Article content continued

Human rights hell holes, like Saudi Arabia and Russia, make up most of the rest of the increase in production. What do you suppose the chance is that Berman will lead protests over there?

“Four years down the road from when Alberta introduced its climate plan and became the only oil-producing jurisdiction in the world with a climate plan — with a carbon tax and a cap on emissions — plus a boreal forest preserve, we have to ask why are the Rockefellers and their co-funders still funding activism against oil and gas in Canada? Why?” asks Krause.

“At this point it’s quite clear to me that this activism is a decoy because it has devastated investor confidence in Canada, it has served to distract attention away from environmental problems in the American oil industry and it has shifted tens of billions of dollars in investment capital away from Canada and into the United States and the American oil industry is booming,” she added.

If Berman really wanted to lower global CO2 emissions, she would spend that $2 million award helping to convince people like her that getting Canadian LNG to China ASAP would be the very best thing for reducing the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).

China produces 27 per cent of the world’s GHGs. Coal makes up 59 per cent of China’s total energy consumption but produces more than 70 per cent of energy-related CO2 emissions in 2018, according to Jan Ivar Korsbakken and Robbie Andrew, senior researchers in climate economics at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway.

If China could phase out coal use with LNG, it’s believed it could cut its GHG emissions by more than 30 per cent, rather than the minuscule, incremental cuts Canada could enact, since we only produce 1.6 per cent of the world’s GHGs.

But don’t expect Berman to do that. It would really help the environment but the U.S. foundation money would dry up faster than she claims the Brazilian rainforest is.

Licia Corbella is a Postmedia opinion columnist. lcorbella@postmedia.com