Fossil fuel rant

I take offence whenever I bring up anything environmentally sound and somebody's come-back is "Why are you against the fossil fuel industry?"

I am not against the fossil fuel industry. Want proof? I work in it. Want more? I drive a car. I get my electricity from natural gas and coal fired power plants. I own a BBQ. I own a lot of plastics. I live in Alberta. Our economy is rooted in fossil fuel. No my friends, Karl is not the enemy of the industry. But I'm nothing if not a pensive person.

We have to come to terms with a few basic concepts. Until someone proves otherwise, we have to assume there is only a finite supply of fossil fuels left. As time goes on, the stuff is going to get way more expensive. Burning fossil fuel creates pollution. Especially coal. And guess which one is cheapest to obtain? That's right - coal.

News flash - Calgary has the biggest carbon footprint of any city in Canada. Toronto and Vancouver produce 9.5 tonnes and 4.9 tonnes, respectively of carbon dioxide per capita. Calgary produces 17.7 tonnes , ranking it fifth-highest in a comparison of 50 global cities. More than Mexico City or New York. Why is it so high? Two words. Coal. Sprawl.

Putting aside the climate change debate..... Nope, not going to bring that up.

I just want us to be ready. Ready for the time when consumption out-paces production. We're almost there. Some rogue analysts suggest we're already past that point. Just look at the oil sands as an example. We're so desperate for oil, we consume up to 1,200 cubic feet (34 cubic metres) of natural gas to produce one barrel of bitumen. That more than enough natural gas to heat my house for a year - per barrel. A cubic metre of oil, mined from the tar sands, needs up to 4.5 cubic metres of water. Oil sands mining operations are currently licensed to divert 359,000,000 cubic metres of water from the Athabasca River per year. This is more than twice the volume of water required to meet the annual municipal needs of the City of Calgary. The oil sands produces 725,000 barrels per day right now. That number is expected to go up to 5,000,000 by 2020. Let's put it another way. Oil sands production uses so much energy per barrel, they're planning to build nuclear plants to generate the electricity needed for peak production. I find that statement a little odd. We're going out of our way to produce non-polluting energy in order to produce more polluting energy. Why don't we just produce the non-polluting energy? I digress.

So should we just sit back and do nothing until we start to run out? Should we ignore the pollution? Should we allow all that free solar and wind and geothermal energy to go to waste? We know there's going to come a time when we will need to start using it, so why not get ready for that eventuality now? It's going to take us years to transition into an economy that relies much less on fossil fuel. I'd like to get started on that transition now.