New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman coined the term "petro-determinist" to apply to a person who believes that we will use oil a long time, so there's no point in doing anything about it.
There's a lot of this about in the debate about the future of the tar sands - with proponents trying to shut down debate about the environmental impacts on the grounds that we simply need the oil.
Vancouver Sun columnist Barbara Yaffe seems to be the latest addition to this club, but is not alone. Recently we've seen it creep into the editorial pages of our own New York Times equivalent, the Globe and Mail.
Worse, perhaps, is coupling petro-determinism with political cynicism, which is on display in this piece by Norman Spector. In chronicling Quebec Premier Charest's own mild determinism that we exploit the tar sands because they are there, Spector tut tuts us idealistic environmentalists by telling us that tar sands money drives politics, so presumably we should just stop trying to make things better.
There's two things about petro-determinism, though, that should be pointed out:
1) It's intellectually lazy: just because we now use oil, it doesn't make the tar sands clean. It is possible to point out simultaneously that we are energy users and that Canadian and Albertan regulators are failing miserably at mitigating the worst impacts of the tar sands.
2) It's actually false: there are things we can do right now to dramatically reduce our dependence on oil, and guess what - nobody is making oil anymore, so at some point we have no choice but to embrace these solutions. Petro-determinism is by definition an argument with a limited shelf life.
It's a worrying trend that our media seems to be dominated these days by those who are rationalizing an energy system that is undermining the security of our life support systems. Our children deserve better.
Matt Price
Policy Director
Environmental Defence
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Posts
