Blog

For years, coal lobbyists have been saying we needed the dirty fossil fuel for when the wind didn’t blow or the sun didn’t shine. We always knew that was a lie. For years, Donald Trump tried to prop up a dying industry. And now the market has proved them both wrong. And there will be no going back.

So the public want change for a post-COVID-19 future, towards a cleaner, fairer, greener society. Whereas politicians want to remain stuck in our polluted past. It is time to make our voices heard.

The Canadian Green Party's parliamentary leader, Elizabeth May, said last week: "My heart bleeds for people who believe the sector is going to come back. It's not. Oil is dead and for people in the sector, it's very important there be just transition funds."

As we transition out of the pandemic we need to transition out of fossil fuels too. We have the science. We have the knowledge. We have the expertise. And now we have to change.

Whereas the oil majors are pulling back their shale operations, others though are looking to expand in US shale.

You cannot underestimate that seismic shift going on as investors, often drunk on big oil profits, now just face uncertainty and loss. The oceans are awash with bobbing tankers full of oil, with no market to sell them. The industry is paralysed by the pandemic.

A new study published last week confirms what we already knew about oil and gas in the Permian Basin. It's an unmitigated disaster.

Big Oil faces a new reality where "everything has changed.” Even their long-term survival.

There is no doubt we are at a historical moment with the industry in deep structural and financial trouble and where a post-COVID-19 recovery could see a radical shift away from oil and into a just transition into renewables. But will that happen?

This week the seemingly impossible happened: U.S. oil futures prices went negative for the first time in history. What happens next is up to us.