This is a guest post by David Suzuki.

Abundant, cheap fossil fuels have driven explosive technological, industrial and economic expansion for more than a century. The pervasive infrastructure developed to accommodate this growth makes it difficult to contemplate rapidly shifting away from coal, oil and gas, which creates a psychological barrier to rational discourse on energy issues.

The ecological and true economic costs of energy use force us to scrutinize our way of living. And because our infrastructure doesn’t allow us to entirely avoid fossil fuels, we must face the contradiction between how we should live and constraints against doing so.

Canada has no national energy plan, other than governmental desire to be a fossil-fuelled energy-export superpower. Given the consequences of human-induced climate change already hitting home, you’d think the highest priority of governments at all levels would be to decide on the lowest-emission energy path. But politicians focused on election intervals have difficulty dealing with generational issues.

Real, important conversations and decisions are instead delayed by diversionary and often irrational arguments and tactics: accusing critics of being hypocrites, claiming foreign money drives environmental agendas and labelling activists as eco-terrorists or enemies of Canada among them. In place of true progress, we get consolidated political power and greater corporate profit and control. Enough already!

Sustainability requires conservation and abundant energy employed with minimal ecological upset. Yet the inability to consider the need to shift quickly from fossil fuels means governments and industry look to mega-technologies like carbon capture and storage to justify inaction on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, while dismissing solar and wind as impractical, too expensive or unable to meet energy needs. Nuclear power may be an alternative to GHG-emitting fossil fuels, but it’s extremely expensive and would not be online were it not for enormous subsidies. Nuclear fuel is also finite, so costs will rise while the problem of radioactive-waste disposal remains unsolved.

As a northern country, Canada is especially vulnerable to climate change. Polar regions heat faster than temperate and tropical zones — Inuit have noticed the growing impacts for decades. With the longest marine coastline of any country, we’re also subject to sea-level rise. And our economy relies on climate-dependent activities such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, tourism and winter sports, all of which are already feeling climate change impacts.

Where is the political leadership and will to confront climate change? We’re seeing some from individuals, grassroots organizations and municipalities. But what about our provinces? Just as the catastrophic loss of northern cod off Newfoundland warned against unsustainable practices, the destruction of $65 billion worth of B.C. trees by mountain pine beetles — once kept under control by winters with temperatures below -30 C for a week or more — should make the province take notice.

Where’s the leadership? Once lauded for policies such as the carbon tax and energy agreements with California, B.C.’s political leaders have now embraced liquefied natural gas, claiming industry expansion will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and add billions of dollars to provincial coffers — never mind that no one in power now will be held accountable for these promises because they’re several elections from being realized.

LNG should be labelled LFG: liquefied fracked gas. Hydraulic fracturing — fracking — requires pumping millions of litres of chemical-laced water deep underground to shatter shale and liberate embedded gas. It’s a short-term way to get energy with long-term ecological impacts on water and whatever organisms might be down there. (It was once thought life disappeared at bedrock, but we now know bacteria are found at least 10 kilometres down.)

Fracked gas is mostly methane, a greenhouse gas more than 30 times as potent as carbon dioxide. Studies reveal leakage around fracking sites may be high enough to affect climate change more than coal! Calling it a “transition fuel” between coal or oil and renewables is nonsense. And fracking is known to cause seismic activity.

B.C. is also planning the Peace River Site C dam, yet a report by the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association claims geothermal could generate similar amounts of power at a much lower cost.

If our leaders are serious about long-term health and prosperity, they need to stop focusing on short-term profits from rapid fossil fuel development and export and start engaging in serious conversations about our energy future.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image credit: People chatting via Shutterstock.

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This is a guest post by David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington. It was originally published on the Science Matters blog.

Some people think a widespread shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources is not practical or even possible.

You've probably heard the arguments: wind doesn't always blow, sun doesn't always shine, the technology's not advanced enough, installations take up too much space, we need sources of baseload power that can only come from fossil fuels or nuclear power.

And so we carry on, rushing to squeeze every last drop of oil and gas from the ground using increasingly difficult and destructive methods like fracking, deep-sea drilling and oil sands extraction, with seemingly little concern for what we'll do after we've burned it all.

A lot of research is challenging those skeptical assumptions, including some by the David Suzuki Foundation, working with the Trottier Energy Futures Project.

"Canada has vast renewable energy resources in the form of hydropower, solar, wind energy, and biomass, as well as geothermal, wave, and tidal resources that are many times larger than current or projected levels of total fuel and electricity consumption," the recent Trottier report, 'An Inventory of Low-Carbon Energy for Canada', concludes.

Those findings are confirmed by research and experience elsewhere in the world. A study by engineers at Stanford University reports, "it is technically and economically feasible to convert New York's all-purpose energy infrastructure to one powered by wind, water and sunlight," and doing so "shows the way to a sustainable, inexpensive and reliable energy supply that creates local jobs and saves the state billions of dollars in pollution-related costs."

An article in the New York Times; points to research by the Paris-based International Energy Agency, showing, "Thirteen countries got more than 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011."

The Stanford study's lead author, engineering professor Mark Z. Jacobson, told the New York Times, "You could power America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The biggest obstacles are social and political — what you need is the will to do it."

It would be even less of a challenge in Canada. Thanks in part to our abundant hydro resources, we produced more than 63 per cent of our electricity with renewable sources in 2011. The U.S. produced 12.3 per cent.

The biggest obstacles in shifting to clean energy may be social and political, but one of the greatest challenges is creating a "smart" electricity grid. As Trottier Project managing director Ralph Torrie says, we'll have to replace our antiquated grid with one that "will use information technologies to balance a wider range of supply sources, energy storage, interprovincial transfers of electricity and a wide variety of energy management and efficiency tools." Because the current system is due for an overhaul, now is an ideal time to invest in reconfiguring it.

Other challenges include the costs and the impacts of renewable energy installations on ecosystems and wildlife. And with biofuels, the sustainability of source materials and effects on land and food supplies must also be considered. But these are far from insurmountable. Fossil fuel and nuclear power sources are also extremely costly and have far greater environmental impacts. And many studies show that moving to renewables creates jobs and contributes to economic health.

The recent Trottier study looked at Canada's potential in the context of reducing energy-related greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050 — a necessary target if we are to do our part to combat climate change. Reaching that target will also require becoming more efficient in the ways we produce and consume fuels and electricity. This means looking at our individual behaviours as well as considering our habits and practices for everything from public transportation to building design to manufacturing.

Sure, it will be a challenge. But the alternative — to carry on polluting air, water and soil and putting our future at risk with global warming — isn't pretty. We've faced and overcome many challenges before. When people have mobilized resources in the past, we've been able to accomplish a lot in relatively little time — from defeating the fascist threat in the Second World War to putting people on the moon.

Finding smarter ways to power our societies is something we can and must do.

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