2021 is an election year. The municipal election will be in October and a federal election is also expected. No provincial election is expected but with the Premier’s ratings sinking to as low as 16% in some polls before vacationgate, it might also be in the works.
Politics has turned up some things to think about. In the USA Donald Trump has given doubts to blind loyalty to a leader, with dire circumstances. Republicans everywhere are starting to regret keeping their leader in office.
Vacationgate here in Alberta have turned up more things to think about. We have too many elitists, silent seat-warming, self-serving politicians who believe they are above the people they were elected to serve. While we are missing birthdays, weddings, funerals, anniversaries, trips, holidays with family, friends and others at the request of our elected officials, they, themselves, traveled around the world. These silent invisible politicians took our trust and spit on it before crushing it under their heels.
Statscan recently reported that Alberta has lost 5.1% of workers since 2018. The politicians will scream it is the world oil glut and low prices that destroyed Alberta’s job market, but Calgary, Alberta’s oil capital actually saw an increase in jobs of 1%, Edmonton lost 7% and Red Deer has lost 18.2%.
Unemployment rate was reportedly down to less than 10% but I had a nice knowledgeable person explain to me that is because they are not collecting employment benefits because they ran out and others who have simply stop looking for jobs.
Perhaps it is time to look for new blood in our political arenas. A new generation of thinkers and doers. There are some younger people in politics after all the median age in Red Deer is 39.5 years of age, half the population is 40 and older so 40 does seem young. But if you spent your entire adult life in politics then 40 is not young. I once asked about Red Deer; ” Do all we do is build houses and ice rinks?” We do get funding from all levels of governments for ice rinks, but try building a swimming pool.
If Red Deer’s median age keeps rising we will see less need for ice rinks and more need for pools.
So is it possible to get out of the rut of rewarding the old guard, the same parties, the same inner circle that tend to look inwards for answers rather than outwards.
How can we grow if we repeat the same program. Remember there is a difference between having 15 years experience and repeating the 1st year 15 times. Does it matter if we have 12 or 13 ice rinks? Would it matter more if we had the only 50m pool? Can we not at least think about it? Why can’t our silent federal and provincial political representatives find funds for more than ice rinks and sports events?
It takes a village to raise a child, it takes the co-ordinated effort of all levels of governments to help our city stop declining. It takes looking outward, beyond the privileged inner circle to find solutions.
We lost 18.2% of workers in 2 years, can we afford 2 more years without change. We talk about diversification, but someone keeps saying we are an oil and gas city. When I ask about capitalizing on ongoing projects, I have been told things like, we looked at it years ago, and thought it was too expensive. It does not matter that things become cheaper and more efficient these days, but we looked at it once and that’s good enough.
For example I asked about the success of cities putting turbines in their water systems to create power. Red Deer is pumping millions of litres of waste water into the river everyday, so I asked about running it over turbines to create some power, and I was told they looked at it many years ago and thought it was too expensive. I was not talking about $100 million dollar turbines but something smaller. Remember that movie where a boy saved a village by hooking his bicycle light generator to a windmill to irrigate the crops. Could we do something in between?
We lost so much, is it time to rethink our politics? Look beyond parties, look beyond incumbency, look beyond age and look for someone willing to move forward for us.
Red Deer has lost 18.2% of it’s workers since 2018, population has only increased by 195 since 2015, I think it is time look beyond the few and look at the whole. Just saying.
Following an alarming rise in fentanyl deaths in recent years, President Donald Trump is taking another step in cracking down on the deadly drug seeping its way onto American streets by designating it a weapon of mass destruction.
The president signed the executive order Monday during an event in the Oval Office, saying the illicit drug “is closer to a chemical weapon than a narcotic.”
The designation comes on the heels of the administration’s increasing military presence in the Caribbean, targeting narco-terrorists and “successful” meetings with Chinese leaders, who have vowed to crack down on the production of precursors of the drug.
Critics of Trump’s move want to address the fentanyl crisis through a different way. For example, a 2024 bill from attorneys general asking former President Joe Biden to do the same thing expressed concerns about political optics and the language akin to military. Overreach and blurred lines in domestic actions, such as rounding up users.
The order would provide the secretaries of the Department of War and Department of Homeland Security to “update all directives regarding the armed forces’ response to chemical incidents in the homeland to include the threat of illicit fentanyl.”
Trump said the fentanyl drug trade “threatens” national security by fueling “lawlessness” in the Western Hemisphere. This is the area of North America and South America, and the islands near each.
“The production and sale of fentanyl by foreign terrorist organizations and cartels fund these entities’ operations – which include assassinations, terrorist acts, and insurgencies around the world – and allow these entities to erode our domestic security and the well-being of our nation,” the order says in part.
Trump said two cartels are predominantly responsible. The Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, known also as CJNG, are based in Mexico.
The Drug Enforcement Agency said last December that in 2023, more than 107,000 people died from drug overdoses, with nearly 70% attributed to opioids, like fentanyl.
In late February, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via its National Vital Statistics System predicted a 24% decline in drug overdose deaths for the 12 months ending in September. The finding was based on 87,000 drug overdose deaths from October 2023 to September 2024, down from 114,000 the year prior.
Trump declared opioid overdose a public health emergency in 2017 during his first term.
If we force a transition that increases the cost of living, threatens grid reliability, and denies developing nations the dense energy they need to rise out of poverty, what have we actually achieved?
Finance expert warns that political timelines for transition defy the laws of physics and economics while threatening living standards.
In the polarized world of energy policy, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find conversations that prioritize practical reality over political idealism. We are often presented with a binary choice: either you are for the planet, or you are against it. But as I often find when digging deeper into these issues on the Power Struggle podcast, the real world is far too complex for such simple narratives.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jerome Gessaroli to strip away the rhetoric and look at the hard numbers. For those who don’t know him, Gessaroli is a finance professor at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a valued member of the Resource Works Advisory Council. He is a thinker who deals in data, not daydreams.
Stewart Muir with Jerome Gesaroli on Power Struggle Podcast
Our conversation focused on a topic that makes many policymakers uncomfortable: the widening gap between our energy transition targets and the physical capacity to meet them.
The Fundamental Equation
We began with a premise that should be obvious but is frequently forgotten in the halls of government in Ottawa or Brussels. Gessaroli laid it out as a fundamental fact that underscores every economic decision a nation makes.
“There is a direct link, a direct correlation, between energy consumption and living standards,” Gessaroli told me. “And so if we expect to improve our living standards in the future, then we will likely be expending more energy.”
This is the inescapable equation of modern life. In the West, where we have enjoyed stable grids and abundant fuel for a century, we sometimes delude ourselves into thinking we can maintain our prosperity while shrinking our energy footprint. But globally, the trend is moving in the opposite direction.
Gessaroli pointed out that while we debate carbon taxes and caps here, the majority of the planet is focused on survival and advancement.
“A lot of the growth in energy consumption will be through the Third World,” he explained. “They’ve just got a huge population, and they want to pursue economic growth, have a better standard of living, and that will require a lot more energy.”
The View from the Developing World
To illustrate this, Gessaroli drew on his observations from India. He described seeing farmers burning dung to create heat and energy—a practice born of necessity, but one that traps populations in poverty and creates localized health hazards. The path out of that poverty isn’t found in wishful thinking; it’s found in density.
“Now, if they expect to have a better standard of living in the future . . . they’re going to be looking at more intensive sources of energy, like coal, natural gas, nuclear, whatever,” Gessaroli said. “They need to use more energy in order to raise their living standards.”
This brings us to one of the most contentious points in the global climate dialogue. We often hear Western politicians ask, with a mix of confusion and frustration, why nations like China and India are still building new coal-power plants. If the technology for wind and solar exists, why aren’t they leaping straight to it?
I found Gessaroli’s answer to be a necessary dose of realism. It isn’t that these nations hate the environment; it’s that they love stability.
“They know how to do it extremely efficiently. They have the local domestic sources,” Gessaroli noted, referring to coal reserves. “There’s a source of energy security in that they don’t have to import the product.”
In an era of geopolitical instability, energy security is national security. Relying on domestic coal provides a safety net that imported fuels or intermittent renewables cannot yet match. As Gessaroli put it: “The type of power that is generated by a coal plant, for instance, is stable, reliable power.”
The Timeline Mismatch
This doesn’t mean the world isn’t changing. It is. Gessaroli was quick to acknowledge that the green energy sector is booming. Innovation is happening. But there is a massive disconnect between the pace of engineering and the pace of political promises.
“There is a lot of growth in terms of other types of energy production. They’re growing quite rapidly and they’re improving over time,” Gessaroli said. “But it’s just not in line with the time frames that our politicians and policymakers are telling us that the targets have to be met by.”
This is the crux of the “power struggle.” We are being sold a vision of the future with a delivery date that defies the laws of physics and economics.
The EV Challenge and the Scale of Site C
Perhaps nowhere is this disconnect more visible than in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). Governments are setting aggressive target dates to ban the sale of internal combustion engines. On paper, it looks like a victory for the climate. But as a finance professor, Gessaroli looks at the balance sheet of power generation.
“What they don’t realize is the activity, the investment, required to actually make that happen,” he said. “Where is all that extra power going to come from?”
This is not a rhetorical question. It is a logistical nightmare. To put it in a local context, we looked at British Columbia. We have just spent years and billions of dollars completing the Site C hydro dam, a massive engineering project designed to secure our grid for the future.
However, Gessaroli’s calculations suggest that the new power demand from a full EV transition alone means we would need two times the amount of power currently generated by the new Site C hydro dam.
Let that sink in. It took us decades of planning, regulatory hurdles, and construction to build one Site C. To meet the government’s EV mandates, we effectively need to build two more, immediately. And that doesn’t even account for the rest of the economy.
“If we want to decarbonize mines and other industrial projects as well, then we’re going to have to find the extra power,” Gessaroli added.
If we cannot build the generation capacity in time, the demand will simply outstrip supply. Prices will skyrocket, and reliability will plummet.
The Unintended Consequences
Towards the end of our discussion, Gessaroli posed a question that has stuck with me. It challenges the moral high ground often claimed by the most aggressive climate activists.
If we force a transition that increases the cost of living, threatens grid reliability, and denies developing nations the dense energy they need to rise out of poverty, what have we actually achieved?
It all leads to his key question: What if the green revolution is hurting the people it aims to protect?
It is a question that deserves an honest answer, not more slogans. As we look toward a future of increased energy demand, we need to listen to experts like Gessaroli who understand that you cannot legislate your way around the laws of thermodynamics.
