Innovative Urban Ecological Solutions Discussion

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by milomilo

I'll have to nope you back because none of your suggested policies will solve much, and have no relevance to whether Alberta unilaterally curtailing its oil production will make any difference. Climate change is a global problem and it makes little difference where the oil is produced (marginal production is always going to be higher cost, more energy intensive). So unless every oil producing country on earth collectively agrees to cut back production, Alberta cutting ours will do nothing except gain us less money.

Governments can shape policy such that our own demand and associated emissions are lower, but we can do very little to get other countries to do the same.

Of course the governments in the various countries involved would need to take similar actions. That those governments should do so is implicit in post. The point is that the onus isn't on end users to fix the problem by eliminating demand as that simply isn't viable. This is not in reference specifically to Canada but to economics in general.

it's true that if we don't create much of something then we can't stop creating much of it. That's obvious. But that's just a way to dodge the issue. If the idea is that because we can't control the whole global situation it's therefore irrelevant to control what we can, then that applies to virtually every larger scale problem making it impossible to address any global issue.

It's like if you hate having a dirty neighbourhood and get annoyed when you see your friend littering and you tell them they should stop. They counter that their littering is irrelevant since they can't force everyone else to stop and their small portion isn't relevant due to the scale of the problem...

Of course that defense is irrelevant since you were only talking about their behaviour in contributing to the problem. Everyone is responsible for their own choices and the fact that no one understands that is what causes such problems to begin with.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Doug

Still out on orders of magnitude. It would be 1,000,000x of manure or 10,000,000x...

A better analogy would be having me choose between you reliably spreading a ton of manure of my land every week (spread thin, all over the place), or rolling dice every day with a once-every-20-years chance that you'll dump a ton of concentrated dilbit somewhere on my land.

(That's a difference of over three orders of magnitude: on average, 1 ton every 20 years for the dilbit, compared to 1040 tons of manure during the same timeframe.)

I don't think you'll be surprised if I tell you I'd choose the former in a heartbeat.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Of course the governments in the various countries involved would need to take similar actions. That those governments should do so is implicit in post. The point is that the onus isn't on end users to fix the problem by eliminating demand as that simply isn't viable. This is not in reference specifically to Canada but to economics in general.

it's true that if we don't create much of something then we can't stop creating much of it. That's obvious. But that's just a way to dodge the issue. If the idea is that because we can't control the whole global situation it's therefore irrelevant to control what we can, then that applies to virtually every larger scale problem making it impossible to address any global issue.

It's like if you hate having a dirty neighbourhood and get annoyed when you see your friend littering and you tell them they should stop. They counter that their littering is irrelevant since they can't force everyone else to stop and their small portion isn't relevant due to the scale of the problem...

Of course that defense is irrelevant since you were only talking about their behaviour in contributing to the problem. Everyone is responsible for their own choices and the fact that no one understands that is what causes such problems to begin with.

Well, I'm not sure why you replied in the first place because it still isn't really relevant to my post, which was on the topic of whether Alberta continuing its oil production was a sensible policy or not.

By 'people' buying less oil I meant collectively, not individually. If the world uses less oil, then the highest cost oil will become unprofitable. That's the only way oil will stop being produced, and if people don't accept that reality they might as well bang their head against a wall. It's why I have little time for people wishing for curtailment of Canadian oil production in the name of stopping climate change. It won't do anything, and anyone wishing for that clearly lacks understanding. Yeah, I guess shutting down our production could 'show that we care', but more realistically it would just be more whitewashing of the developed world, outsourcing our environmental damage to a poorer jurisdiction.

That said, whether Alberta should think about slowing growth to improve our long term economic outlook is another matter entirely.

[scryer]

I swear there are too many trolls on here these days...

Back to the topic: has anybody on these forums got solar panels installed on their home and do you find any measurable economic benefits with them? This is my last desperate attempt to get this thread back somewhat on track..

[vid]

Originally Posted by scryer

I swear there are too many trolls on here these days...

Back to the topic: has anybody on these forums got solar panels installed on their home and do you find any measurable economic benefits with them? This is my last desperate attempt to get this thread back somewhat on track..

There is no track. The track is a lie.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by scryer

I swear there are too many trolls on here these days...

Back to the topic: has anybody on these forums got solar panels installed on their home and do you find any measurable economic benefits with them? This is my last desperate attempt to get this thread back somewhat on track..

My mom and step-dad do, and they seem to like it just fine. I believe they get a cheque back for like a couple hundred bucks a month for it. They got it installed something like ten years ago, so pretty early on in the trend.

[Chadillaccc]

An innovative and environmentally conscious way to help deal with the byproducts of the Alberta oil industry, while creating a whole new potentially highly productive industry for the province! Best part is, it's just outside of Edmonton, so a huge pool of talent and industrial capacity right there!



'A huge opportunity': Alberta oilfields could give rise to lithium industry fuelled by electric cars
Calgary-based E3 Metals wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the work of Elon Musk.
AMANDA STEPHENSON | CALGARY HERALD | January 7, 2020

The natural resources company, which was founded in 2016, has developed a patented ion-exchange extraction technology that produces purified lithium concentrate from the light metal that occurs naturally within the province’s oilfield brines. The company’s goal is to produce battery-grade lithium hydroxide that can be used in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries — the same type of batteries that power the electric cars made by Musk’s company, Tesla Inc.

“It wasn’t because of Tesla, but it was because of what Tesla did,” E3’s president and CEO Chris Doornbos said, on the inspiration for his company’s technology. “They took a concept, which was an electric vehicle, and turned it into something that could be a mainstream vehicle . . . and therein lies an opportunity.”

It’s long been known that Alberta’s historic oil and gas-producing Leduc Reservoir is rich in lithium deposits, but the exponential growth in worldwide demand for the light metal is a recent phenomenon. That growth is driven in part by cellphone batteries, but it’s the rise of the electric vehicle that’s really driving renewed interest in Alberta’s as-yet-untapped lithium potential.

While electric cars are still relatively rare in Alberta, they have already made major inroads in Europe, California and China — and the growth is only expected to accelerate as battery capabilities improve, EVs get cheaper and concerns over climate change increase. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, EV sales worldwide are expected to surpass sales of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2039. The demand for lithium is forecast to overtake supply as early as 2025.

“Everyone who’s following this space believes that’s going to be the tipping point,” said Doornbos. “If Alberta really wants to be smart about looking to the future, and not just doing what we’ve always done, we need to start building this industry up.”

Most of the world’s lithium is currently produced in Australia, South America and China using traditional processes such as hard-rock mining or massive evaporation ponds. Neither method is suited to Alberta’s climate or geography and both methods have negative environmental implications. Proponents of a homegrown Alberta lithium industry believe that — with the development of the right technology — the province could be a global provider of greener, more economical lithium produced via repurposed oil and gas infrastructure.

An Alberta lithium industry could also provide employment for laid-off oil-and-gas workers. E3 — which has secured the lithium and other mineral rights to more than 1.3 million acres in the Leduc Reservoir region — hopes to ultimately construct a commercial extraction and processing facility within the province, something that Doornbos said could create 300 to 500 full-time jobs. The company hopes to be in production by 2023, producing 20,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent per year with the ability to scale up.

“There’s a huge opportunity to do it here in Alberta, because what you need is land and a professional skill set,” Doornbos said. “And we have all of those pieces here.”

Full story: https://calgaryherald.com/business/l...-global-demand

[headhorse]

electric cars are not an "innovative urban ecological solution". banning cars from cities is though!

[Chadillaccc]

Repurposing abandoned oil fields in an urbanized region into the most environmentally conscious lithium production facility on the planet for electric car batteries is most definitely an innovative solution.


Banning cars from cities anywhere in the Western Hemisphere (the Americas) would lead to a near total economic collapse in the short term and is a really stupid idea. Phasing them out of core areas is at least plausible and should be implemented in stages eventually. Offering tax incentives for the purchase of non-combustion vehicles is also a plausible idea.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Repurposing abandoned oil fields in an urbanized region into the most environmentally conscious lithium production facility on the planet for electric car batteries is most definitely an innovative solution.

Your province has so much environmental destruction it will bankrupt Canada to fix it and yet you portray your lithium mining (which oil sands supporters constantly tell us is terrible!) as beneficial? What is it going to do, walk out of the earth and clean itself off for you?

At least your leader is an American puppet already. Last time a country said it was going to become prosperous by exploiting its lithium reserves, the US backed a fascist coup there.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by vid

Your province has so much environmental destruction it will bankrupt Canada to fix it

What amazing things has Ontario done to remedy the centuries of industrial pollution to the Great Lakes, the Sudbury Basin, the annihilation of the Carolinian forest, among the innumerable other catastrophes wrought by the industrial sector of "your province" by "your leaders"? Oh right, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about, because all four major provinces have caused enough environmental destruction that it would bankrupt the country to fix it.

I don't understand the point of your post. Did you literally just say it all to be a gigantic gaping asshole? Or just completely wasted and angry at an entire group of people due to the actions of some of them? Sounds like the mindset of a Trump supporter to me.

It's not like Alberta's oil wouldn't have been produced if it had been formed in Quebec, Ontario (or anywhere else for that matter) instead. It was produced for demand within Canada and around the world. Alberta didn't cause this environmental destruction, global demand for our resources did, just as all environmental destruction has been caused. That's the evil that is capitalism.

[vid]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

What amazing things has Ontario done to remedy the centuries of industrial pollution to the Great Lakes, the Sudbury Basin, the annihilation of the Carolinian forest, among the innumerable other catastrophes wrought by the industrial sector of "your province" by "your leaders"?

Fuck of a lot actually. Thunder Bay has cleaned up all but one of its nearly a dozen toxic waste sites, there is only one superfund site left on the US side of Superior, Sudbury Basin is no longer a barren moonscape, the previous government instituted pretty strict and wide-ranging land protection policies through most of Southern Ontario (and even parts of Northern Ontario), so I would say we actually are in a position to say Alberta isn't doing a good job. Thunder Bay, in 2003 during an economic depression the likes of which Alberta has never seen, declined a petroleum coke refining plant because it would cause significant environmental damage to the lake from which we draw our drinking water. We gave up 1,000 jobs during the worst economic period in our city's history (worse than the 1930s) for the sake of the environment. We also staunchly opposed Energy East for the same reason (although we already knew TCPL planned to lay off most of the people working for it here anyway, regardless of that pipeline's construction.)

We do still have areas where work is needed, like Grassy Narrows, but that's not something that will bankrupt the country. It's actually pretty cheap compared to what will need to be done in Alberta cleaning up the thousands of abandoned wells that litter the province.

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Oh right, you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about, because all four major provinces have caused enough environmental destruction that it would bankrupt the country to fix it.

I don't understand the point of your post. Did you literally just say it all to be a gigantic gaping asshole? Or just completely wasted and angry at an entire group of people due to the actions of some of them? Sounds like the mindset of a Trump supporter to me.

So first off, I'm a Bernie Bro. But if you want a right-wing perspective, the Financial Post reports that it could cost up to $260 billion. Visual person? Here's a map:


source

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

It's not like Alberta's oil wouldn't have been produced if it had been formed in Quebec, Ontario (or anywhere else for that matter) instead. It was produced for demand within Canada and around the world. Alberta didn't cause this environmental destruction, global demand for our resources did, just as all environmental destruction has been caused. That's the evil that is capitalism.

If it were in Ontario it would have been liquid oil, not oil sands. Our oil was liquid. I'll let you look up why I used the word "was" there.

As for global demand for resources... You oil isn't in very much demand? Like, it's about as in demand as New Coke and station wagons. You have the worst oil on the planet, the oil people only begrudgingly accept when the good oil isn't there.

And, come on, I am talking to you from a city where there have been times that every single large employer was shut down at the same time, where economic decline was so deep that we will never recover from it. I keep telling you guys "If you don't smarten up, this will happen to you!" and instead of learning from the tragedies we've experienced you just keep barrelling on as if things will always be rosy. Unending growth is a impossible dream. Be glad the government is on your side, because when Thunder Bay's economy shit the bed, the government wasn't on our side and you know how that ends.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

I don't understand the point of your post. Did you literally just say it all to be a gigantic gaping asshole?

vid is probably just jealous of the rest of us, and wants to join us on your ignore list.



... oh wait, can't work, I just remembered he's an unignorable quasi-mod thanks to his database editing privileges! Damn.

Well, turns out he insulted you for no reason then! lol.

[Chadillaccc]

Delete.

[vid]

All I can literally do, aside from editing the database, it move discussions from building requests to completed building requests. I can't even close or delete threads in those same forums. If someone spams it (unregistered users can post in database requests) I have to ask a moderator to help.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by vid

All I can literally do, aside from editing the database, it move discussions from building requests to completed building requests. I can't even close or delete threads in those same forums. If someone spams it (unregistered users can post in database requests) I have to ask a moderator to help.

All things considered, your single greatest power on this forum is probably your immunity to ignore lists

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by vid

And, come on, I am talking to you from a city where there have been times that every single large employer was shut down at the same time, where economic decline was so deep that we will never recover from it. I keep telling you guys "If you don't smarten up, this will happen to you!" and instead of learning from the tragedies we've experienced you just keep barrelling on as if things will always be rosy. Unending growth is a impossible dream. Be glad the government is on your side, because when Thunder Bay's economy shit the bed, the government wasn't on our side and you know how that ends.

This is the thing that is most important. Even if we don't believe in climate change at all or don't think it's worth fighting, if everyone else does then it doesn't matter what we think. And even then, focusing the bulk of our industry on one resource is foolhardy regardless, just looking at it from a mathematical view it means that this industry needs to grow faster than the average of the Canadian economy forever for Alberta to retain its "can do" status. And that is obviously impossible.

[vid]

Originally Posted by milomilo

This is the thing that is most important. Even if we don't believe in climate change at all or don't think it's worth fighting, if everyone else does then it doesn't matter what we think. And even then, focusing the bulk of our industry on one resource is foolhardy regardless, just looking at it from a mathematical view it means that this industry needs to grow faster than the average of the Canadian economy forever for Alberta to retain its "can do" status. And that is obviously impossible.

There is a big push to get rid of tropical oils (palm oil especially) because of the environmental destruction caused by growing the plants that make them. It's slowly reducing the size of the industry. We feel good about it here—which we should, the deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia has nearly eliminated orangutans palm oil itself is terrible for your health—but it has led to job losses and desperation in that part of the world as demand falls.

Thunder Bay's economy had three pillars supporting it. With forestry, agricultural exports and vehicle manufacturing, we were already pretty diverse back in the 1980s. We were just diverse in the wrong things. Forestry was killed off by the internet, changes to building codes and US tariffs. Agricultural exports were killed off by the fact that China's on the *other side* of the west, and Europe isn't fenced into two sides anymore. Vehicle manufacturing sounds good but then you realize it's public transit rail vehicles and the only entity buying them is the government, which is gradually becoming conservative nation-wide meaning a big fuck you to rail transit. No future there anymore. With the Mexican supply chain issues at Bombardier it's no longer a guarantee that the TTC and Metrolinx will stick with them as a vehicle supplier. Buy America policies mean our plant can't sell to the US anymore.

Thunder Bay is proof that even a dynamic and diverse economy can go sideways, fast. In 1970 we predicted the city would have 200,000 people in 2000. In 2005 we predicted it would have 75,000 by 2010. And at the end of the day, short of turning Toronto into the Tokyo of North America, public transit wise, what exactly would the government do to fix it? Convince the EU to ban wheat imports from Ukraine?

We put high hopes into the mines in the north thinking we'll be the next Alberta with all the precious metals up there, but they're just as hard to get out of the ground as Alberta's oil (they're in a swamp 300km from any roads, for one thing) and some of the biggest and richest mines have lifespans of just 10 years. That's another thing that Alberta doesn't seem to get: mines eventually run out of the thing they're mining, and then have to close. Atikokan once had a population of 8,000 people working in a nearby iron mine which exported its iron ore through a massive dock in Thunder Bay (the dock still exists, it's several million tonnes of concrete in an out of the way spot, so it will outlast humanity) and now, Atikokan has barely 2,000 people and that massive iron mine is a group of toxic lakes. And that was iron!!! In the Iron Range! The gold mines are lucky if they get 20 years. The Ring of Fire has 40 to 80 years worth of resources in it. What are humans even going to do in 2200?? Where are we going to get more palladium, chromium and lithium than already exists on the planet?

This is why never ending growth is impossible. Things on the planet are finite, and even if there is a lot of something, if the market changes so that you have no customers for it, why extract it?

I hope Alberta has some luck with lithium because 500 Thunder Bayers need jobs as of 3 weeks ago. Apparently there's just shy of a million tonnes of it? That's about 6 million car batteries. There are 12 million cars on the road in Ontario. Good luck!