INNISFAIL – Local supporters of Alberta’s oil and gas industry have eagerly gone to Edmonton’s climate change rally today to protest teen activist Greta Thunberg’s visit to Alberta.
But there are also locals going to support Thunberg, including nine high school students from Sundre. As well, one prominent Central Albertan, Penhold mayor Mike Yargeau, is speaking out in favour of her mission.
The 16-year-old climate change activist from Sweden came to North America last month to take part in the United Nations climate action summit in New York. She has since visited several cities across North America and arrived in Alberta on Wednesday.
“We’re pushing back against anybody bringing up any celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jane Fonda, Greta Thunberg, coming up to try and tell us how we should run our business and our oil and gas industry,” said Glen Carritt, organizer for the United We Roll for Canada Convoy. “We’re very, very proud of our oil and gas industry and our environmental standards and we don’t need people yelling at us to tell us how to take care of that.”
Carritt, who is also a member of Innisfail town council, said a convoy with about 100 to 200 trucks is leaving Red Deer early Friday morning (Oct.18), and will gather in Edmonton for a counter-rally, shortly before noon.
“We’re going to head up to the legislature to show that we’re still fighting for oil and gas and the Canadian energy sector,” said Carritt.
“We’re showing the other side, the positive side and how proud we are of the oil and gas industry,” he added. “We don’t need people like Greta telling us that we should be shutting down our oil and gas industry when we need to flourish with it. We’re tired of spending $50 million a day on foreign oil when we should be using Canadian oil.”
RELATED: St. Albertans join Thunberg at Edmonton climate rally
However, Yargeau, a known supporter of Alberta’s oil and gas industry, applauded Thunberg and her efforts in a tweet Thursday (Oct. 17) evening.
“I think we all should applaud her. How long have we talked about that we need to get more young people involved in our day-to-day lives and decisions that affect us,” said Yargeau. “Here we have a young woman involved, trying to make a difference and whether or not you agree with everything she says, I think we need to applaud the fact that she’s willing to get out there and be involved.”
Yargeau also praised Carritt and his mission of support for the oil and gas industry.
“Glen deserves a ton of credit for what he’s doing, organizing that group (United We Roll For Canada) and getting that message out too,” said Yargeau. “They’re getting involved. They want to stand up for Alberta and that’s good.
“There’s a way we can do this and respect each other at the same time even though we don’t always agree,” said Yargeau.
“Part of why I tweeted that out last night was because you go through social media and you see all these people jumping on her (Thunberg) for being young and naïve and whatever they want to say on their Facebook memes and pictures,” he said. “It just drives me crazy because we talk all the time about getting young people involved and we have someone that’s willing to be a leader and then people want to jump on her for being young,
“As Albertans, if we want to show off our province and want to show people how we responsibly develop our oilsands and oil and gas industry, we should be welcoming everyone and we should be showing them this is who we are and we’re good at it,” said Yargeau. “I hope she gets a chance to see some of that while she’s here too.”
Carritt noted Canada’s leading example when it comes to clean energy.
“We are leaders in environmental standards and innovators. Canada should be teaching the rest of the world how to have as good environmental standards as we have,” explained Carritt. “We have a low carbon footprint, we’re basically carbon neutral in the sense that we absorb as much carbon as we expel. Nobody ever talks about the carbon balance. They all talk about the carbon per tonne that we put out per capita,” he added. “What people need to continue to look at is the carbon balance.”
Rally organizer Luke Nelson, a first-year university student and representative with the Edmonton Youth For Climate (EYFC), said the climate change rally on Oct. 18 is not an attack on oil and gas workers but a call to action from governments around the world.
“It’s following in the Fridays for Future movement,” said Nelson. “The message of our strike is first of all, not against oil workers in Alberta. That’s one thing that we really want to emphasize is that we’re not the enemy of the hard-working Albertans who do put in a lot of work. We understand that.
“What we are trying to fight for is for governments to take climate change as an issue that is a very serious issue, one that they need to start putting money into and start treating it as such,” explained Nelson. “We are advocating for governments to start listening to the international agreements such as the Paris agreement, that even the Canadian government signed up for but hasn’t been following.
“We’re just encouraging governments to start treating this as an issue that is a very key issue at the moment, like we see it,” said Nelson.
Numbers for today’s rally are expected to be in the thousands.
“At our last protest we had about 4,000 people out, (according to) a lot of estimates so we’re expecting possibly that many or possibly more,” he said. “There’s a lot of excitement and buzz about this (rally) probably even more than the last one.”
He said that since March, his group has worked with other groups to hold about five other climate change rallies in Alberta, including the week of action from Sept. 20 to 27.
