Alberta Teachers Associations Sponsor Session On "Bright Future" Of Oil & Gas, Net-Zero 2050 "Plans"

[hatrack]

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The Pathways Alliance has pledged to achieve net-zero emissions from their operations by 2050. The alliance wants to build a large carbon-capture and storage network that could, in theory, reduce the carbon pollution from almost two dozen oilsands facilities. Critics say the oilsands companies are misleading Canadians about the rising trend of industry pollution overall, and the fact that fossil fuel production and use — not just the industry’s operational emissions — must decline if the world has a chance of slowing global warming that is causing climate change.

The teachers’ convention group said its two-day meeting “is an essential component of our professional responsibility for lifelong learning.” Its summary about the Pathways session floated the idea that the oil and gas industry can be a “partner” in reducing carbon pollution. The summary also promoted the efforts of Canadian Natural Resources Limited, a Pathways member and one of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies, which has lobbied against tougher climate rules. “There’s a bright future for oil and gas, and students can drive change from within the industry,” the summary stated.

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One example, she said, was how the Pathways decarbonization plan doesn’t measure up to several key recommendations of a United Nations-backed expert panel on net-zero pledges.

For one, the panel found that corporate net-zero pledges must include targets to end the use of fossil fuels, a goal that scientists, through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, have concluded is necessary to limit global warming. Pathways’ objective, however, is to become the “global supplier of choice” for oil and its members have released plans to increase their oil production.

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https://thenarwhal.ca/alberta-teachers-pathways-alliance/

[orthoclad]

1. Carbon capture

There are several ways to sequester the millions of years' worth of stored carbon we've released over the past century or so:

1. New molecular bonds. Put it into carbonates or organic molecules.
a. Biological. Driven by sunlight, this is the way it was done to form the products we've burned. Clean, but slow, sometimes very slow. Carbonate rock took a LONG time to form.
b. Artificial. It would take about as much energy to form new molecular bonds as we released when we burned the carbon fuels. Sheer loser strategy.
2. Out of sight, out of mind. Pump it into the ground.
a. First of all, it would take a lot of energy to isolate and concentrate the carbon oxides. Of course, burn more carbon for the energy! Methane and other carbon GHG gases which are released abundantly now would be a whole other problem. Pump them back where we got them?
b. Second of all, no one knows the long-term effects of pumping these huge amounts of gas into deep rocks. Physical effects: fracking already causes earthquakes, probably due to lubricating deep rocks with those proprietary chemicals we're not allowed to know about. But cheer up! They can use that deep-pumped CO2 to squeeze out even more oil and gas, making absolutely sure that the Earth will be stripped of those resources even more completely. And what's a few earthquakes between friends? Chemical effects: reactions between carbon dioxide (acidic in water solution) and deep, hot rocks under tremendous pressure are completely unknown. But cheer up, it will take a long time for us to notice, so it's OK.

The only carbon capture I trust is reforestation. But we're bulldozing forests for tar sands.

Carbon capture is the blackest of blackwashing. The ruling class knows it's twaddle, but if they can use it to confuse the issue and put off reckoning for a few more years, they can sequester even more of the world's wealth, then colonize Mars or something. This is why poor little New Zealand is full of plutocrat bunkers, and billionaires are having seminars on how to maintain control of the security forces for their compounds.