I thought my generation at least took some successful steps against air pollution. But that claim is looking increasingly smokey. Yes, air pollution from industries has gradually been reduced, and yes, far fewer people smoke tobacco. But that progress is clearly being reversed by wildfire smoke, with the burnt area across Canada by early June five times higher than usual.
I don’t recall the climate change predictions making much mention of this problem, but that’s what we’re getting this spring. Some of us hoped that obvious climate catastrophes might finally result in real action, but that dream is also going up in smoke.
Despite the intense warnings from scientists, and no end of chatter about getting to “net zero” by a quarter century from now, the evidence shows that elites are not seriously addressing the climate crisis. That’s even very evident here in Hamilton.
Current projects by three major local players show that money and private profit continue to trump the required rapid cuts in climate-wrecking emissions. Overwhelming public support for real action and earnest letters and petitions apparently are insufficient to alter business as usual.
Our largest public institution, McMaster University, still refuses to end its $30 million investment in oil and gas companies, despite a decade of protests and an 8-day student hunger strike. Adding insult to injury, the university is installing four on-campus ‘natural’ gas generators with the stated objective of saving money.
The mis-named natural gas is nearly all methane, a greenhouse gas that is up to 80 times more climate damaging that carbon dioxide. And in Ontario the vast majority of this fossil gas is obtained by fracking in the United States where leaks make it as bad for our atmosphere as coal.
Our largest industry, Arcelor Mittal Dofasco, is paying Enbridge an undisclosed amount to install a new fracked methane gas pipeline that will increase Hamilton’s total fossil gas use by nearly one-fifth. This will replace coal emissions for some gain to the atmosphere, but the same company is entirely eliminating fossil fuels at their plant in Spain by going directly to green hydrogen. AMD won’t say if and when that will happen in Hamilton.
And GFL (Green for Life Environmental) Inc whose trucks collect much of Hamilton’s recycling and other waste under a large city contract, has chosen fossil gas to power a brand new industrial facility near the steel mills even though it acknowledges that it could be run with electricity. GFL is the owner of the large landfill in Stoney Creek and describes itself as “providing sustainable environmental solutions”.
For all three ‘community leaders’ the rationale is essentially the same – continuing to wreck the climate is the cheapest option for their bottom line. Too bad about the bottom line of the public good. That’s despite all of them collecting generous dollops of public money – $3.8 million for GFL from a federal sustainability fund, $900 million divided between the feds and the province for Arcelor Mittal Dofasco, and the usual on-going public monies for the university.
Government subsidies facilitating more climate destruction convict the feds of duplicity, while the provincial Conservative government, like its federal cousins, doesn’t even bother to pretend it is concerned about climate.
Enbridge, Ontario’s fossil gas monopoly, is at the centre of each local project instead of admitting their climate crimes and paying appropriate compensation to the victims. Governments continue to cave to the powerful oil and gas corporations which rake in higher profits than ever while the planet overheats and our country burns.
Don McLean of Hamilton 350 Committee can be reached at don.mclean@cogeco.ca