UN tries to thwart fully-approved Canadian infrastructure projects, supports similar ones in China, and I don’t remember voting for those clowns

Commenting on energy used to be fun and rewarding. Earnest people wanted earnest answers about how the energy world – what fracking is, how dependent are we on oil, where does it come from, etc. Then people had questions about renewables, and those were pleasant discussions also, explaining how those options work and how they fit into the system.

Over the past few years, that’s all fallen apart. Trying to explain the way the energy world works – the way it really works, not the way people hope it can one day work – is now grounds to throw the explainer into the “denier” pit.

The media stands by, complicit and stupid, and simply bleats out political propaganda without even realizing what it is. Of course, it doesn’t help when our politicians simply smile and wave with no critical value to add whatsoever.

Case in point: A United Nations anti-racism committee recently was in the news demanding that three major western Canadian energy infrastructure projects be halted: an oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline, and a hydroelectric dam. Their reasoning is that indigenous groups have not provided their consent. What is happening in fact is that not every indigenous person supports the developments, but a great many do. The UN would appear to require unanimous approval, for energy projects anyway. This is kind of an ironic stance given that a foreign committee of 18 people sees fit to enforce their will on Canada, and they have near zero support here.

The UN attack on the pipelines is understandable; they would not support petroleum infrastructure if their life depended on it (oh yeah, bit of irony there – it does). The hydroelectric opposition is shocking though, an outrageous attempt to influence Canadian energy policies.

What makes their uninvited demand so outrageous? Well, consider the UN’s support of China’s Three Gorges Dam. This dam displaced 1.2 million people, flooded 1,300 known archaeological sites, and flooded or partially flooded 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages. The UN hailed the project because it has “made painstaking endeavors to eliminate poverty, reverse ecological damage, preserve biodiversity, and reduce gashouse gas emissions, scoring remarkable achievements.” Kind of odd high-fiving for a dam that placed at risk “twenty-seven percent of all endangered freshwater fish species in China.”

None of the three Canadian projects that the UN wants halted have even a fraction of the magnitude of any of the problems the Three Gorges Dam created, but, hey, this is Canada. You want to steal lunch money? Those dumb Canadians (or their government anyway) will roll over in a heartbeat, without a fight, without a whimper. We’ll stand by and agree that we must be very bad people indeed to even think of allowing these developments.

Canada is rapidly becoming an international joke on a number of planes. On the environmental side, despite massive progress, huge renewable resources (hydro/wind/solar), vast quantities of clean burning natural gas, and a soon-to-be-punishing carbon tax, the country throws itself at the mercy of critics, flogging itself publicly for or “dirty oil” or any other number of ludicrous tags that extremists choose to place on our docile heads.

Canadian resources are produced to the highest standards in the world, in a truly open way that anyone can view and document. Few nations on earth that rely heavily on resource extraction are as open and committed to high standards as Canada. And yet we continue to allow the abuse to be piled on.

The latest UN salvo is too much; it is absurd, unwarranted, unfair, political and none of their damned business. If Trudeau doesn’t take a stand at some point, he will never be able to say that he didn’t see western alienation coming.

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