Letter: Time running out on finding renewable energy
By Letters to the editor
To The Editor:
Last week, we learned that the Paris climate agreement will go into effect in November after the EU formally joined the accord, making it a reality.
Concurrently, PM Trudeau announced the approval of the vast new LNG project for the BC coast, which flies in the face of Canada’s Paris commitments. It defies the arithmetic of climate change, a calculus that strengthens with each week of emerging science.
The carbon in the oil, gas and coal sectors already in production will take us past the two degrees of global warming all nations pledged to avoid. It’s not the next oil field that will break the planet’s climate: it’s the ones already pumping.
We’ve have as much fossil fuel infrastructure as we can possibly tolerate. If Canada builds LNG, or new pipelines we will exceed the livable limit of 2 C.
Everything need not stop tomorrow; the decline of fossil fuels can be managed.
“If you let current fields begin their natural decline,” says Energy researcher, Stephen Kretzmann, “you’ll be using 50 per cent less oil by 2033.”
That gives us 17 years to replace all that oil with renewable energy as the wells we’ve already drilled dry up.
Yvonne James
Nakusp BC
