I'm under no illusions that this will change any minds, or even that people will actually watch the thing, but this is a good debate between both sides of the "Carney's playing 3-D chess" argument.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] villasv@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I don't really buy the hosts arguments, feels like they're grasping at straws. I think Max has the better take on this, but also overly apologetic to a fantasy environmentalist Carney.

Carney is not calling a bluff nor betting that electrification will "win anyway", he's willingly giving Alberta what they're asking for even though it's not a great idea so that Smith can piss off. That's not environmental politics chess, it's basic "pick your battles".

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I would have agreed with you completely up until last week, when he gave the project to a Crown corporation.

Simply removing federal resistance and letting Smith try and fail to find a company willing to build the thing seemed smart.

This new approach...I'm not so sure.

[–] villasv@lemmy.ca 2 points 58 minutes ago* (last edited 54 minutes ago)

Yeah but this isn't cheap, he isn't just "simply letting Smith try and fail", he's committing federal funding for that folly. So it's not that "smart", as if it would cost nothing to say "yeah sure go ahead", he's willing to throw money into the fire to build the pipeline, and the pipeline doesn't really need to be necessary to be built, it just needs funding and the contractors to run the pipes.

The only way he "wins" this game is in the case where the pipeline actually doesn't get built, but I wouldn't bet on that, regardless of the pipeline being necessary or a good investment. Also, if the pipeline doesn't get built, does BC still get the funding for all that good stuff? If so, then yes that's maybe a good gamble.