ONCE UPON A TIME CANADA HAD A THRIVING OIL INDUSTRY

    FP:  Once upon a time in a northern Dominion called Canada, there was a thriving oil industry that provided fuel for vehicles, trains and airplanes. There was also a large natural gas industry that kept the people warm during the long cold winters and supplied the raw material for plants that manufactured plastics, detergents, fertilizer, synthetic clothing and a great many other items needed and used by people every day. That oil and natural gas industry employed more than a million people

   Amazingly, these realities mattered not to Canada’s starry-eyed prime minister, who vowed that his little northern country would set an example to the world. His paladins imposed special taxes on the users of fossil fuel, creating hardship for the people while also weakening the dominion’s competitive position with its largest trading partner. The prime minister journeyed to the main oil and gas producing province, hoping to use his imagined charisma to convince workers worried about losing their jobs that “phasing-out” their industry was necessary to stop global warming.  

    People asked the prime minister what was to replace all that fossil fuel energy? He proclaimed that it would be “green energy” generated by the wind and the sun. But the people knew that the wind only blew some of the time. And that, in this northern land with little sunlight during short winter days and none on long cold nights when energy is needed most, solar was useless.  And the government had not learned from experience in a province called Ontario, where billions of dollars spent on green energy had yielded only small amounts of very expensive and unreliable power that needed back-up fossil-fuel power plants to prevent black-outs.