Where’s Jason Kenney’s Alberta Energy War Room when you need it?
I’m talking about Donald J. Trump’s Super Tuesday victory speech, wherein he “conjures a dark vision” (The New York Times) and offers “grim visions of an American apocalypse” (The Guardian).
Surely it deserves a response from the War Room, which is officially known as the Canadian Energy Centre and is found at CanadianEnergyCentre.ca if you’re silly enough to be looking for a cyber-geographic location.
Now, a caveat: Reading the transcript of a Donald Trump speech is an unnerving and disorienting experience – much worse without the unintended hilarity of actually listening to the man rambling incoherently in his disjointedly comedic monotone.
It’s a nasty job, but somebody from Alberta had to do it, and it might as well have been me.
You see, it turns out that Trump – who I’m betting a significant number of the politically active base of United Conservative Party (UCP) would love to see back in the White House as No. 47 – falls on the tar side of Alberta’s famous and controversial tarsands/oilsands divide.
So as soon as he got to talking about heavy oil seven or so minutes into his Super Tuesday Republican primary victory speech in the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, not far from the late Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s presumably less palatial home. (Although, to be fair, you never really know, do you?)
Why would Trump have been talking about heavy oil, you ask?
Well, like everything else, it comes back to his dystopic view of the world – and the United States’ place in it. And his dislike of foreigners, especially foreigners from Latin America, of course.
So let’s pick up the theme a few seconds before Trump, rambling about American energy independence, veered sharply toward “tar oil.” (Bad.)
“So the world is laughing at us. The world is taking advantage of us. Three years ago, we were at a level. We were energy independent. We’re going to be very shortly energy dominant. And today, we’re getting oil from Venezuela. Can you believe it?”
He continued: “And we’re doing numbers on that oil. You know what we’re doing? We’re refining the oil. We have our refinery for that oil. It’s really, I call it tar. It’s not oil. It’s terrible. We have real stuff, but we’re refining it in Houston. So for all of the environmentalists, you ought to look at that because all of that tar is going right up into the atmosphere. You just ought to take a look. It’s the only plant that can do it. We have the only plants that can take tar and make it into oil. And that’s what it is. It’s a shame. But we were energy independent. We were going to be energy dominant. We were going to be supplying oil to Europe all over the world. And then a tragic thing happened during the election. It was a tragedy because you wouldn’t have, think of it, all of the problems that you have today, I don’t think you would’ve had any of them. You’d only have success.”(Emphasis added, of course.)
Yadda-yadda.
But here’s the thing, he’s not just talking about Venezuelan heavy oil, so loved by those refineries in Houston to which Kenney, Alberta’s previous UCP premier, wanted so badly to build a pipeline that he gave one of his corporate friends $1.5 billion, for which we got nothing.
They love the Venezuelan variety – notwithstanding the U.S. State Department’s problems with the government of that country – because it’s just a short, cheap boat ride across the Gulf of Mexico, instead of a long, politically fraught pipeline trip through the continental United States.
But when you get right down to it Trump is talking about the same stuff from Alberta’s oilsands, isn’t he? (“I call it tar. It’s not oil. It’s terrible!”)
And if you thought it was bad when Trump threatened to sic the Russians on countries that won’t pay their NATO tax to America’s arms industry, just wait till he sics those foreign-funded environmentalists on heavy oil, because “all of that tar is going right up into the atmosphere”!
You have to know that while they may start with Venezuela, sooner or later they’re going to turn their baleful green gaze northward – all with Donald Trump’s approval and encouragement!
I mean, Jeez, Louise, if this doesn’t warrant a stiff rebuttal from the War Room, what does?
Hey Tommy Olsen! Get cracking!
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