Almost exactly a year ago, Yukon’s justice minister signed off on the permits to allow for our Crown-owned utility, Yukon Energy, to construct one of the most carbon-intensive projects in Yukon’s history, the liquefied natural gas project.
It appears that this ill-conceived action coincided with what market watchers now have discovered was the beginning of the drop in the price of oil. The LNG project was uneconomic as soon as they ripped down the first tree to clear the site while we were out of town at the Atlin music festival.
Al Gore spoke recently in Toronto and he sent a clear message: that the time to change our direction to renewable energy is now. We need a Yukon government that is going to the climate change negotiations in Paris in December to say, yes, we must change, Mother Nature is telling us in a persuasive voice; yes, we can change because we are innovators, progressive and we care; and, yes, we will change and it is going to start now.
If the Yukon Party is not willing to do this, then we need to call a territorial election today and so we can send a government who will. We can no longer afford to wait. As Al Gore stated in his CBC interview, we do need to put a price on carbon in economics and there also needs to be a price on denial in politics.
JP Pinard and Sally Wright,
Whitehorse and Kluane Lake