 to care more about the environment than the U.S. does here on View from the North. And this is Dr. Ken Rogers, retired Canadian businessman. And we're going to talk about, you know, the view from the North about the environment and the view from the South about the environment. And before the show began, we were talking about, you know, this remarkable experience that Ken and I had back 45 years ago, maybe, which was in the mountains, in the Rocky Mountains, in, I guess, British Columbia or Alberta, where he took me to the Continental Divide, where you can see a stream. And the stream is going in two directions. It's going east and west. And I, you know, I didn't understand that. I didn't know about it. And he said, notice, notice, Fidel. Notice it goes both ways. This, if you didn't notice, this is the Continental Divide. And the holy, holy, I mean, I thought it was a line on a map. Oh, no, no, no, no. Then it was really very beautiful. But the other thing I wanted to mention before we begin our conversation in earnest is a program, it's a series on Netflix called Alone. And Alone is a contest. It's a documentary covering these people who enter into this contest with big stakes, you know, a lot of money if you win. You have to stay out in the wild for like 100 days through the winter season, alone with very limited, you know, provisions and tools. And a camera, actually a couple of cameras, where they take pictures of themselves and a radio that reports back when they need to, quote, tap out. Tapping out means I give up. I can't stand it anymore. You know, come with a helicopter and take me away. Take me back. A lot of them, a lot of them do tap out because they can't stand the weather. They can't stand the struggle of survival in the complete wilderness. But one thing about this show, which is so captivating, is the environment. I mean, there are, yes, there are places in the world that are completely isolated and beautiful, beyond description, beautiful. This is not only in Canada, it's in various places. And they're all alone. And there are maybe 10 or 12 of them at a given time. And the guys who put this together do a great job in showing you about, you know, the primitive, the wild, which still exists. And in large part, I mentioned it because in large part, you can find places like that in Canada right now today. I know you could find a place like that. Canada wouldn't be too far from your home, would it? That's correct. I mean, you've got to take into account that, you know, Canada is the second largest country in area in the world. And a good percentage of it is about as useful as most of Alaska. What do you mean useful? That deserves some definition. Well, useful or useless or pretty empty. You know, you have some parts that, you know, there are no people, for example, not too far from north of Vancouver, sort of halfway between Vancouver and where the Alaska Panhandle, the southern part of Alaska Panhandle, is a huge part of British Columbia called the Great Bear Rainforest. You know, you may have seen documentaries where there are white, white bears, you know, and, you know, that created good native folklore, and that's why they call it the Great Bear Rainforest. You know, it's also, you know, wonderful country for fishing, you know, hunting, if they allowed it now. It's almost like a mega-sized reserve. But, you know, you have this wilderness all over Canada. But when you talked about somebody camping out overnight, you know, if you were camping out, you know, you can go, you know, 30 miles from Vancouver and you're in the absolute wilderness. Even though Vancouver's got nearly 3 million people in the metro area. But you could camp out there quite nicely. Whereas if you went, you know, you know, 30 miles north of Winnipeg and tried it in the middle of winter, you'd have a very different problem. It's much like Minneapolis and Seattle are at the same latitude. But, you know, experiencing the winter in Seattle is pretty comfortable in Minneapolis is pretty miserable. I mean, I always felt that you, you're my exemplar of a Canadian, that you had a special feeling about the environment. That you were not afraid to go into it, that you appreciated it, that you related to it. Anybody living, you know, reasonably close in this very large country, this country with such, you know, a spectacular wilderness, would have a certain connection with it and appreciation of it, perhaps more than Americans did or do now. Am I right about that? Yes and no. If you were to ask the average Canadian on the street, they think that Canada has a wonderful policy to try to strive to get, you know, control of the changing climate, to get our greenhouse gas emissions down, etc. And that, you know, the public relations put up by the various levels of government in Canada have certainly brainwashed the majority of the Canadian public. The public in their stomach really is, you know, strong advocates that climate change exists and something major should be done about it. But I was looking at a thing called the Climate Change Performance Index. A European group puts out this index every year and they rank a whole bunch of countries. And in this year, they rank 64 countries in terms of their climate change performance. How are they doing compared to the Paris Agreement targets, etc. Well, out of 64 countries, Canada was ranked by them 61st. I mean, almost the end. And the United States was ranked only a teeny bit better. They were at 55th, you know, so that, you know, the two of us are at the bottom of the bucket. And for example, they did it under four categories. And they kind of have very low, very, very low, you know, are the two worst categories. And that's where Canada ranked on everything. They had, we ranked at the very low in greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energy and energy use. And the only one we ranked a little better, we just ranked low on the climate policy. Now, if you read the Canada's official climate policy, you'd just say, wow, do these people ever have their act together? They just don't follow through. You know, and much of it in Canada is the relationship between the federal government and the provincial governments. The federal government has all the money. Like they have all the taxing power, relatively, like the provinces have some, but the federal government really has an abundance of funds. And the provincial governments have most of the responsibilities or the provincial governments and the municipal governments. So that you have a thing like health care, and you get a federal government establishing a standard. And then as the costs of health care increase, the federal government doesn't increase the amount of money they put in. You know, so that the health care system starts to suffer, like we've got a major suffering now in that regard. But with regard to climate change, the majority of the population in Canada, you know, is in, let's call it, north of Ohio, you know, or next door to Michigan, you know, southern Ontario and Quebec, you know, have about 60% of Canada's population, where, you know, most of the resources that involving energy and none of those come from those two provinces. So when you're sitting with climate change, you can't separate energy and the production of energy from the climate change policy. So that Canada has this wonderful looking policy produced by the federal government, but they leave the responsibility to, you know, the three big energy provinces to deliver. You know, That's going to be British Columbia, Alberta, and which, Actually, it's not British Columbia. It's actually Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. British Columbia has a ton of natural gas. They have enough natural gas that could probably supply Europe for a lot of years, but there's no pipeline. Right. And you have to go through the Panama Canal or something to get it over there. Well, no, you've got to get it from, you know, northeast British Columbia. You've got to get it to a coast first. Oh, well, cheer up. Everything toward the Arctic is melting anyway. So it'll be easier and easier if the Russians let us pass, you know, that's another show. But let me, let me, let me ask you about the western provinces. I mean, they're heavily invested in oil and gas. And that's always been the case. And it's a big part of the economy. And a lot of people are employed in oil and gas. And their general view of the matter is, hey, we, we do oil and gas. Don't bother us with clean energy. We're, we're dedicated to oil and gas and, and we don't buy, we don't buy the same, you know, climate change approach that the east does. Am I right? No, no, you're not correct. I love when you tell me I'm wrong. Well, you're just wrong a little bit, let's say, that the province of Alberta, which is the biggest energy producer. And it's the one that, that makes Canada, you know, a mega, you know, on a world stage, the fourth biggest oil producing country in the world. And most of it comes from Alberta, you know, or Alberta and Saskatchewan. But Alberta was the first place to have a price on carbon. First place in North America. You know, that Alberta has, let's say, the difficulty with the oil sands is that when you're mining the oil, like some of it is really just open pit mining. You, it's like you bring in a big shovel and you dig up sand that's, that's got oil, you know, it's oil and sand mixed together. That's the Athabascar sands, isn't it? Well, they would like you to say the oil sands. Okay. But because, you know, but, you know, if, if in Hawaii you want to improve your infrastructure and you want to pave a road, well, where do you get the asphalt? You know, and so, you know, on a world scale, you'd say, well, who are the most terrible countries for, you know, climate, their climate policy or climate result? You know, how are they doing for, you know, total greenhouse gas release? Well, if you take any country where the amount of oil and gas production they have is large compared to their population, you know, which in Canada's case is there. Well, actually, if you took the five biggest oil producers in the world and you just say, well, the United States is the only one with an awful lot of population compared to what they're producing. And the other four look like they're the laggards in the world's effort to solve climate change. You know, and similarly, like the province of Saskatchewan in Canada is probably in the most difficult spot to handle for or to resolve climate change problems because their biggest industry is fertilizer, like potash. And potash mining, you know, and potash itself, you have nitrous oxide. Well, it's a greenhouse gas that makes CO2 look like it's, you know, an ice cream cone. You know, that, you know, there's, it's just so potent as a greenhouse gas that it's, it's kind of almost impossible to develop fertilizer without having a problem. But what I, what I get is that these, these provinces are particularly interested in the economics of, you know, providing potash or oil or gas. And they're not too interested in following these wonderful policies that have been, you know, written in Ottawa. No, no, on the contrary, they're standing on their head to achieve the policies that they believe are appropriate. And their policies often are more stringent than some of the federal ones. But, That cuts against them. It cuts against their interest, doesn't it? Well, it's just tough to make the total target, you know, like, like if you're, if you're in, you know, Saskatchewan, which only, it has less than a million and a half people. But it's got a huge white mining industry and a huge oil and gas industry, even, even though it's smaller than Alberta. And, and it's, you know, and the rest of their GDP relates to agriculture. Like it's, it's as good as Ukraine or Southern Russia, maybe even better because you can have, you know, dry land farming works like, like crazy in Saskatchewan and, and Alberta and Manitoba. You know, it's sort of the bread basket for, you know, production of wheat and things like that, where you don't need irrigation, you don't need anything, you just plant it and it grows. Okay, so you have good policies. Maybe, maybe on this rating schedule you mentioned, maybe not as effectively as the US, but, but close in terms of, you know, efficacy or not so efficacious. But I guess that, you know, to me, there are a few things that enter into that calculation. Number one is the quality of the policy itself, whether it's, you know, what do you want to call it? Conceptually, conceptually visionary or not. Two is whether you're taking the steps and contributing to the world funding through the United Nations and COP 27 and the like to deal with climate change, protect, preserve the environment around the world. And, you know, with the notion being as came up in COP 27 that the more successful countries, the countries that have provided the gas and oil and, and contributed to climate change should, should fund the problems that are being experienced in the other ones, like extreme weather, because it's not, it's not equal to achieve some sort of. You'll never, ever get the countries to agree on that because it would become an open-ended liability. It's, it's like, you know, pick a couple of racial ones in Canada versus the, the natives or in the United States versus the blacks. How much should every state pay for, you know, the harm done to the blacks 200 years ago? You know, and nobody's going to agree to that as an open-ended item because, and that's really the, the climate change question in these third world countries is, is, you know, the United States and Canada and other wealthy countries might make significant contributions, but they sure do not wish to in any way agree that they are liable for something. You know, and your climate change problem, you know, is, is so different from one country to another. For example, most of Europe looks like they're one doing wonderfully well. You know, well, but then you take Poland, you know, and Poland ranks about the same as Canada and the United States on most things like that index I referred to a few minutes ago, but, but Poland has, how do they produce their electricity from coal? How do they heat everything in the country from coal? Are they a nice warm cozy country like, you know, you know, Florida? The answer is no. They have a terribly cold winter. And so they, you know, how do they then have no greenhouse gas production? Well, if you don't have a bunch of other industries that exist that can bridge you to substitute from coal to something else, you're just S.O.L. So other countries, I'm thinking of Sub-Saharan Africa and all that, they have a real problem because the extreme weather, the drought, the floods, all this, it disrupts their society. And, you know, they can't get a handle on, on stability, democracy would have you even, you know, developing an economy, because, because of the weather and the extreme weather. So it would be better on a global basis if somehow we could equalize the burden. The United Nations is ineffective in doing this. I don't, I don't know what the solution is, but I don't you agree that it would be better for all of us if we could find a way to equalize the effect of climate change, whether it's contributing money, whether it's said, you know, getting less of a return on investing into fossil fuel, whether it's using technologies that we're still developing that, that are actually not deployed yet, but will be, whether it's geo, the geo approach where you salt the clouds, right? And you change the weather by affecting the geophysics of the area. I mean, this is, this is a big discussion now. And there's an essential injustice in that because no, none of the scientists know exactly what effect it has. If you salt the clouds in one place as to what happens in another place, you could be doing very destructive things if you don't know enough about it. But my point is, isn't it better to have this, this kind of equalization? It would be better. But, you know, even though I might think of climate change as, as the biggest problem for North America. But you mentioned, you know, the rest of the world, well, their biggest problem is stop having wars. I mean, let's pretend that you and I are in charge of handling, you know, climate mitigation policies. Where in Africa can you go that it's worth even trying to get there to set up camp? Because, you know, if you look like you've got five cents in your pocket, you might be kidnapped and held for ransom by some yin-yang-y group. Same, same thing in Latin America. Well, and you've got a slug of Asia with that same problem, like you've got Myanmar or what used to be called Burma, you know, that's atrocious stuff. Well, you know, yes, you're right. And it's a chicken and egg problem because if you have a society that can't develop a stable government, can't develop public safety, can't develop an economy, it's more likely that you're going to have incidents like that and risks and dangers to anyone who tries to fix it. And so it makes it more difficult. And then as a result, people don't want to come in and fix it and it perpetuates. I don't know where you start, you know, tacking this down. But it seems to me that dealing with climate change has a benefit. I mean, a lot of these countries have given Europe millions of migrants because of the droughts and the floods and the extreme weather in sub-Saharan Africa and all of Africa really. And so, you know, the question is wouldn't it be better if we at least started tacking it down in that regard? And we gave them better energy, for example, cleaner, cheaper energy. And if we also gave them better weather so that, you know, it didn't have these aberrations in weather, unpredictable. Well, you say give them better weather. I don't think that you can give them better weather. You can perhaps start taking measures so that it'll stop going downhill. Okay. But, you know, most of Africa has really nice weather. Yeah, I suppose. If you're comparing it to Mongolia or Siberia or, you know, most of Alaska. If you have drought and you can't eat, it's a problem. And you tend to look elsewhere to live. Well, climate change and feeding the world go together the same as energy. I mean, the big problem with all of the climate change stuff is basically you say the end result would be you have electrification of the world. You know, you produce everything that is run to a great extent with electricity. Now, how do you produce the electricity without any greenhouse gases? You know, and you have measures to suck the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. You know, well, you're really dealing with the need to produce an awful lot more electricity than we have now. Now, if you take all these countries that are growing, just take China alone or better still take China and India together, you know, being probably a third of the world's population between the two of them. And they have phenomenal growth rates. You know, they're that now if their standard of living continues to rise, you know, let's just say if you took India alone and moved it up to the standard of living that China is now at, you know, in GDP, how much additional electricity does the world need to produce? Right. And what are the side effects? Yeah, treatments of all that. So I guess what I'm asking is, you know, where does the average Canadian stand, where does the average province stand? Where does the average Canadian company stand, including multinationals, on those issues as opposed to the U.S.? Are you, I mean, the index is of course one factor, but is the Canadian view of it more constructive, more helpful or less? Or is it the same? Do you know, do we share the same, you know, ethic? We share the same efficacy in dealing with this, you know, and adapting to it in working on avoiding greenhouse gases. And of course, in the technology. Well, as a generalization, Canadian individual Canadians and individual Americans are really, really similar in their attitude. The biggest difference between the two is in the U.S., you've got a more extreme right wing side. You just have more, let's call it climate denier equivalent than we did, you know, any stupidity to that extreme that you have in the U.S., we have some, but just not as much. That, you know, Canadians are far more willing to accept if the government concludes something, bring in a policy, they'll adjust to it, you know, if they're going to, you know, if you invent a new traffic light called a purple light, whatever it is, you know, red light, green light, Canadians will do what you're supposed to do for a purple right. You know, Americans might say, you know, start a big portion would be jumping up and down saying you're violating my right to carry a gun because, you know, purple lights affect how I can carry it or something. No, and everything to do with climate change, you know, that applies, but one advantage the U.S. has is the sheer scale of your corporations and your governments. You know, the U.S. has several research, government financed research facilities around the country that deal with all kinds of oil and gas matters. And, you know, similarly, the corporations, you know, if it's economic to produce electricity with solar power, the corporations will get out there and do it. You know, and in some states, you know, usually California leads on most good things that happen in the U.S., in my opinion, or, you know, California, Washington and Oregon certainly seem to be the most Canadian-ish in their attitude towards, you know, things like, you know, bringing in rules that will help things like climate change. However, overall, those big U.S. corporations, you know, will generally do research on their own, where the Canadian corporations just aren't that big, so we can't do as much. Now, you get things like minor changes in policies like the province of Alberta with their oil and gas, you know, was trying to encourage a lot of what I call the right thing. Well, Alberta oil was probably, you know, 15 years ago was half American companies. Well, you know, as Canada moved to, you know, more policies trying to deal with climate change, most of those American companies said, we don't want to deal with those rules. We'll, you know, move all our exploration activities into the U.S. Oh, how interesting. You know, and now, so that we've now narrowed down and there's only a half a dozen companies are producing 5 million barrels a day in Canada. I mean, the, you know, subsidiary of Exxon is still there. Imperial Oil is one of them, but most of the rest of left town. I mean, even some of the Canadian companies, you know, we used to have a monstrous company called in Canada, and it was split and half moved to the States and half stayed in Canada. Very, very interesting. It leads me to my last question to you, Ken. And that is, you know, looking at the younger generation, the ones coming out of high school and college, how do they feel about this? Can we count on them to continue bearing the torch on climate change and fossil fuels and all that, you know, effectuating these policies, or are they going to say ho hum about it? Well, in Canada, you know, the young people that I've encountered are more raw about climate change than their parents, you know, tends to be the oldest of people, like, let's call it the seniors, and the young kids seem to be the ones that are raw, raw for, you know, climate change policies. You know, it's working age adults that, you know, are less gung-ho. That's fair to say that there'll be more, what do you call it, political public pressure on the subject in the next five or 10 years? Oh, yeah. The pressure is on now. You know, Canada and the U.S. have been real laggards in, you know, moving towards the Paris levels. But both countries have really accelerated what they're doing lately. I mean, in the U.S., you could blame it on the Trump era, to a great extent. You know, but, you know, in Canada, you know, it's really, you know, lack of the federal government financing things. For example, you know, in northern Alberta, or let's call it right near Edmonton, you know, there's a $4 billion plant that's just, you know, starting construction for development of hydrogen. You know, and there's a second plant about, I think it's $1.8 billion for hydrogen. You know, those, you know, that's not chicken feed. That's mega-scale operations, you know, that you've got, you know, in just north of what I call that Great Bear Rainforest on the coast of British Columbia, a little bit south of the Alaska Pan, the bottom of the Alaska Pan handle, you know, is the world's most efficient aluminum schnelter. You know, well, aluminum production, you know, where aluminum is really a useful product, but it's a great contributor to greenhouse gases. Well, the world's most efficient plant is there in British Columbia in a place called Kittomat, where, you know, they have a fantastic way of producing electricity that made that so inexpensive. It's really a nifty deal so that, you know, American and Canadian companies are at the forefront in a lot of the technological developments. It's just the Europeans started, you know, solar and wind before we got around to it. And, you know, if you think of the Joe Mansions of the world saying, well, we've got these coal mines and we've got people working them, and why don't we let them work that out for the next 20 years or something, where the Europeans were saying, no, no, let's close them all down. Yeah. Well, there's going to be more motivation with more bad weather, more droughts, more floods, more what-have-you, and more pressure on both countries. I'm really glad to find that, you know, these technologies are happening because they're an example of what can be done. It's not like you can turn the whole society upside down one day and deal with climate change that way. You have to bring technology in and make things more efficient, little by little, you know, work out, minimize the risk of fossil fuel. Can we got to go? Thank you very much for this very interesting discussion. I always enjoy your flexibility, if you will, and good nature. We'll be back in two weeks. We'll find something else. I'm thinking of the arts and music in Canada, if you like. And after that, I would like to spend a show with you on starting a business in Canada, and how that might differ from starting a business in the U.S., okay? Ken Rogers, retired Canadian businessman, always so nice. Take care, be well, don't be cold. All right. Bye for now.