Canada could be called land of stranded assets. Trans Mountain pipeline could be a white elephant.

Canada could be called "the land of stranded assets." Oil assets in the ground that are problematic if still banked on as assets. Lots of oil in Alberta and still an oil thirsty world, but the world is thinking, "oil is a killer."

A while ago, a big oil company backed out of it's plan to expand Trans Mountain Pipeline. The plan was to expand a smaller pipeline that goes from from Alberta to Burnaby, BC.

Close to home, Trans Mountain has a branch to Whatcom County Refineries though the expansion plan was just to Burnaby.

The company backed out due to political obstacles, but Canada's government bought the stalled project, a few years back, to keep it alive.

Canada's Liberal Party Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, was walking the tightrope between Alberta's "family wage jobs" and environmentalists.

"Just one more pipeline, then we'll be done," but now it looks like that's not a good idea. Canada's government may have blown billions of dollars on a white elephant pipeline project.

I still see that many of these dilemmas are caused by so much focus on opposing production without opposing consumption. In this case, much of the oil would be for export to Asia and around the world, but consumption is still the issue along with the need for family wage jobs at the production end.

Yes, it's safer to ship oil by pipeline than rail, if oil must be consumed. Yes, maybe it's better to use Canadian oil than from the Middle East, though I hear that Alberta tar sands are about as dirty as it gets.

Scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I think the main focus of activism needs to be on changing the way we plan our living habitats to make them less dependent on fossil fuels. Changing technology, changing lifestyle assumptions and changing neighborhoods.

If we just attack the supply chain, we pull cards out of the foundation of the card house we are living in. It falls on our precarious political situation and (if in USA) could even bring another Trump, if not Trump himself. - Inflation worries. Loss of family wage jobs before alternatives are in place.

My own lifestyle is somewhat minimalistic and not family oriented, however.

In the end, the card house falls on mother Earth which will survive in some form, but not necessarily good news for us.