Mitch Anderson

What Is Alberta’s Oil Wealth Paying for? Not Better Education Production is up. Jobs are down. And the province is dead last on per-student funding. That’s not what prosperity is supposed to look like.

www.desmog.com/2025/10/29/w... #abpoli #abed #UCP #albertandp #Alberta
Why does the richest province in Canada invest the least per student?

What Is Alberta’s Oil Wealth Paying for? Not Better Education Production is up. Jobs are down. And the province is dead last on per-student funding. That’s not what prosperity is supposed to look like.

www.desmog.com/2025/10/29/w...
Premier Smith’s single-minded fixation on the oil and gas industry has left her province dangerously dependent on cyclical royalty revenue, soon to be clobbered by a global oil glut and waning demand. Alberta's students and teachers deserve better.

Why Is Canada Fast-Tracking LNG? Not for Economy, Climate or Reconciliation Some questions Prime Minister Mark Carney should ask before pushing ahead with natural gas projects.

www.desmog.com/2025/10/23/w...

Danielle Smith’s Pipeline Without a Proponent Is All Dollars and No Sense Canada has a higher calling than wasting time and political capital indulging fossil fuel fever dreams.

www.desmog.com/2025/10/08/d...
Smith questions whether Canada is a real country. In this moment of ludicrous political theatre, it seems more illuminating to ask: is Alberta an actual province, or just a company town? The blurry line between oil patch and elected government is essentially gone.

Renewables Are a Global Economic Engine, Not a Culture War Threat Energy companies are learning this lesson faster than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith.

www.desmog.com/2025/09/29/r...
Follow the money. Exactly zero companies are betting their own $ on a new bitumen pipeline, while global investments in renewables and battery storage are surging. Canada needs to skate to where the puck is going, not where it was last decade. @mark-carney.bsky.social

What ‘Chimney Sweep Testicle’ Can Teach Us About Fossil Fuels’ Staggering Health Consequences Coal, oil and gas have been killing people for centuries. We’re still paying for it.

www.desmog.com/2025/09/12/w...
Fossil fuels costs trillions in human health impacts each year. Chimney sweep testicle is thankfully a thing of the past due to belated regulation and cleaner fuels. Lets finish the job.

Understanding Alberta’s Expensive, Ideological War on Renewable Energy Premier Danielle Smith and U.S. President Donald Trump are weaponizing the powers of the state against wind and solar energy generation.

www.desmog.com/2025/09/04/u...

Mark Carney’s Climate Warning from 2015 and the Perils of Pragmatism Canada’s PM once cautioned that most fossil fuel reserves will become unburnable. What happened?

www.desmog.com/2025/09/02/m...

The Peak Numbers Canada’s Oil-Friendly Newspapers Keep Ignoring Will fast-tracked oil sands infrastructure become stranded assets in four years? You won’t read about it in Canada’s mainstream outlets.

www.desmog.com/2025/08/18/t...

Oil Sands Expansion Hasn’t Brought Alberta the Prosperity Its Leaders Promised Premier Danielle Smith has thrown around some vastly inflated figures. Global energy forecasters aren’t buying it.

www.desmog.com/2025/07/23/o...

Fast Tracking a Pipeline to BC’s Coast Will Undermine Canada’s Security A revived Northern Gateway proposal tops the fossil fuel industry’s wish list. Carney should think twice before fulfilling that risky pipe dream.

www.desmog.com/2025/07/14/f...
How do we build infrastructure and energy systems that are resilient and secure in an increasingly destabilized world? The illegal war in Ukraine provides important lessons regarding worst-case military scenarios that reflect badly on pipeline projects.

Alberta Is Making It Even Harder to Develop Renewable Energy The province released new burdensome reclamation requirements for wind and solar projects — the latest performance in an elaborate political troll.

The stark contrast in how Alberta treats the relatively puny reclamation risks from the renewable energy sector compared to the vast unfunded liabilities from the oil patch is so brazen it almost qualifies as political performance art.

www.desmog.com/2025/06/20/a...

Alberta’s ‘Emissions Intensity’ Hasn’t Improved, Despite Government Claim The 26 percent reduction the Alberta government recently bragged about happened almost entirely between 2012 and 2016.

The latest battle between Alberta and Ottawa is not over pipelines or policies, it's about data. If the oil patch is unwilling or unable to reduce their ballooning emissions, the Alberta government will misconstrue reported figures while working to prevent better measurements from being collected.

Earth to Mark Carney: ‘Decarbonized Oil’ Is as Real as Vitamin Cigarettes Canada's new PM parroted industry nonsense after a meeting with premiers last week.

www.desmog.com/2025/06/09/e...

Pathways Alliance Lobbied for Policy That Hurts Its CCS Viability Do oil sands companies actually want to capture carbon? Canada’s new energy minister, who served on MEG’s board, has received mixed messages.

Pathways Alliance is trying to ride two horses with one ass. If they are serious about their $16 billion carbon capture project, why did they lobby to freeze the price for Alberta carbon credits? www.desmog.com/2025/05/29/p...

Pathways Alliance Lobbied for Policy That Hurts Its CCS Viability Do oil sands companies actually want to capture carbon? Canada’s new energy minister, who served on MEG’s board, has received mixed messages.

www.desmog.com/2025/05/29/p...

Top Free-Market Think Tank Unsure That Canada Needs More Pipelines While Alberta premier Danielle Smith demands new oil corridors, the Macdonald Laurier Institute notes that pipeline capacity is currently ‘sufficient.’

www.desmog.com/2025/05/23/t...
Approving (and potentially paying for) additional oil pipelines out of western Canada has become a kind of loyalty test for federal politicians. If oil pipelines are somehow now a sovereignty deal-breaker, it's worth asking: are they actually needed?

Nope.

Engineer Explains Why Alberta’s Hydrogen Strategy Is Money-Losing Climate Failure Desperation, bad advice and lobbying likely underpinning the province’s plan to blend hydrogen with natural gas for home heating.

www.desmog.com/2025/05/15/a...

A Rundown of Trump Allies That Have Endorsed Pierre Poilievre Concerned Canadians should take note of all the Conservative leader’s MAGA endorsements and vote accordingly.

www.desmog.com/2025/04/23/a...

No, Canada's So-called ‘No Pipelines Bill’ Didn’t Block These 16 Energy Projects Fact checking Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s revisionist narrative of how the Liberals ruined everything.

www.desmog.com/2025/04/16/n...

Conservatives Will Lift BC Tanker Ban, Pierre Poilievre Tells Oil CEOs at Rally Poilievre turned a letter from 14 energy executives into a prop-sized checklist at a recent campaign event in Newfoundland.

www.desmog.com/2025/04/09/c...

Climate Expert Who Studied WW2 Shares How Canada Can Win Trump’s Trade War ‘When we need to urgently build big things we have to do it ourselves,’ Vancouver-based author Seth Klein tells DeSmog.

www.desmog.com/2025/04/08/c...

Tariffs Likely to Crater Canadian Crude Exports to the US, Marathon Tells Investors The American refiner pitched a pivot away from Alberta suppliers ahead of President Trump’s trade war salvo.

Shout out to @markhamhislop.bsky.social
for breaking the important story on how US refiners plan to turf Alberta crude suppliers after Trump tariffs.
www.desmog.com/2025/03/05/t...

YouTube video by Rusty Ford Psychopathic Politician Blues

An apropos oldie from my good buddy Rusty Ford.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVuI...

Trump and the Energy East Pipeline Revival: Why Canada Shouldn't Waste Billions A smarter investment? Put that money towards a massive build-out of the nation’s electrical grid to reach projected energy demand instead.

www.desmog.com/2025/02/21/t...

The Wheels Are Falling off Alberta’s Gas-Powered AI Data Centre Proposal Thanks to shifting markets, political scandal, and the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation citing ‘zero consultation’ in its cease and desist letter.

www.desmog.com/2025/02/19/t...

Trump Dissed Poilievre, Revealing Key Weakness for Conservatives Poilievre has clearly not earned enough respect from the Trump administration to credibly defend Canada’s interests.

www.desmog.com/2025/02/11/t...

Why Is Alberta Falling for Kevin O’Leary’s AI Data Centre Stunt? The celebrity investor pitched ‘Wonder Valley’ with no committed investors, no Indigenous partnership, and about 27 megatonnes of projected annual emissions.

www.desmog.com/2024/12/20/w...

Anti-Renewable Influencers Parrot Takes from Fictional Series ‘Landman’ Right wing YouTuber Tim Pool is the latest to own ‘climate people’ with fake facts spouted by a grizzled TV oilman.

www.desmog.com/2024/12/06/a...

Are We Cancelling the Enlightenment? | The Tyee If we’re bored of reason and a single shared reality, we’ll need something to take their place.

Are We Cancelling the Enlightenment?

“If the Enlightenment is to reinvent itself, it needs to remind us all why a single shared reality is worth the effort. “
Rollicking essay by @mitchinvan

via @thetyee.ca www.thetyee.ca/Analysis/202...