For me, CBC News Network is the most comprehensive, reliable and accessible news station in Canada. So, whenever I have a craving for news, I connect with CBC’s 24-hour news station. If you have ever watched it, you will note that besides the time-specific programming, there is frequently a banner of current news headlines on a continuous loop.

Recently, while watching coverage of the Canadian Prime Minister at a NATO conference in Europe, one such banner headline flashed on screen that I didn’t fully get at first glance. Knowing that these headlines are on a loop, I waited a few minutes for the news about Alberta oil production to come around the next time.

And there it was at the bottom the screen …

“Alberta Oilsands To Hit Record Production High in 2025” (June 24, 2025)

How have we gotten ourselves to this point?

According to AARP’s “Ten Key Moments that Shaped the Environmental Movement”, it has been…

1. 63 years since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring
2. 55 years since the first Earth Day
3. 54 years since Greenpeace was founded
4. 45 years since curbside recycling started (remember the 3 Rs)
5. 40 years since a hole was discovered in the ozone
6. 28 years since hybrid cars were introduced
7. 19 years since Al Gore published An Inconvenient Truth
8. 10 years since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was mapped; and
9. 6 years since Greta Thunberg was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

From a very rudimentary economic perspective, I would say that we are here – now, because we want more—“we” being humanity in general. We want more oil. Our demand for oil is increasing. Generally (and I believe it applies in this case) increased demand results in increased production. Are the oilsands in Alberta to blame for Record Production?  Is the government to blame? Or are we humans to blame?  We can spend lots of time debating this (and we have and will continue to).

Somehow, the environmental movement has moved away from this notion of “personal responsibility”. Back in the early days of the movement there was a clear understanding that humanity was “the enemy”. We are addicted to oil, we can’t break the addiction, we don’t acknowledge the addiction. (We don’t want to break the addiction?)

Instead, in the last decade or so, the environmental movement has turned into a blame game. It’s the government’s fault, it’s Alberta’s fault, it’s the oil companies… etc., etc., etc.. We protest, we express our outrage, we blame others and the systems that support them. And then we drive away in our oil powered cars and go home to our oil heated homes.

And we almost never hear the words “personal responsibility” anymore.  Let alone fulfil our responsibilities to reduce or eliminate our respective demand for oil.

But behind the cover story and the headline news, we can still see the foundational notion of “personal responsibility” – if we look.  On the international stage, Greta Thunberg – a climate and environmental activist – is best known for her school strike, spearheading environmental protests and speaking out about big oil, government inaction, and social injustice. Greta is an exceptional person. But she also embodies the ideals of personal responsibility. In fact (according to Wikipedia), “Thunberg’s climate activism began when she persuaded her parents to adopt lifestyle choices that reduced her family’s carbon footprint. Thunberg challenged her parents to lower their impact on the environment by becoming vegan, upcycling, and giving up flying. Giving up flying in part meant her mother had to abandon international ventures in her opera career.”  When Greta travels, she uses low carbon or no carbon modes of transport.

Of course, there are many of us who embody the notion of personal responsibility. Or who are trying their best within their means to reduce their carbon footprint.

I have a friend – (I’ll call him Dan) – who proudly tells anyone who will listen, “I don’t burn any fossil fuels”. He lives in a city neighbourhood in a townhome. Presently “Dan” generates all of his home “electricity and heating needs” through a combination of solar and geothermal. He has two electric cars, one purchased almost 15 years ago and a more recent model. Incidentally he is paying for his most recent car from saving on home electricity and heating bills. In fact, except for a modest investment in early years of his project, all capital additions to bring him to his current “full carbon independence”, have been paid for with energy savings.

Dan has been working on his no-oil “project” for over twenty years. It’s his ongoing retirement project. In this context, Dan understands two things very well. First, he spent a fair amount of time understanding and leveraging provincial and federal government programs that offered incentives and possibilities for carbon reduction. Second, Dan is a patient and methodical man. He started very small with a few solar panels and has over the years added incrementally to his “system”, to the point where today (and for the foreseeable future) he doesn’t burn fossil fuels.

But – despite best efforts on many fronts, overall we are losing the battle. More production means more emissions, and more emissions means more climate change… Ultimately more climate change means more of our hard-earned dollars (including tax and insurance dollars) go towards climate mitigation.

And we must not equivocate here – this all starts from more demand for oil.

… And The Enemy is Us.

*****

Kim Elliott is a SCAN! member and a retired accountant who specialized in financial management and management assessment.