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So what was the reaction to Rachel Notley from environmentalists? F———- YOU. I’m paraphrasing, but come on: Notley wanted to build one pipeline. One federally approved pipeline with widespread Indigenous support in her home province that wasn’t even a new pipeline: It was just an expansion of an existing pipeline. What did she get instead? Lawsuits. Protests. Unconstitutional threats from B.C. to unilaterally shut it down. And failing all that, senior politicians threatening to get arrested to stop it.

So, who’s governing Alberta now? What is probably one of the most regressive parties in Canada when it comes to climate change. The United Conservative Party is planning to kill the carbon tax by any means necessary. They’re going to leave coal plants open. They’re also planning to immediately shut off B.C.’s gasoline supply in order to starve the place into submission. Alberta, a place that is often pissed off, is particularly pissed off right now.

So great job everybody: Oil country extended the olive branch at great personal expense to itself, and you instead tarred them as a bunch of duck-killing, planet-destroying, neocolonialist knuckle-draggers. Now, you’ve got a government that not only doesn’t give a crap about reducing emissions, but sees opposing green activists as a just and righteous thing. It might be time to think about some pragmatic moderation in the environmentalist movement, because this stuff is just going to keep happening.