Canada and Venezuela both try to be social democracies, the hard part is where the line gets drawn. Canada draws it one place, Venezuela another. Each's huge oil and bitumen reserves and politics make for interesting comparisons sometimes. Venezuela under Hugo Chavez doesn't play ball, he often nationalizes stuff first, then negotiates compensation later. Canada plays ball with the bankers and billionaires, it gave up nationalizing stuff decades ago-sold out PetroCan to the oligarchy for peanuts.
Canadians are some world's best at advanced exploration and drilling technologies, members of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association (CanGEA) also produce more than 20 per cent of the world's geothermal energy. They just don't do it in Canada...yet. Canada can and must lead the way by investing public money in geothermal energy production in Alberta's tar sands. If they do, the Orinoco in Venezuela will follow, so to will Utah.
Real wealth, real social justice requires ecological sustainability to better our and our family's well being into the future, and isn't that our only real job, bettering the world for those from whom we are borrowing it. Geothermal's got the right stuff, its energy is constantly and evenly available 24/7/365, it's power can just as easily converted to electricity as steam heat, it can crack the water molecule to provide hydrogen for future trains, buses and trucks. Geothermal, catch the wave of the future.
"At the end of the day, Alberta's junk crude, a screaming signature of peak oil, remains a strategic resource that should serve as a continental bridge to a low carbon economy. Furthermore, energy transitions take decades not years. This reality alone makes superior environmental performance in the oil sands not a rhetorical luxury or propaganda item, but an issue of critical national importance." - Andrew Nikiforuk, TheTyee.ca
