“The Stone Age did not end because we ran out of stones, it was because a new technology swept in as a replacement.” I’m not sure who made that comment, but it does seem timely in the context of Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall’s recent comments at a Calgary Petroleum Club event where Wall suggested “We are in the middle of a battle and, frankly, we haven’t been winning many battles.”
Understandably, Wall wants to protect the short-term reality of a carbon-based economy. I can’t help but feel that he could better serve his constituents by recognizing that the transition away from carbon based economies is indeed happening on a global scale.
The “existential battle” to which he referred is not about a regional carbon based economy versus the “others” — it is very much an existential challenge for the survival of the planet.
This could be a tremendous opportunity for the governing parties of both Saskatchewan and British Columbia to notice what much of the rest of the world already knows. Continued investment in carbon based economies is like investing in stones, with the hope that the Stone Age will have a resurrection.
Ron Robinson, Nelson