Alberta coal fiasco unearths billionaire power grab

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By David Suzuki

Alberta’s government recently announced new regulations for renewable energy development. They include restrictions against wind or solar projects in areas with “pristine viewscapes” and farmland that needs protecting. According to the Globe and Mail, that’s reduced investment in new projects — in a province with abundant solar and wind capability and a once-booming industry.

Meanwhile, the government is about to open the Rocky Mountains’ eastern slopes in southern Alberta to Australian coal billionaires — even though most people in Alberta oppose coal mining there. On January 15, Energy Minister Brian Jean announced that the government would rescind three ministerial orders on coal, including an eastern slopes mining and exploration moratorium.

The proposed open-pit metallurgical coal mines wouldn’t just be a blight on “pristine viewscapes” and important farm and ranch lands, they would also place “numerous watersheds up and down the Rockies at permanent risk of environmental insults, including toxic coal dust, water contamination, strip mining, landscape destruction and toxic selenium pollution,” the Tyee reports.

It’s somewhat understandable, although not excusable, that a government would so staunchly support an industry that brought economic prosperity to its own jurisdiction and the entire country. But the climate-related consequences of burning oil, gas and coal continue to mount. (Metallurgical coal, used for making steel, is still a carbon-emitting fossil fuel.) Wise leaders would look to better opportunities — especially in the growing, increasingly lucrative clean energy transition.

Alberta’s government seems devoted to the extremely wealthy who own or run the “resource” companies — from Australia’s Gina Rinehart, a Trump ally who, like many billionaires, inherited much of her wealth, to Suncor CEO Rich Kruger, who was paid US$36.8 million in 2023, his first year of leading one of Canada’s highest greenhouse gas emitters.

They want to keep fossil fuels burning and profits flowing regardless of the consequences to land, water and air, biodiversity, human health and climate stability — anything that might diminish the power and control of the large corporations that monopolize energy sources and systems is bad!

Alberta’s support for coal in this case could partly be a result of mismanagement and failure to stand up to foreign interests, especially given that a broad, non-partisan coalition of people — from ranchers and musicians to environmentalists and Indigenous people — has banded together to oppose development on the eastern slopes.

Former Premier Jason Kenney opened the province to coal mining in 2020 but backed down under public pressure in 2022, reinstating an eastern slopes moratorium that had been in place since 1976. Four coal companies are now suing the government for $13.8 billion.

“Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart has also launched two separate lawsuits against the government, one for rejecting her Grassy Mountain project in 2021 and another for damages due to the coal ban. She is seeking more than $2 billion in compensation,” Andrew Nikiforuk writes in the Tyee.

Rinehart, Australia’s richest citizen, has also contributed generously to climate science–denial organizations.

Some billionaires will never have enough. They live to accumulate wealth, well past the point of personal usefulness. The amounts they’ve hoarded could solve any number of global problems. The top one per cent now holds more wealth than the bottom 95 per cent of the world’s population, and “billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024, three times faster than the year before, equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day,” Oxfam reports.

They’re fine with accumulating excessive wealth by destroying landscapes and watersheds, tearing up Indigenous territories, polluting air, water and soil and putting all life at risk. Some of them think they can escape to Mars when they’ve plundered the only livable planet we have.

It seems Alberta’s government has bought into the U.S. MAGA concept of government for the billionaires by the billionaires! It’s the playbook of self-serving, unimaginative politicians everywhere: sacrifice the future to convenient, short-term economic gain.

The only “trickle down” is the millions trickling from billionaires to politicians, especially in the U.S., who do their bidding, at the expense of the health and wellbeing of those they were elected to represent.

Lets’ take back power from the billionaires and oligarchs. The Rocky Mountains are worth far more to the people who live in and visit Alberta, and to the world, than they are to Australian billionaires.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.

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EXCERPT: Former Premier Jason Kenney opened the province to coal mining in 2020 but backed down under public pressure in 2022, reinstating an eastern slopes moratorium that had been in place since 1976. Four coal companies are now suing the government for $13.8 billion.

KEY WORDS: metallurgical coal, Rocky Mountains eastern slope, coal mining, Gina Rinehart, Suncor, billionaires,

REFERENCES:

According to the Globe and Mail:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-alberta-renewable-energy-regulations

Australian coal billionaires: