Draft Reply to Candidate Peter Goldring, Edmonton East
Work can be like a seven-headed hydra. You chop off one head and two more grow back in its place.

SEE Magazine is running an election feature, Question of the Week, where people pose questions to the suite of candidates running in some Edmonton riding. Last week, UofA Women’s Studies Professor, Linda Trimble, asked the candidates in Edmonton-Centre what their parties would do to advance the positions of women, the handicapped, and “racialized minorities”.

“When will people knowledize that you can’t make adjective into a verb by adding I-Z-E?” I said to conan_o and Mercedes, ripping off one of Gil’s classic lines. SEE writer Mark Wells phoned to ask if I’d write this week’s Question of the Week, so conan_o, Mercedes and I were brainstorming.

We came up with “What will your party do to end the direct and indirect subsidies to polluting, non-renewable energy developments and transition Canada to sustainable (clean, renewable, low greenhouse gas emission) energy sources?” A question we were all pretty happy with. Wells later asked for an “ideal response” which I wrote but wasn’t published in the weekly newspaper due to space constraints. Among what was published was the incumbent Conservative candidate Peter Goldring’s response wherein he says that my question is misleading then proceeds to make misleading and demonstrably false statements himself. Frackin’ frack.

Hydra-like about this exercise is that I thought I was only writing a question; then had to write the “ideal response”, and now have to write a rebuttal to Goldring’s misleading and false submission. Alright then:

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Dear SEE Editor:

Peter Goldring’s response to SEE’s Question of the Week, December 21, 2005 contains misleading and false statements about alternative energy which require correction or retraction. Additionally, I wish to rebut the untrue implication that fossil fuel development is not harmful to the environment.

Regarding Mr. Goldring’s statement that “worldwide, tens of millions of birds” are killed by windmills: Both wind power supporters and opponents agree that avian deaths from windmill collisions number in the thousands per year. Robert Bradley notes in Why Renewable Energy Is Not Cheap and Not Green that “worldwide, thousands of birds” are killed.

The biggest single threat to birds all over the world is habitat destruction. Canada's boreal forest is home 60% of all the landbirds in the country (representing 1-3 BILLION nesting birds!) Industrial activity including conventional oil and gas, pipelines, forestry, and strip mining coal and oil sands destroy vast tracts of bird habitat through-out the northern range of these species dooming millions of birds to death. 40 species of boreal birds are in decline, some at alarming rates.

Regarding the implication that fossil fuels are not subsidized: In 1995, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) criticized Canada saying that "direct subsidies and fiscal incentives to the energy industry continue to undermine efforts to improve energy efficiency." Yet, from 1996 to 2002, federal tax expenditure associated with oil and gas production totaled over $5.5 billion. Subsidies to fossil fuels distort the energy market and need to be abolished so that renewable energy is relatively more competitive.

Regarding Mr. Goldring’s statement that solar panel manufacturing is a highly polluting process: Photovolatic solar panels are made of specialized formations of glass, steel, aluminum, and plastics; their manufacture is comparable to that involved in making household windows, water heaters, or mirrors. A typical solar module will "payback” the energy it consumed during manufacture in less than 2 years and then proceed to off-set over 1.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year for the remainder of its 25 year operating life, in addition to all other air pollutants associated with coal combustion such as particulate matter, heavy metals, and oxides of nitrogen and sulfur.

Regarding Mr. Goldring’s suggestion that pristine wilderness will be destroyed to make solar power plants: in contrast to fossil fuel developments, solar panels are intended to be installed at point of use, minimizing line loss and utilizing existing disturbances such as the roofs of houses and buildings. Oil and gas facilities, oil sands development, coal mines and power plants are sited where the resources lie and combined with the infrastructure to move electricity or fossil fuels to market, they destroy large areas of pristine wilderness.

Finally, to detail the myriad of ways in which fossil fuel development harms the environment would require too much space than is available, but in overview they cause toxic air pollutants, climate change, smog, wildlife habitat fragmentation and destruction (including effects on endangered species), water pollution, excessive water consumption, and terrestrial disturbances. There is no question that fossil fuels developments harm the environment; the debate is whether this harm is acceptable and should continue to be tolerated.

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Published version at http://seemagazine.com/Issues/2006/0105/let.htm