High Gas Prices? We Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet"With high energy prices, distance really makes a difference 'in remote communities' [sic] but it's not just gas that's expensive. The distance from larger cities makes everything cost more - a difference that will just be amplified as energy prices soar." New York Times, March 12, 2008
In a recent article, well known Peak Oil educator and author Richard Heinberg stated that "There is a strange clause in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that applies to only one country—Canada. The clause states that Canada must continue to supply the same proportion of its oil and gas resources to the US in future years as it does now. That’s rather a good deal for the US: it formalizes Canada’s status as a resource satellite of its imperial hub to the south.
According to Heinberg, the unique SPP clause places sufficient domestic supply in exteme jeopardy.
With 70% of Canadians heating their homes with natural gas, not to mention the high per capita number of car owners in the country, Heinberg emphasizes that 'there will come a point when there isn’t enough to fill domestic needs and continue to export. That point is not decades in the future, it is fairly imminent."
What this clause in the Security and Prosperity Partnership insures is that the US has an iron grip on more than 60 percentof our oil and natural gas production. This well may prove to be to our peril.
In the article entitled "Proportionality", Heinberg threw out a challenge to Canada's NDP party with the following:
"So Canada’s energy security and global climate security are both held hostage by a provision within a trade agreement—a provision that is unique in all of the world’s treaties. Canada has every reason to repudiate the proportionality clause, and to do so unilaterally and immediately.
Of course, the current Canadian government will not do so. Nor will the main opposition party. Both are securely bound to do the will of their puppeteers in Washington. But what about the NDP, Canada’s other main (center-left) party? Couldn’t it make the abolition of the proportionality clause a key campaign issue? Surely Canadians care about energy security and simple fairness. By raising the question, the NDP would educate Canadians about the links between fossil fuel depletion, globalization, and climate change, while forcing the other parties to either identify themselves with, or abandon, a policy that imperils their nation’s future."
I wasn't sure that the NDP would see the piece, so I sent Heinberg's challenge to Peter Stoffer, Darrel Dexter (Leader, NS)and Jack Layton (Federal Party Leader). Layton responded.
Click here for Jack Layton's response
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Richard Heinberg is the author of eight books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial SocietiesPowerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World (New Society, 2004), The Oil Depletion Protocol (New Society, 2006), and Peak Everything (New Society, 2007). He is a Senior Fellow of Post Carbon Institute and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. He writes a regular column for The Ecologist, and has also authored scores of essays and articles that have appeared in such journals as The American Prospect, Public Policy Research, Quarterly Review, Z Magazine, Resurgence, The Futurist, European Business Review, Earth Island Journal, Alternative Press Review, and The Sun; and on web sites such as Alternet.org, EnergyBulletin.net, GlobalPublicMedia.com, ProjectCensored.com, and Counterpunch.com. He has appeared in numerous video documentaries, including Leonardo DiCaprio's 11th Hour.
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