Strong and Free... For Now

A center of prime education, prize natural landscapes, premium dead cow and plentiful dead dinosaur: I have had the incredible pleasure of calling Alberta my home for the last eighteen years. With pride I worked my way through one of the best education systems in the world, visiting the mountains and consuming hearty amounts of dead cow and dinosaur. I was taught that Alberta is the only Canadian province in the black, and when the first major recession of my generation hit a few years ago, nothing seemed to change except for the news headlines. This has been my past, but what about my future?

The industries that Alberta is so dependent on (namely the exploitation of cow and the gathering of dinosaur) are not sustainable. The process of raising cattle is extremely wasteful, as they require large amounts of land that is becoming increasingly scarcer and the human population grows. Oil however, is even worse: not only does it produce large amounts of waste and in addition to it being non-renewable, is the fact that the world is trying to become less dependent on it.

Alberta is doing next to nothing to create viable economic alternatives which can be gradually implemented. We continue to invest in, and rely heavily upon our oil trade, with the Government of Alberta proudly advertising a 32 million dollar investment into alternative energy sources. This meagre sum pales in comparison to Norway’s 330 million dollar investment, especially when the fact that the GDP per capita of Norway is only about 8 percent greater than that of Alberta. This means that when the demand for oil drops, Alberta will be hit hard with virtually no economic alternatives. This will result in a drastic decrease in the standard of living. If I choose to stay in Alberta when I raise my family, I doubt very much that will be able to match my parents in terms of standard of living.

Another criticism of Alberta’s oil industry involves the waste created by processing of oil. While I believe that the destruction of the environment by the creating of the oil sands is an important issue, I do not believe that the public needs to worry about coping with eh tailing ponds. Oil companies have already begun to clean up these ponds at the behest of the government, and I only see these cleaning efforts increasing over the years to come

Whether or not I will stay in Alberta is undecided as of yet and will most likely depend on the present government’s actions into the investment of other economic alternatives. We need something else do, otherwise we’re in big trouble.

A company that will go to the ends of the earth for its people will find it can hire them for about 10% of the cost of Americans.