Terry Etam, author of The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity: Clearing the Air Before Cleaning the Air, columnist for the BOE Report and writer for Public Energy Number One, gives an update on the oil and gas activity north of the border.
Canada’s Greatest Export shares a story about the country of Germany coming over to Canada to accelerate their divestment from fossil fuels and direct their attention towards hydrogen.
Etam, who also works with a Natural Gas Company, said they weathered the regulatory storm the past couple of years, and are back to a comfortable pace for business. He also elaborated on several of the Canadian Regulations that are hindering oil and gas development.
Host Jason Spiess and Etam discuss the current energy transition and image, citing Etam’s latest BOE Report article on Henry Ford’s introduction of automobiles to the marketplace and society.
People, particularly enthusiastic energy transition enthusiasts, like to point to instances in human history where a new technology rapidly wiped out an old one. Two pillars of this line of thought are the switch from horses to automobiles, and the one from land lines to cell phones.
Neither of these are particularly intelligent comparisons to an energy transition; both brought phase-change-equivalent upheavals to the way we lived. A car was able to expand one’s world dramatically compared to a horse, and cell phones brought an unimaginably huge catalogue of potential compared to a land line phone.
An energy transition will bring a modified and possibly less form of pollution and/or habitat destruction, but there will be no revolutionary uplifting of public life (evidence points to the opposite, if German firewood sales are any indication).
The interview talks about the importance of North American energy security and the flow of energy across the borders. Etam explains how this is critical to Canada’s fossil fuel industry.
Here is an excerpt from Etam’s latest column in Public Energy Number One:
Suppose a person starts a new business. Months of tireless effort ensue. It all works out. The business grows like crazy and within five years it employs a thousand people. The owner becomes wealthy.
Philosophical junction point: Did that person create a gift for society in the form of creating a thousand jobs, plus the ancillary spin off jobs created by their spending?
Or did the business owner become rich on the backs of employees, capturing the benefits of their labor for their own outsized benefit, while the employees did not become rich?
You will predominantly be drawn to one option or the other. That is the backbone of our modern free-market system, and the inherent greatness of our capitalist-based economies that are democracies – the push and pull between these two belief systems. We can rail against the other side all we like because it is a huge philosophical divide, but the fact is both types exist and have a voice/vote in a democracy.
The two also discuss inflation and how they both believe it hasn’t even begun. Agriculture issues, pesticide bans, Ukraine War and energy issues are the root causes discussed by Etam and Spiess on why inflation issues are just beginning.
Here is Amazon’s description of Etam’s book The End of the Fossil Fuel Insanity:
Everyone knows that fossil fuels won’t last forever. Something needs to change at some point, regardless of whether the issue is climate change or because we need a practical replacement for petroleum as cheap supplies run out.
But while headlines suggest that a green-energy paradise is around the corner, not many are aware of the immense technical challenges that stand in its way. To turn our backs on fossil fuels, a staggering amount of work will be required to refit a global energy sector that has grown systematically for over a century. News of the latest green advancements can make it seem like plug-and-play technology, and simply a matter of switching from one source to another. In reality, the challenge is far greater, and infinitely more complicated.
To make matters worse, environmentalists and fossil-fuel defenders wage continuous but fruitless war, and the growing gap makes it impossible to have any sort of constructive dialogue. Each camp becomes more locked in their position with every exchange, and the most revolutionary ideas never see the light of day. Instead of building, time and money are wasted sparring.
Sparing no sacred cows, Terry Etam cuts through the media rhetoric, government propaganda, and widespread ignorance of the energy sector to get to the heart of what needs to change—and what needs to stay the same—if the challenges of moving away from fossil fuels are to be met, while maintaining the quality of life we have come to expect and rely on.
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