There are more than a few things that piss me off, with questionable business ethics near the top of the list, but closely followed by stupid B.S.

Both of these are readily apparent in our Canadian Federal government and both are contributed to globally by the news media.

OK - time to put some specifics to this rant.

There is no question that coal is more polluting than crude oil - higher emissions of SO2, NOx, Mercury, particulates, and yes carbon dioxide.

People, including my fellow Canadians, seem to like to rag on the Canadian Oil Sands and how bad it is for the environment. Well consider this - there are far bigger fish to fry!

Oil production is dominated by the USA, Russia, and Saudi, who combined produced over 40% of the world's oil. Canada produces less than 6% of the world's oil and less than 1/2 of that is from the oil sands.

By Contrast, China produces almost 50% !!! of the world's coal, and in second place is India at 10%.. YES, that is right - China and India produce and use more coal than the rest of the world COMBINED!

Not only are they the largest producers - it still isn't enough for them - China is also the number 1 importer of Coal, India is #2, followed by Japan, Korea, Taipei, and Vietnam. China and India also account for over 33% of the world's Oil imports !!!

So to all of you damned environmentalists out there, the next time you are looking for a scapegoat to pick on - look East if you want to make a difference and not to ESG compliant Alberta - thank you very much!

I found data ( source below ) on the GHG emissions by year for every country in the world from 1750 to present. By adding the yearly data up, one can see what the total emissions for any country were. Also, the grand total is the worldwide emission.

In the graph below, I show the total CO2 emissions by country or region over two different time periods, with those CO2 emissions expressed as a percentage of the world's CO2 emissions.

The Blue bars are the total CO2 emissions from 1750 to present by region. You can see that Europe, Asia, and North America are about equal contributors to date.

The more telling figures are the Orange bars. Those are total CO2 emissions in the last 20 years, again normalized to the whole world. Europe ( as a percentage of the world ) has dropped in half, while North America has dropped by about 33%. Asia now represents fully 1/2 of all the world's CO2 emissions !!! almost doubling. India also has doubled, from 3.1% of the world's emissions to 6.4 % .

Canada has dropped from 2.0% of the world's lifetime anthropogenic CO2 emissions to 1.6% in the last 20 years despite increasing oil and gas produciton. Canada is one of the most environmentally conscious producers of oil in the world. Since the Oil sands only represents 10% of Canada's GHG emissions, that means the oil sands is 0.16% of the world's GHG emissions yet it is vilified while Asian coal and oil use gets a free ride. Someone has to have an agenda here!

Sources:
[Data set]. Global Carbon Project. https://lnkd.in/eku_wVGc
Our World in Data https://lnkd.in/eAFMKhif