Carbon pricing is counterproductive to climate/energy realities (comment Whse Star Oct. 25, 2016)

Carbon pricing is counterproductive to climate/energy realities (comment Whse Star Oct. 25, 2016)

Conventional oil production, which generates or underwrites almost all of the profits, usable net energy output and economic vitality of the global, fossil energy-based economy, has been declining since 2005.

For the simple reason of real economic strength being in decline, actually below phoney GDP growth figures, picking up adequate pace of a renewable energy transition is more difficult now than it was a decade ago.

And it will be harder yet 10 years from now to, for example, push for an overdue wind power expansion.

The high carbon price, if that was a valid term, which it isn’t, or better too high fossil energy costs, is already siphoning off more and more of renewably needed investment.

That is particularly out of sync because wind energy long held the technological maturity to deliver the crucially necessary wealth from affordable, very high net energy output that oil-gushing wells once had until around 1960.

Carbon pricing mechanisms in their real effect subsidize a status quo of unaffordable, unconventional oil and gas expansion and emission increases.

However, even if the carbon price advocacy of slow change held water, it still shows how fundamentally out of touch a carbon tax is with the accelerating pace of change in climate and energy realities.

Growing greenhouse gases, other pollution and increasing financial debts have converged.

High pollution levels increasingly mirror a lot of unconventional extractive process intensity that expends vast financial, energy and mineral resources.

The deadliest bottleneck of energy transition is not an also very important home heating need, but transportation, which is currently 95 per cent oil-dependent.

That includes the often overlooked running of farm tractors that are crucial for food production, locally or otherwise.

Inviting minimum enviro-impact, high energy and profit outputting wind power, similar to Bear Mountain Wind Park in Dawson Creek, B.C., is a no-brainer. But the electric transportation initiative is equally pressing.

Part two of this commentary, to be published later this week, will reflect on the first concrete climate/energy deliverable of the 2016 Yukon election campaign to bring on an electric mail delivery fleet, including charge stations available to the public.

Peter Becker is a Whitehorse energy consultant.

By Peter Becker