Engaging Articles of the Week
The US administration’s international focus over the past 8 months could probably best be described as: ADHD. Eight months ago, as Canadians well remember, Trump spent a lot of social media time talking about the annexation of Canada. Then the focus shifted somewhat (but not completely) bizarrely to Greenland, creating another subset of international anxiety. In the midst of general jousting with all the major superpowers, the US administration now has its sights set on yet another secondary actor on the global stage – Venezuela. US warships are moving into the region, and video footage of exploding drug-running boats is now a weekly occurrence. The media is in full overdrive analysis of potential Venezuelan regime change, with the likes of the BBC and Politico issuing stuff like, respectively, “warships, fighter jets, and the CIA – what is Trump’s endgame in Venezuela?” and “What Trump’s Venezuela Strategy is Really About”. Oddly enough, for articles with such bold “we know the real story” chest-thumping titles, neither offers much of a reason at all. The BBC speculates it is to scare Maduro into stepping down, which is a pretty weird take (“Ahhh! US boats offshore! I must flee!” ???), but Politico offers no better: “There are lots of reasons. There’s the drug reason, a stability reason, the migration reason, the human rights reason, and the democracy reason.” Collectively, that basket makes no sense whatsoever as to why Trump would be active in Venezuela (respectively: other countries are far bigger drug problems; stability – Huh? Attacking/overthrowing Maduro would increase stability?; migration – the border is now secured; human rights – Huh? Trump like North Korea’s leader; democracy – another Huh? For same reason… in other words, these analyses of Trump’s reasoning are aimless and vague, because they dance around the real reason…) Here’s a much better one: Oil. Trump by now understands that US refiners require large quantities of heavy oil that the US does not produce, and is therefore beholden to Canada; US Gulf Coast refineries were build to feast on Venezuelan and Mexican heavy oil. With Venezuelan production suffering and Mexico’s in free fall, Canada now holds the upper hand on a large part of US required oil supply, and that’s not a good thing in the White House. As such, it makes total sense for Trump to be trying to get those Venezuelan barrels back on the market to both drive down global oil prices (new unexpected supply) and to reduce Canada’s leverage. Canada could of course increase its own leverage by building pipelines to coasts, but we can see how that is going (Eby = NO). Carney is telegraphing that something is coming, and it is going to be fascinating to see what that looks like. Remember, the federal government as of this summer upped spending on the utterly stupid idea of creating/sending green hydrogen from Canada to Germany. So anything is possible I guess as long as it’s painted the right colour. BBC and Politico stories here and here.
COP30 begins here in November, or maybe it’s over already, but anyway the famous jet-propelled global CO2 conference is here, where this year a bunch of rainforest was cleared for a new highway and 50,000 people will jet in to tell everyone else to stop doing what they just did. The Financial Post ran this sobering assessment: “According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), from 2015 through last year total global public and private investment in clean energy was an estimated US$14.6 trillion (inflation-adjusted). Yet from 1995 (the first COP year) to 2024, global fossil fuel consumption rose more than 64 per cent. Consumption of oil grew 39 per cent, of natural gas 96 per cent, and of coal 76 per cent. As of last year, fossil fuels accounted for 80.6 per cent of global energy consumption, only slightly lower than their 85.6 per cent share in 1995.” Despite these statistics (from the green-friendly IEA no less), these lunatics STILL refuse to scale back the conference, or switch to video, or make it modular so that such crazy jet consumption isn’t required. I wonder if they hold a session where they discuss their contributions to global hydrocarbon consumption. There likely will be no Irony Acknowledgements to begin the day. FP article here.
Here’s some not energy news but if you’re going to watch/read anything at all this week, it will be a better week if get to this. If you like laughing anyway. It’s a news story from way back in 1970, from Oregon, about a dead whale washed up on shore. A very big whale, 45 feet long and eight tons. The poor deceased beast was a source of local fascination until it started to stink, and locals demanded something be done. No one was quite sure what to do. For some reason the Oregon State Highway Division got the call to deal with the whale, and they decided on dynamite as a solution. The news video in the link below is a masterclass in journalism; the journalist covers the story perfectly, from an analysis and background of the situation, to interviews with the highway engineer in charge of the project (“Well, I’m confident that it’ll work, the only thing is we’re not sure just exactly how much explosives it’ll take to disintegrate this thing…”), to his live coverage of the actual event from a safe(?) vantage point. Some definite foreshadowing there, and I can even skip ahead and give you a preview of the ending and you’ll still want to read it…as the intrepid reporter put it, “The humour of the entire situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival…pieces of meat passed high over our heads…the dunes were rapidly evacuated as spectators escaped both the falling debris and the overwhelming smell.” That synopsis doesn’t cover a quarter of it. The link below is actually to an article written by legendary comedy writer Dave Barry’s take on the subject, who adds his own context like no other can. Enjoy. Link here.
Apparently a lot of you like podcasts. Get a load of this guy. A fun energy chat with Mr. Trevor Rose who routinely puts out excellent podcasts with a whole cast of interesting characters. Link here.
The ideal Christmas present, or well not bad if you can’t think of anything else. At the peak of the energy wars, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity challenged the narrative, facing into the storm. Read the energy story for those that don’t live in the energy world, but want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
Email Terry here. (His personal energy site, Public Energy Number One, is on hiatus until there are more hours in the day.)