Calgary’s new mayor wants the city to get real about climate change. It’s about time.

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This article was published 01/11/2021 (1484 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Calgary’s new mayor, Jyoti Gondek, said her first priority was to get a “climate emergency” declaration passed by city council, you could almost hear Canada’s oil capital shifting into a higher gear so it could catch up with the rest of the world.

Given all the focus on COP26 and the dire reality and forecasts about the impact of global warming, it’s about time.

Gondek wasn’t anticipating a flood or a heat wave, it was October after all. She was giving notice that under her leadership she wants Calgary to maintain its reputation for innovation when it comes to supplying energy to the rest of the country and the world.

“We became fixated on that end product, being oil and gas. So, let’s move past the outputs, and start talking about the processes again,” she said on a radio talk show shortly after being elected.

She believes there is still a future for oil and natural gas; it’s not going to be locked down overnight. But she wants the city to get in on decarbonization and the moves by energy producers to make their extractive processes and products less damaging to the health of the planet.

She was selling Calgary as a place full of people skilled at figuring out technical solutions to the complicated problems that go along with extracting, producing and distributing the energy that keeps the world moving, whether it be fossil fuels or renewables.

Premier Jason Kenney called her declaration “peculiar,” which only goes to show how out of touch he is.

But if Houston can come up with a Climate Action Plan (2020) that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, meet the Paris Agreement goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 and declare itself a leader of the global energy transition, it’s surely time Calgary followed suit.

But Kenney’s staunch defence of the petroleum industry, his attacks on environmentalists, and his pathetic attempt to establish a “war room” to counter what he sees as anti-oil and anti-Alberta propaganda, seem stuck in a 1950s time warp.

With the appointment of Stephen Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace activist, as federal environment minister, Kenney is even more eager for a fight the federal government over its climate change, environmental and energy policies.

But it surely must be clear to him that he is facing pressure to change, to face up to the global energy transition, not just from outside Alberta but from inside too.

Gondek certainly made that clear with her stance on the climate emergency. The Calgary and Edmonton Chambers of Commerce cited “the impacts and opportunities in climate change” as one of their top priorities when they put forward a platform during the recent federal election.

Edmonton city council declared a “climate change emergency” in 2019 and has an “energy transition plan.” There will likely be more action on that front since Edmontonians just elected Amerjeet Sohi, a former federal Liberal cabinet minister, as mayor.

Both Sohi and Gondek have indicated they are open to having a much more cordial relationship with the Liberal government than Kenney has.

Kenney won’t be attending COP26, which he referred to recently as a “gabfest.” Former NDP Premier Rachel Notley, whose popularity rating is currently significantly higher than Kenney’s, managed to attend its forerunner in Paris in 2015, even though she had been elected only six months before. She also managed to bring with her an aggressive Climate Change Leadership Plan, which had the backing of environmentalists, large oil and gas producers, and Indigenous communities.

That plan was scrapped when Kenney became premier and he has yet to come up with another one. He hasn’t even indicated if Alberta will introduce its own carbon tax or stick with the one imposed by the federal government after the UCP scrapped the NDP’s made-in-Alberta carbon tax.

Decisions at COP26 may up the ante for Alberta and Saskatchewan as major petroleum producers. But even if the meeting is a failure, it’s clear that climate change is now a top priority for Justin Trudeau and that can only mean there will be more pressure on the oil and gas industry, which accounts for 26 per cent of national total emissions.

Kenney could fight it all the way and or he could pull a Gondek and climb aboard the transition train.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary-based writer and freelance contributing columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @GillianSteward