Western Canada is under major development pressure for its fossil fuel resources. This extraction is not only unsustainable, but it requires opening up more and more land for access.

Many would see this as a necessary compromise to continue to satisfy our society’s need for energy.

But are we really stuck with this choice of economic prosperity versus environmental destruction? What happens when the fossil fuels run out? Do we really need to despoil our remaining wild areas in order to extract every last drop? Are there better ways to use energy today that would enable us to preserve these wild areas instead? What does current technology offer? Is it practical for the average person to get off fossil fuels? Is it too expensive?

That’s a lot of questions, and interestingly the answer is that yes, we do indeed have the technology right now to get off fossil fuels. And not only would it be more convenient for the average person, but in many cases it’s actually cheaper (on a full life cycle time frame). It is not a matter of technology and it’s not a matter of economics. It is a matter of political and public will.

For this reason, we are now faced with the choice: do we want to pursue this one last march into our wild areas to support dying industries for the sake of additional unsustainable short-lived revenue, or do we instead want to preserve what’s left of our heritage for Canada and the World?

There are three technological innovations that will help us get off fossil fuels. They have been around for a while but for various reasons have not reached mainstream adoption. They are heat pumps, electric cars and solar panels. Heat pumps will allow us to kick our addiction to natural gas for home heating, electric drives will enable us to get off oil and gasoline for doing mechanical work, and solar energy will provide the energy to power all this.

The cost of operating heat pumps and electric cars is much lower than the fossil fuel equivalents, but they have a higher initial capital cost. They pay for themselves in a few years because of this, however.

Of course society would still have a need for hydrocarbons as feedstock for plastics, and for particular niche applications. However, hydrocarbons can be synthesized from electricity so when (if) we ever get to a place where most of our electricity is created from the boundless opportunities that solar presents, then we can just synthesize the hydrocarbons we need.