Opposition To "Carbon Capture" Now Growing w. Conservatives - Even RFK Jr. & Vivek Oppose It

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Dissatisfaction with the technology has been edging into the mainstream of rightwing discourse. “We might as well take tax money at gunpoint and burn it,” Canadian conservative influencer Jordan Peterson in February wrote on X to his 5.3 million followers in response to a CCS project in Wyoming. U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been frequently interviewed on conservative media platforms, last year called carbon capture a “boondoggle.” Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran a failed primary campaign this year against Donald Trump for the Republican leadership, called pipelines in Iowa that can transport captured carbon to sites where it can be buried underground “the greatest violation of property rights.”

These tensions are growing in Alberta, the heart of Canada’s oil and gas industry, where a consortium of six top oil sands companies known as the Pathways Alliance applied this spring for regulatory approval to build a $16.5 billion carbon capture and storage project. It’s been blanketing the country in ads stating that “carbon capture is an important step towards carbon neutral resource extraction.” Alberta’s premier Danielle Smith, who earlier this year shared a stage with Tucker Carlson and was recently interviewed on Peterson’s podcast, has announced taxpayer support of up to $5.3 billion for the plan. “Let me tell you, we are only going to strengthen the case for carbon capture, utilization and storage in the years ahead,” she said during an industry convention last year.

Rural northern Alberta, where the project will be built, is definitely no hotbed of environmental activism. The region is home to an anti-renewable energy group called Wind Concerns whose leader earlier told DeSmog that climate science is “ridden with fraudulent data and outright lies.” Yet locals there have created a new group called No to CO2 Landowners Group, which has teamed up with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and environmental organizations to oppose the Pathways Alliance carbon capture plan.

“Despite their claims, this is unproven technology with far-reaching implications into the future,” Amil Shapka, one of No to CO2’s representatives, has said. “With this being Canada’s largest CO2 pipeline and storage project, is our community ready for the potential health, safety and environmental risks to our water?” The increasingly scrambled politics of carbon capture are now creating tensions at the national level in Canada. Because the federal Liberal government has proposed investment tax credits up to $10 billion to support the Pathways Alliance plan, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is now associated with a mega-project opposed by some rural Canadians.

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https://www.desmog.com/2024/07/31/the-growing-conservative-backlash-against-carbon-capture-and-storage-canada-proud-pierre-poilievre/