Since the proclamation of the Leap
Manifesto at the recent NDP national convention in Edmonton, there's
been a lot of doomsaying on both sides of the economy-versus-energy
industry debate.
If we don't radically
reduce our use of fossil fuels, are we on a path to climate change
catastrophe? Or is Leap the manifestation of a fevered mind, bent on destroying our way of life?
A lot of these arguments remind me of
two groups carrying on a heated online discussion on the colour of
the sky. Is it the azure blue of day, or the rich dark of night?
Actually, if you look outside, it's raining.
If you connect the dots to four
significant articles in the good old Globe and Mail Tuesday, April 26, it will
put the Leap debate into sharper focus.
First, there is the ongoing coverage of
Alberta premier Rachel Notley pleading before the federal cabinet for
stronger support for a pipeline project. Any project, as long as it
carries Alberta bitumen to a saltwater port. The exercise is probably
pointless, and we'll get to that later.
That's because of the other three
articles.
First of those is an announcement that
Saudi Aramco plans to go public — partially, very partially. The
royal family-owned national energy giant says it plans to hive off
five per cent of its holdings in a public offering.
That's roughly the market value of
Alphabet, the company that owns Google. In fact, if you combined the
values of all the shares of Alphabet, Apple, Microsoft and Exxon
Mobil together, you would still not reach the approximately $2
trillion that Aramco is said to be worth.
And the Saudis are selling. Why? To
diversify their economy, according to the Globe article. They want
the Saudi economy to contain 35 per cent of income generation from
small and medium-sized businesses. A reasonable goal, I suppose.
Would Aramco, with its 261 billion
barrels of cheaply recoverable crude and condensate be a good buy?
Hmm . . . perhaps not if the Saudis are starting to wean themselves
off it.
And why would that be? Perhaps an essay
by Stephen Carlisle, president and managing director of General
Motors Canada can shed light on that.
His article, published in the Report on
Business opinion page, is as astounding as the news the Saudis are
selling part of their national energy monopoly.
The car of the future will be electric,
says the General Motors head honcho. It will be self-driving. It will
be shared.
It will not burn gasoline.
He likened this impending change to the
revolution that saw the end of horse-drawn carriages, beginning in
the early 1900s. It took 50 years, but millions of horses, harness
makers and carriage factories were buried by that revolution.
Carlisle wrote that Mary Barra, GM's
board chair and chief executive officer has made it her mission to
“disrupt our business model and to own the customer relationship
beyond the car.”
What's good for General Motors is good
for us all, right? And General Motors does not see a car in every
garage in our economy's future. Electric, autonomous and shared —
this is where General Motors plans to stake its future value for its shareholders.
A fourth article appears in the Globe's Drive
section. It opens with the assertion there is a sense of inevitability
that cars will soon drive themselves. Electric cars, that is. No
gasoline to burn, at least not in city centres, where the vast
majority of car trips are taken.
Why is premier Notley so obsessed
with pipelines, when even the Saudis and General Motors see a future
with less and less oil needed to run the economy? When crude oil
stockpiles are already flooded? When everyone everywhere agrees the
planet cannot withstand continued growth in the burning of fossil
fuels? Just asking.
It appears obvious that our debate over
the Leap Manifesto should not be about its relevance or usefulness.
It should be about the fact that an energy revolution is already upon
us, and that we need to adapt to a new reality.
We've still got time. A little, anyway.
Carlisle said the horses-to-cars revolution took 50 years. According
to the recently signed Paris Accord on climate change, we've got till
2030.
We need to use that time to build
toward the future that is coming, not to the one we wish we could
keep. That's not a leap, it's practical reality.
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