Liberal resource leadership boils down to LN ‘Gee, I don’t know’

This piece originally appeared on The Hill Times, Sept. 23rd, 2024

The Liberal party leadership needs to get in a room together, invite some scientists and economists, and figure out where they stand on liquefied natural gas, or LNG, because at the moment it’s confusing for everyone.

Within six months, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrytia Freeland praised it, while Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathon Wilkinson correctly called it a “fossil fuel” and said he’s “not interested in investing in LNG facilities.”

Within last July alone, Minister of Science and Industry Francois-Phillipe Champagne said he wants to export LNG because “it’s what the world needs”, and two weeks later, Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Steven Guilbeault said ending LNG subsidies is “a common sense bottom line.”

What’s going on here? Why the confusion? The Conservative party, led by Pierre Poilievre, is at least aligned on fracked gas — albeit aligned behind the fossil fuel lobbyists who have perpetual access to his office through a revolving door. Of course, it’s easy to be aligned if everyone on your team is borrowing from the same Canadian Association of Oil Producers talking points. Not checking in with scientists who say that LNG (read “methane”) is over 86 times worse than CO² for the climate, or the economists saying global demand for LNG is reaching its twilight may be willfully ignorant, but at least it’s consistent.

An argument could be made that the fracked gas both-sidesmanship of the Liberal party is about balancing much-needed planet-saving emission reductions while not spooking people who think oil and gas is still intrinsically linked with Canadians’ prosperity. But LNG’s climate-harming impact is proving to be nearly as bad as that of coal, and subsidizing the oil and gas industry is costing Canadians $6 billion, or roughly $214 per taxpayer per year, to pay for extractive corporations who are already glutted with cash.

The media uncertainty about LNG reflects the Liberal party being vague about it, which means many Canadians are unsure about it. This uncertainty is caused by the dogged lobbying efforts by the fossil fuel industry and a multi-billion dollar spin campaign aimed at convincing everyone that fracked gas is somehow clean.

Sowing doubt — about climate change, about who is responsible and its impacts, and about the relative cleanliness of fossil fuels — has been the modus operandi of the oil and gas industry for over a half-century. Quite simply, their business model is based on continued and perpetual expansion of extraction. And that can only happen if we are convinced we need fossil fuels. Greenwashing is how you drown out a growing majority who are facing the massive economic, health, and social costs of burning-as-usual.

This kind of resistance to oil and gas is particularly uncomfortable when everyone knows that cheaper, more sustainable alternatives to fossil fuels exist and can be rolled out at scale. So the fossil fuel industry claims that methane fracked out of the ground, also known as LNG, is “clean,” and we are told we should be happy that “at least it’s not coal!” Next, we are given, “the world needs what Canada’s got!” from the tar sands playbook, and then the industry figured it had its bases covered. (If it weren’t for those pesky economists, scientists, and everyone else not fooled by their deception while living in the world of unnatural disasters perpetuated by climate change caused by burning their products.)

From the perspective of extractive industries, it’s a win-win. At best, they would have sold us on their snake oil; at worst, they could create enough doubt to keep up production.

With that in mind, Liberal Ministers playing to the fossil fuel industry’s contrived confusion seems less of a lack of consistency and more of an outright dangerous misunderstanding. The stakes — being the lives of billions of people — demand clarity on our relationship with LNG.

The Liberal party needs to listen to the experts saying LNG’s time has passed, the scientists saying the burning methane is a clear and present danger to the climate, and the majority of people across Canada and the world who are witnessing first hand the growing, catastrophic impacts of climate change. Liberal Ministers need to speak in the same voice to end LNG subsidies and advocate for investing instead in creating the sustainable economy of the future.