Gas Price Caps ARE Viable, Profiteering by Big Oil, Earth Day & a Bonus Compilation - Sierra Club Canada

Cutting gas taxes – and cutting vital services – does NOT help Canadians. Oil & gas corporations will likely just pocket the difference – and it’s a good question as to how much of those profits could go to the U.S. Big oil and gas are already profiteering off the oil crisis – as they have previous crises – and it IS profiteering not just innocent supply and demand. As economist Jim Stanford wrote in the Toronto Star price caps to address gas prices are actually very viable:

“Most of Canada’s petroleum needs are met from domestic production… Producing, refining and distributing Canadian petroleum products is no more expensive than six weeks ago… [i.e. there’s still plenty of incentive under a cap. Suitable measures include] price caps on domestically produced petroleum products, an excess profits tax on abnormal industry profits, and expanded GST rebates for weary consumers… [Australia, Spain & Ireland] & many more, have used price caps, excess profit taxes & consumer rebates to moderate the impact of global oil shocks (in 2022 as well as today).”

The Environment in Canada Podcast episode 107 on gasoline price caps and Earth Day. You can listen to the episode on The Harbinger Media Network, IHeart Radio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or on our website below:

Earth Day special episode with links to resources on biodiversity and nature, information on the cost of living and price caps on gas, and an update on a recent demonstration (pictured) that saw hundreds of people in Montreal protest against Federal cuts to climate action and services. Find out more:

From the newsletter:

Framing that boils everything down to ‘the market,’ ignores influence and casts corporations as innocent actors (those poor, innocent, oil corporations). It leaves out big oil’s direct – intentional – decades of using climate denial and delayism which continues to this day: Big oil and gas are making a lot of the profits they are making precisely because they have held back renewable competition, misleading governments and citizens. Because big oil and gas, like many wealthy interests, try to enforce monopolistic control wherever they can. This market-framing is designed to keep you from seeing that influence.

The Federal Government have done everything they can to shift the ‘Overton window’ in favour of oil and gas talking points by framing oil and gas as ‘pragmatic,’ ‘realistic,’ and ‘reasonable.’ According to Energy Minister Tim Hodgson oil is also ‘woke.’ Despite green oil being a myth and carbon capture being a scam, profiteering, wildfires that obliterate whole communities, the risk of global economic and ecological collapse, and the wars started for oil or by leaders who believe oil corporation lies.

Imperial Oil just spilled 843,000 litres of ‘woke’ bitumen emulsion from a pipeline northwest of Cold Lake, Alberta – pipeline spills like this are inevitable. The “LNG Canada plant – [Canada’s] country’s first major LNG facility, [owned by foreign companies] – is one of the highest sources of global emissions for flaring, undermining claims that Canada produces the cleanest natural gas in the world,” a Narwhal exclusive today reports.

Calling oil ‘woke’ is where I get, honestly and empathically, concerned for all leaders on Parliament Hill: we know they face a never ending stream of oil and gas lobbyists who are experts at warping reality and that key decision makers have little interest in meeting with environmental voices. Imagine a family member you have who fell down a YouTube conspiracy theory tunnel – courtesy, by the way, of big oil’s disinformation. Except leaders have power. The hold big oil, the U.S. – and their allies in the Atlas Network – have on the information leaders receive is bad for their reasoning, but disastrous for us.

Take the U.S. President, for example. Sure, he’s ironically supercharged the transition to renewables by starting a war with Iran, but in all his talk about his aggression towards Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, and Canada one thing becomes clear: he actually believes oil corporation lies about a bright future for oil and about renewables being flawed and, no doubt, that delusion has helped drive his expansionism. Calling oil ‘woke’ is literally saying ‘war is peace’ and ‘ignorance is strength.’ It should raise alarm bells.

So did oil and gas corporations cause the pain at the pump we’re experiencing now? Absolutely, their disinformation and lies held us back from building out electric alternatives (and still are) and big oil lies directly enabled the man who started the Iran war and enabled U.S. reasoning for it (again, even if that will come back to haunt big oil as the IEA confirms).

Again, the U.S. Government’s strategy is to try to get countries like Canada to believe that, by backing oil and gas and tech interests, we are supporting our own interests. When we are actually furthering U.S. interests in the process.

Providing distraction from all this though is the well-debunked Alberta-separatism-4D-chess-excuse: which ignores that support for climate action in Alberta is stronger than that of the Federal government’s approach, and that the Federal government is doing a LOT to help oil and gas corporations that has no impact on that issue. In fact Federal actions arguably enable attacks on national unity: enabling bad faith actors like U.S. AI corporations and Kevin O’Leary, and allowing disinformation to spread.

This never-ending ‘Alberta-excuse’ has, from the beginning, been a trap: the more you give in, the further the line moves. A new example: “Defying significant Indigenous opposition, Ottawa quietly handed Alberta control over environmental impact assessments in a new cooperation agreement.”

Help fight back against this false framing of pragmatism by talking with others!

Photo of the PAS UNE COUPE DE PLUS ! / NO MORE CUTS! rally in Montréal last Saturday which saw hundreds of people protest against Federal and Provincial cuts to the environment and public services as well the Federal Government’s clear support of destructive oil, gas & LNG expansion. Our Sierra Club Canada Quebec Chapter Director Shirley Barnea helped organize and lead the march, leading chants through a megaphone and guiding the crowd.

Episodes in the compilation after the intro on Earth Day and price caps and approximate start time:

The Trap of Individual Impact, Acting as a Community, & Migration – Voices in NL (8 minutes in).
Anti-gaz de schiste du N.-B. avec Denise Melanson (44 minutes in).
Urban Bee Populations and Climate Change (1 hour and 25 minutes in).
When the Last Glacier Melted, the World Would Catch on Fire (2 hours and 12 minutes in).
L’environnement, c’est intersectionnel avec Lourdenie Jean (3 hours and 4 minutes in).
Decolonizing Climate Research with Dr. Enoch Tse (3 hours 38 minutes in).

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