just spent $1.5 billion dollars on nothing, and an undisclosed piece of $6 billion more, the spectacular failures of fossil fools like Jason Kenney are required to highlight for the rest of us the direction the 21st century economy is going.
Investments around the world in electric cars, batteries, gigafactories for making them and components and resources for building them have reached astonishing heights while Alberta was distracted by trying to resurrect the bitumen industry. Tesla has suddenly become the fifth largest company in the world, after Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet. Ontario has jumped on this trend, investing $295 million in a $1.8 billion electric vehicle production plant by Ford, triggering an equal investment from available federal programs.
The Alberta government investment debacle is getting people to look at where companies are really investing and what business are doing well. Alberta’s solar boom is suddenly getting noticed, with a startling 5,000 MW of solar power in the queue to get built. To give you an idea of the size of this investment, even after the large projects of last year we currently only have 20 MW of solar power generation in Alberta from bigger installations. Yes, the industry is about to expand by 250 times. The new projects will include the largest ever built in Canada.
In Alberta’s wake up and smell the coffee moment, let’s all sit back with a cup of Joe and think about the future.
Tom Moffat
6-5
Yep typical deflection. Biden cans the pipeline and Kenney gets the blame. Looks like the NDP are out in full force with the “who am I going to hate today that is conservative”. Shall we talk rail cars which are far more dangerous modes of transport than a pipeline. Nah, we’ll blow by that one.
I don’t hate conservatives, but I do hate Reformers trying claiming they are conservatives, and even worse liberals converted to reformers. Just a bunch of turncoats looking for the buttered side of the bread.
You have nailed it. Every since these Reformers got control of our beloved Conservative party it’s been one financial mess after another and Kenney is the worse of any of them. They have deliberately destroyed everything our hero Peter Lougheed created for us.
The joke is they know it and find it smart to convince their ignorant supporters to try to blame it on everyone else when we know they are to blame.
Maybe you should wake up. I suggest you find yourself some intelligent Albertans like lawyers, accountants, bankers, or former MLAs like many of us have , instead of making yourself look so foolish. Believing the lies of a Liberal turned Reformer and ignoring what our hero Peter Lougheed created for us doesn’t make you look very smart, does it?
Add that to the fact that you’re the only one that seems to be dumb enough to support him and you have shown us where your intelligent level is, does it not?
Alberta is truly the land of opportunity with untapped resources in geothermal, solar, wind and hydrogen
Electric cars are not yet viable in most parts of Canada, due to the fact that simply heating and defrosting the car on a cold winter day uses more than half of the battery capacity. And batteries are less efficient in cold temperatures. Works fine in California, but not in Alberta.
Although, there is a Tesla charging station along the eastbound main drag in Fort Macleod, AB which is used more often than maybe what is thought. EVs are coming, like it, or not, with improved battery technology. The ability of the human race to invent and adapt should not be underestimated.