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Energy industry more than just oil and gas

"Quite arguably long gone and relegated to the history books are the days of being able to drop out of high school to pick up a shovel and earn a six-figure salary in the patch."

I wrote these words in a January, 2020 column criticizing the UCP's predictable failure to reignite Alberta's economy by giving profitable corporations a tax break that punched an almost $5 billion dollar hole in government revenues.

I since then have come to learn that while the industry has indeed played a role in enticing some young workers to drop out of high school to get rich quick in the patch doing grunt labour, that this trope presents a grossly generalized and inaccurate picture of the whole.

After all, the oil and gas industry also hires some of the most brilliant engineers and scientists as well as talented trades people from electricians to welders.

These are people whose skill sets must unquestionably transcend beyond the oil and gas sector and be not only applicable elsewhere, but even coveted and highly sought out.

I mean, it's called the energy industry, and it isn't exclusive to only oil and gas.

Many of the major global conglomerates who themselves are avoiding long-term, capital intensive oil and gas projects that might never payoff, at least in this lifetime have all long since established renewable divisions.

Shell, Total, BP, Eni and Equinor have apparently led the renewable energy charge among fossil fuel giants, while ExxonMobil, Chevron and Petrobras drag their feet and dig their heels deep in the fading 20th century dream of soaring oil prices.

If I were a betting man, I'd put the odds with the companies that have a vision for a future that isn't exclusively petro-centric, and are actively planning and preparing.

None of this necessarily has to mean bad news for workers in the patch.

Because whether geothermal, solar, wind, carbon capture and storage, or anything and everything else in between, those sectors also desperately need brilliant engineers and scientists as well as talented trades people from electricians to welders.

That being said, such a transition is a huge undertaking that would undoubtedly require an element of mobility. But even moving all over the province, sometimes even country, is something patch workers are used to.

What I perhaps fail to understand, is the unrepentant reluctance and outright scornful refusal to consider applying one's skills in another energy sector.

Sure, the demand for oil and gas isn't going away any time soon and some positions are still certainly needed. But the boom times of the good ol' days are staring at us in the rearview mirror while reality lays on the road ahead.

Now, I know it's common for lefties like me to be depicted by the rightwing spin machine's pundits and talking heads as some deranged radical environmental extremist who hates oil and everyone involved in the industry.

Or something.

But this is just a fabricated narrative to make it easier to hate me, and subsequently instantly dismiss anything I say with no need for consideration.

So, it merits saying.

Speaking for myself, and pretty well every other of like mind I've spoken with who shares similar values, no such hate exists.

We don't hate fossil fuels.

We don't hate oil workers.

We don't hate the sector, although we admittedly might not be particularly fond of the greed that fuels it and the self-destructive path that it's put us on.

We even appreciate and are grateful for the industry, recognizing its undeniably critical role in ushering in the marvels of modernity over the past century that have made these times arguably the best and most fascinating in history.

But we swore no oath of unquestioning fealty and servitude to the industry.

If anything, our allegiances lay with the land, and the hope to leave the environment if not in better shape than we inherited it, than at the very least in no worse a condition.

And the only way to make that happen and reverse course on the environmental devastation being wrought across the globe, is to embrace change and transition to a cleaner future, one day at a time.

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