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Do these reports give pause to the idea of another bailout? Apparently not. Aviation is a sexy industry. As far as I know, no one protests the aviation industry. Greens don’t camp on runways. Greenpeace doesn’t climb up the noses of parked jets. The Sierra Club doesn’t issues tiresome anathemas. (Considering the role of jets in ferrying tens of thousands of climate activists on their pilgrimages to the capitals of the world, for their annual prayer-fests to Gaia, maybe this is not surprising.)

The National Energy Board doesn’t review Bombardier for its upstream or downstream carbon emissions when the company proposes to add to the world’s massive fleet of jets. Yet the aviation industry, as the European Union has declared, “is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.”

The same consideration applied when governments came to the rescue of General Motors. There was no talk of upstream and downstream emissions then, no talk of “leadership” on the climate change file when it came to saving the car industry — which, like the aviation industry, relies utterly on oil and its derivatives to power its vehicles. Every car is a stove on wheels burning fossil fuels. The really great thing, however, about cars and jets is they are not pipelines.

With these varied consideration in mind, I suspect that if there is an agreement to give special treatment to Bombardier, it may be met with some puzzlement in Western Canada, and perhaps in Newfoundland. In Alberta, it is not a single industry that is struggling; it’s the industries that depend on the oil sector — which is pretty much all of them. And it’s the whole province that is reeling — not from mismanagement, poor performance or unfulfilled contracts — but because of low prices for its products. That industry, like Bombardier, has “high-paying jobs,” is “innovative” and while oil is not “fabulous,” it may claim an even greater virtue: it is necessary for almost every other industry. It is surely necessary for jets and cars.