FFS STFU About Pipelines: Rick Mercer Gets Told

Rick Mercer seems to have forgotten his roots.

This is the guy who was the spokesman behind the One Tonne Challenge before the oil-loving Conservatives took an axe to the program.

I LOVE this video by Scott Vrooman, taking a spin on Rick Mercer’s rant on petroleum madness:

https://www.facebook.com/torontostar/videos/10153926492136151/?fref=nf

Folks, it’s not about pipelines.  Rick Mercer is VERY wrong to believe that we need a big honking bitumen highway stretching across this great country.

We need to STFU up about pipelines.  We need to STFU about oil.

Our economy is a basket case because of oil and building pipelines will only guarantee that it remain a basket case for another hundred years.

Pipelines will also guarantee that we will fail miserably when it comes to any kind of target with the Paris Accord or other global environmental initiatives designed to mitigate the effects of our 19th century carbon economy.

It’s time we showed CONSIDERABLE bias against oil.

The current ‘have not provinces’ used to be the ‘have provinces’ before resources destroyed any sense of economic balance in this country.  We used to have enviable high paying manufacturing and technology jobs throughout the heartland of Canada and this has been crushed by oil.

In the early days, Alberta’s oil sector was built by subsidies from Ontario and Quebec and we have a right to say no to Alberta’s oil pumping through our backyards.

So … let’s START spending our mental energy thinking about ways we can minimize our reliance on oil.  There are already hundreds of possibilities out there.

• Learn how to do more with less or pay for it if you don’t.
• Encourage a sharing economy.
• Educational programs that force us to think about ways that we can minimize our carbon footprint when it comes to our daily activities (food, clothes, cars, transportation, working environments, etc).
• Renewables should immediately get any subsidy or devotion that oil currently receives.  Annually, several billions of dollars in taxpayer funds go towards
• Legislate and enforce the construction of ‘zero-footprint’ residential developments.  Sprawl must either end or become independent.  New homes shouldn’t be a part of the problem, but the solution:  homes with solar, wind, geo-thermal and other renewable structures should be the only things we build.
• Mutual funds and other investment vehicles should get special incentives when putting cash into renewable energy programs across Canada, including R&D for storage, delivery and distribution.
• Teach people how to go back to their roots:  spend time freezing, storing and preserving foods that we import in the winter months.
• Prohibit the installation of new gas stations.  Incentivize the installation of electrical charging networks.
• Incentivize any domestic – ie. anywhere in Canada – manufacture of anything to do with renewable energy
• Fund research and development related to renewables, clean up and removal of cars from our highways
• Pump cash into massive public transit programs that will exist for decades to come
• Focus on reduction:  tax carbon, tax gas and tax cars that burn gas.  Incentivize those activities that don’t use gas.

So there it is.  I’m a renewable simpleton and I’ve come up with a list of about 20 different tools that can be implemented IMMEDIATELY that will ensure we drastically reduce our reliance on oil.

Let’s move forward people and stop obsessing about pipelines.

We don’t need them and we don’t want them.