Canada needs policies to promote low- or no-carbon energy systems

By Lethbridge Herald on May 28, 2025.

Editor,

In the Herald’s guest column of May 15, 2025, Bill Whitelaw laments that Canada’s current energy policy signals a clear intention to phase out the traditional oil and gas industry in favour of what he calls “an ideological climate agenda”.

He ignores the elephant in the room: the existential threat of climate change currently facing Canada and the world.

Science tells us that accumulations of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere have disrupted traditional climate patterns. The result is more frequent and severe storms, wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, water scarcity, rising sea levels, and flooding.

If unchecked, global warming will eventually render our earth uninhabitable.

To address this existential threat, world leaders gathered in Paris in 2015 and drafted the Paris Climate Agreement, which was adopted by 196 nations, virtually the whole world. Its goal is to limit the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels by year 2100.

They later adjusted this target to 1.5ºC by 2100 in order to avert far more severe climate impacts than originally expected.

Currently, the Earth’s climate has warmed by at least 1.1ºC above pre-industrial average. Without rapid and deep emissions reductions in overall fossil fuel use, the earth’s temperature will reach 2.5ºC to 4.8ºC by the year 2100. This would mean climate catastrophe.

Despite our global obligations and vast renewable energy resources, Canada, alongside the USA, is at the bottom of the G7 countries when it comes to carbon emissions reduction and renewable energy integration.

To remedy this, Canada needs policies that promote widespread electrification and development of low- or no-carbon energy systems like wind, solar and thermal; also carbon capture and storage, and use of alternative fuels such as green hydrogen and sustainable biofuels.

The oil and gas industry has brought tremendous benefits to humankind, and the Canadian government has supported the industry in many ways.

But Canada must now pivot, and do our part in the international effort to avoid climate catastrophe by phasing out oil and gas and converting to clean energy.

This is no ‘ideological climate agenda’, but the path to a safe-climate world for the world’s children and future generations.

Anne Morris

Lethbridge

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