By Hugh Holland
2024 saw overwhelming challenges that seemed beyond political leaders anywhere to resolve.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the world is committing suicide by burning fossil fuels. Climate change is damaging food crops, homes, and infrastructure everywhere, driving inflation, and accelerating migration from the global south that is disrupting the global north.
Putin can’t run his own country but wants to run others, and the Russian people can’t get rid of him. The Middle East and parts of Asia continue to be riddled with religious competition and hate.
The US is fast going bankrupt, according to Elon Musk, who says he can cut $2 trillion or 30% from $6.7 trillion annual US spending, while Trump promises to cut tax revenues. Good luck with all that.
Trump threatens to impose a 25% tariff on US imports from Canada if Canada does not secure the Canada-US border against illegal immigration and drugs. But it is in our own best interest to do that.
Digital communications are making it easier to spread both good and bad information.
Income inequality and homelessness continued to rise. All of that put people everywhere in an ugly mood. Politics became more partisan and extreme. Politicians received more insults and threats.
But despite all that, there are some reasons to be optimistic in 2025 and beyond.
- Necessity is the mother of invention
The world is now facing two problems that will undermine everything else. Oil and gas are finite resources that, at current consumption rates, will be depleted in about 50 years, and worse still, the emissions from producing and burning fossil fuels are killing the planet. Climate trends are clearly telling us we have only about 25 years left before damaging climate trends become irreversible.
The team-planet meets every year at the UN Global Conference of the Parties, such as the recent COP 28. What we urgently need now is for both the producers and consumers of fossil fuels to honestly acknowledge the two biggest global problems and honestly agree to cooperate to solve them.
Fortunately, China’s huge population has already settled on the smartest way to combat climate change. They are fast reducing energy demand by switching to highly energy-efficient consumer products such as LED lighting, electric vehicles, and heat pumps. That 60% reduction in energy demand enables a corresponding reduction in energy production and, at the same time, enables the transition to clean energy.
Meanwhile, Trump foolishly claims the US to be an oil superpower, but his thinking is more than a little warped. The US is indeed the world’s biggest oil producer at 12.9 million bls per day, but also the biggest consumer at 18.9 million bls per day. So, the US imports 6 million bls per day and 54% of US oil imports come from Canada’s proven reserves of 170 billion bls. Without imports, US proven reserves of 55.2 billion barrels would last only 8 years. Superpower? Canada is a major supplier of electricity from Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, and BC to adjacent northern states.
Canada doesn’t have to impose retaliatory duties or cut off delivery. If Trump imposes 25% duties on “all” Canadian products, then Americans are in for a chilly and expensive winter.
Canada has the world’s third-largest proven reserves of oil. Oil and gas production is responsible for 5% of our GDP but 30% of our emissions. Obviously, we can’t suddenly stop producing oil and gas, but since 2015, the Canadian government has been funding measures to help oil and gas producers reduce their heat-trapping emissions during the 25-year transition to clean energy. And along with 65 other countries, Canada introduced a refundable carbon tax as a “no-cost” way to motivate and educate consumers to find ways to reduce their consumer emissions. However, we could progress much faster if only the right and left provincial and federal politicians cooperated.
- Trends that can solve these problems are increasingly driven by economics, not politics.
Neither extreme right nor extreme left politicians will solve our fundamental energy and climate problems. The far-right professes to support “freedom,” which too often means “freedom of big money and corporate power to exploit others.” The far left is focused too much on unrealistic visions of equality for everyone in everything. Our problems will only be solved by the more moderate and realistic center-right or center-left leaders and parties.
If politicians can’t solve our two most fundamental problems, they will soon be pushed aside by economics. As proven reserves of oil and gas approach depletion, the price will rise dramatically and force the transition to other known and less damaging types of clean energy. So, the question becomes, “Are our politicians smart enough, open-minded enough, and honest enough to acknowledge the interlocking problems and cooperate on solutions soon enough”?
Global estimates to achieve net-zero emissions range from around $3 to $10 trillion a year over the coming decades. That’s often seen as a massive obstacle to rapid decarbonization. However, most models do not comprehend China’s smart energy-saving strategy and have underestimated how fast the costs of low-carbon technologies such as solar, geothermal, and Small Modular Reactors can fall. “After accounting for these factors,” reports the Economist, “the incremental cost of cutting global emissions falls to under $1 trillion a year, less than 1% of global GDP.” “While the new Trump administration may slow the transition, it will be impossible to stop it.”
A recent report by The International Energy Agency says, “Geothermal covers about 1% of global electricity consumption today, but new technologies could enable geothermal costs to fall by 80% by 2035 and provide annual output equivalent to the current electricity demand of the United States and India combined.” Geothermal wells are already under construction in Alberta to co-generate electricity and replace natural gas heat with zero-emission heat for melting bitumen.
Except for natural resources, it’s difficult for Canada to compete with the 10 times economies of scale of the elephant on our border. However, Canada still ranks among the top countries in the world and is higher than the US in many ways.
Happy New Year
Hugh Holland
Hugh Holland is a retired engineering and manufacturing executive living in Huntsville, Ontario.
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