War in Middle East reminds us, we need to be free of oil
“The world is caught again in the bloody tangle of war, fossil fuels and climate change,” writes Chris Hatch in a recommended piece this week in Canada’s National Observer. The unintended dominoes are falling.
As in the past, it appears this war will last much longer than its US protagonists initially claimed. Only this time marked by next level impunity (with not even a disingenuous nod to international law or the UN Charter) and a new order of destruction.
The horror now unfolding in the wake of the US and Israel’s attack on Iran reminds us of a central truth – oil & gas are a poison. A poison to our climate and environment. A poison to our health. A distortion to our economy and a barrier to our independence. These fossil fuels are the lifeblood of modern-day tyrannies (witness those in Iran and Russia), and a poison to our politics, democracy and peace. Oil is death. The day cannot come soon enough when we are liberated from this scourge.
"This is chemical warfare," wrote Bill McKibben earlier this week, as he shared images and reports from Iran about the dark cloud covering Tehran after the US and Israel bombed oil storage sites. The deaths that will result may be less immediate than the over 165 girls killed when their school was bombed, but they may well be more numerous.
The fossil fuel lobby, never ones to let a good crisis go to waste, has been quick to latch onto the chaos now unleashed to once again press for Canada to expedite the building of new oil and gas infrastructure – pipelines and LNG facilities. This time, however, a viable and cheaper alternative to oil and gas is readily available. And hopefully, this war will drive countries into the embrace of those renewable energy substitutes as quickly as possible.
“America’s imperial conflicts have always been good for Canada’s oil patch,” writes journalist-historian Taylor Noakes. It’s why Alberta’s oil executives were so distraught by Prime Minister Chrétien’s refusal to support the US during the 2003 Iraq War.
The sharp rise in oil prices in the wake of the current war will no doubt again be a boon to Canada’s oil patch – owned mainly by Americans – and a saving grace for the Alberta budget, whose fortunes follow the price of oil. But it’s going to bring great harm to the rest of us.
Forget new fossil fuel infrastructure! And for god’s sake, let’s not reward the US oil and gas companies stalking our country. They are war profiteers who will capitalize on the current conflict to gouge us with high prices, hoover up political favours and subsidies wherever they can, and whose price spikes will ripple through the economy and make life even more unaffordable.
“If we want to be free to chart our own course in this world, unplugging from the American oil economy as quickly as possible is the only viable way forward,” continues Noakes. “By completing a transition to renewable energy on a national scale, we free ourselves from some of the disruptions and economic impacts caused by the global fossil fuel economy.”
Renewables are the future. As Bill McKibben – whose recent work documents the extraordinary and exponential growth of solar power around the world (North America is the sorry laggard) – notes, “Sunlight travels 93 million miles to reach the earth. None of them through the Strait of Hormuz.” Everything should now be about how to hasten the day when we get off oil and gas. It’s the only way to liberate our foreign policy and ourselves.
We desperately need to break the silence on climate, and get back to demanding bold and robust climate action.
To that end, please watch and share the Climate Emergency Unit’s final video on the 6 Markers of Climate Emergency Action, available here. In 12 minutes, it succinctly lays out what a genuine and coherent climate emergency plan actually looks like.