Putin a Saviour?

 

Putin a Saviour?

In 1967, I managed to have a job in the old Radium Hot Springs hotel. Spring was in the air but we ended up with a few chilly nights and needed to heat the hotel, an old brick building. I was shown how to set up a fire, add coal and switch the water circulation pump on. It didn’t take long for the building to warm up. Other buildings were more modern and had gas-fired furnaces.

There are many ways that humans can stay warm in the winter, but it takes more work to get the heat, and the pollution from coal is more damaging than what gas produces. In 1967, people were not yet much concerned about pollution. It was later that we discovered acid rain melting buildings and in the late seventies, the danger of Global Warming woke us up to reality. An invisible enemy is always the most dangerous.

When you walk the main streets in our Crowsnest Pass little towns, you may notice metal covers on the sidewalks where coal used to be delivered to buildings. If you go to the museum, look at pictures and exhibits, paying attention to what people in the past were wearing. A man at home was wearing a three-piece suit and all that went under it. The ladies wore heavy material long dresses and they themselves can tell what was under them. There were large aprons and shawls over the sweaters. There is nothing wrong with dressing up for the season instead of making the home always summery.

Life was grand, but not as easy. It took time and work to stay warm in winters and much more work to feed ourselves, wash up, clean the house and get from A to B. The work and the lesser selection available to most wasn’t exactly a negative aspect. Life was meant to take time and effort, and many folks had employment no longer available in our present age. Even knowledge was harder to obtain. There was no Google or anything like it.

Libraries were busy, people did accounting or law without computers, books and articles were handwritten, edited, and copied to be submitted for typing. People worked, got paid, and used the pay to purchase things and keep the economy going.

Over time, it all changed thanks to the use and distribution methods of energy. Now even watching TV doesn’t require standing and walking to change a channel or to reduce the sound. Take away the cheap energy and its distribution infrastructure and it sets us back to the last century. Our bodies are fatter and weaker and all we have is our technological knowledge that mostly depends on the energy. Electricity comes in wires and powers everything. Only one minor problem, garbage is created and there is no way to get rid of it. It transforms the home planet to be less desirable.

For years we knew we would have to take care of the problem but didn’t. Political will, powered by donations from energy giants, blocked most efforts. It will take time, the oligarchs and their minions said. My doctor said that I should quit smoking to improve my health. It will take time, I said, I will reduce it significantly by 2050. He said you may be waiting till it’s too late. Yet reducing CO2 emissions by mid-century makes sense to him while he and his patients are all wheezing thanks to forest fires smoke.

All of us are rightly horrified by what Putin is doing in Ukraine. It’s hard to see any good coming out of it, yet half of humanity doesn’t condemn it. One evil most publicized is Europe’s dependency on Russian energy that last week was shut off to Poland and Bulgaria. It reminded me of the first oil crisis in 1975. We didn’t warm up cars, didn’t hold the ovens or fridges open, and replaced damaged weather stripping when needed.

If we care about Ukraine, we need to bring the energy-saving measures back. The entire world must act together to conserve energy and speed up weaning ourselves off from the easy energy we so depend on. We love to hate Putin and his war, but the real fight is in changing our energy consumption and the type of energy we use. Instead of building more pipelines, human ingenuity must use new ways.

We have plenty of options to do it, regardless of what the fake news says. What we need is the will to do it seriously. For example. If we all had electric vehicles, we could use them as a power storage system. The battery in one vehicle can provide all the power that an average home uses in three days, not that it would need to. However, it can’t be done by us without planning and support from our governments.

Projects such as Montem Resources are planning here in the Pass can help, not just the world but the people in Ukraine. If we do it fast and well, show the economic benefits and motivate the politicians to do more, Europe may give Putin the finger and tell him to keep his dirty energy. Without the revenues from oil, gas, and coal, he will not be able to build tanks and missiles. We can show the world that Alberta is an energy-producing area without pollution.

Europe may need to use coal, as the old Radium hotel did in 1967, the smoke can be filtered, but not for long. Life is always about what people believe. People always must choose if it’s all about me, or if I care about other people. Seeing the raw suffering of the people from Ukraine may just tilt the balance. We exist in a balance. It’s never all the way in one direction or we are doomed.