Understanding Alberta’s Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns
A serious look at the Nemeth Report’s climate change conspiracy
Alberta’s controversial public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns released a series of reports commissioned by the inquiry on January 13, 2021, as part of its enlargement process. The reports have been widely criticized as “textbook climate denialism” and “conspiracy theory.”
One document in particular, the Nemeth Report, officially titled “A New Global Paradigm: Understanding the Transnational Progressive Movement, the Energy Transition and the Great Transformation Strangling Alberta’s Petroleum Industry,” has been widely mocked. Many have expressed outrage that the report’s author, Dr. Tammy L. Nemeth, reportedly a home-school teacher in England who holds a PhD in history, was paid $27,840 to produce the document.
While a lot of the mockery and outrage is, I think, deserved, I wanted to take a serious look at the document’s arguments and perspectives.
Nemeth correctly identifies the existence of a global campaign to end oil production and fight climate change and its impact on Alberta, but I don’t want to play both sides here. The report, and the Anti-Alberta Inquiry in general, is rooted in conspiracy theory, ideologically and intellectually dishonest, and makes a mockery of the very real concerns of Albertans impacted by the clean energy transition and the province’s economic struggles.
What strikes me first about the report is its unfailing commitment to its own argument. Nemeth lays out a strong narrative with abundant citations and clear conclusions, but never, even for a moment, considers counter-arguments or anything even approaching the existence of other points of view.
Nemeth’s argument goes something like this: Alberta’s oil sands have been the target of “the Great Transformation,” a global campaign by what Nemeth calls the Transnational Progressive Movement to shift the world “to a new energy economy that will halt fossil fuel use and development… in order to create a new global low-carbon, net-zero civilization.”
The Transnational Progressive Movement, according to Nemeth, includes governments, the United Nations, international organizations, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), academics, think tanks, businesses, and corporations. They target youth movements and the media to facilitate a cultural shift towards green energy and the end of oil and gas production. While their stated goal is to fight climate change and protect the environment, Nemeth argues that is just a rational for their “ultimate goal of ending capitalism and our modern way of life.”
Nemeth lays out a history of the Transnational Progressive Movement, going back fifty years to the beginnings of the modern environmental movement, but beginning in earnest with the 2008/09 financial crisis, which ended a decade of high oil prices and production expansion. With the financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama in the United States in 2008, Nemeth writes, “the Transnational Progressive Movement saw an opportunity to bring about a Global Green New Deal.”
Groups like the United Nations Environment Programme, the Center for American Progress, and the Transatlantic Climate Policy Group, again according to Nemeth, argued that the financial crisis was an opportunity to transition the global economy away from fossil fuels and implement new market structures. They encouraged ENGOs and other groups to strategize for the end of oil production and to encourage boycotts, divestment, litigation, and control of the environmental narrative. They were encouraged by the success of efforts to convince Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline in November 2015 and the international climate negotiations that led to the Paris Agreement in 2016.
By 2020, they had succeeded in “essentially locking in the oil sands, ‘keeping it in the ground,’ by preventing the construction of additional pipeline capacity such as Energy East, Northern Gateway, Keystone XL, and the troubled Trans- Mountain pipeline.”
Nemeth concludes that “the very future of Alberta is at stake.”
The first thing to note is that Nemeth’s general argument is true, with the exception of that last dramatic statement perhaps. Environmentalists across the world are calling for an end to fossil fuel extraction, and they are supported by governments who have committed to meeting the terms of the Paris Agreement. Things like divestment from oil companies, protesting pipelines, and media and youth engagement programs are all part of their strategy.
Supporters of programs like the Green New Deal are seeking to reform capitalism, some even want to abolish it. They do want to use environmental policies to radically change the way we live, and to right the wrongs of racism and social injustice.
Nemeth presents this as some kind of grand conspiracy, that environmental activists are telling the world that they want to stop climate change and protect the environment, but they’re hiding that they really want to transform capitalism and the social order. But supporters of the environmental movement aren’t hiding anything. Their goals are abundantly clear.
The conspiracy also extends to climate change itself, which Nemeth describes as “a useful vehicle, pretext, or… ‘a marketing tool,’ to pursue and achieve a voluntary relatively non-violent overthrow of capitalism and our current modern industrial society.”
I’m not going to get into Nemeth’s climate change denialism, as those arguments have already been widely dismissed by scientists. But the conspiracy goes that, even though the science around climate change has been overblown, the environmental movement is using climate change as an excuse to radically transform the global economy and stop Alberta oil sands production. “Others on the left, such as Communist China, might have alternative reasons,” Nemeth speculates, suggesting that China is encouraging the green energy transition “to weaken the west (especially the US if possible) and assert the dominance of ‘socialism with Chinese Characteristics’ as a global alternative.”
Nemeth’s conspiracy also incorporates the current coronavirus pandemic. Nemeth warns that the COVID-19 pandemic will be used like the 2008/09 financial crisis to call for a green recovery, to use the pandemic to foster the Green New Deal and similar policies. This move was already happening early in the pandemic, according to Nemeth, with scary narratives like “climate change will lead to more pandemics,” “less trade, less travel, less commerce is good for the climate,” and “if we can change our lifestyles for the virus, we can do it for the climate” regularly appearing in media.
Nemeth also speculates that, under the Great Transformation, many pandemic measures will be made permanent. “Life in lockdown for the coronavirus,” Nemeth writes, “with social distancing, restrictions on mobility, loss of employment, disruptions in the supply chains, potential shortages of food, shortages of medical supplies, monitoring quarantines, and tracking the infected with apps, drones, and other technology, is not far off from what is proposed in the various Green New Deals and the Great Transformation.”
Indeed, Nemeth predicts a dystopian future if environmental activists are successful at implementing the green transition with the same exaggeration. “Everything will be electric,” but there wouldn’t be enough electricity to go around, so people will have to use less. Gas-powered cars will be banned, we’ll be reliant on batteries manufactured in China and “walking, biking, ride sharing and public transport will be encouraged and preferred by the state.” Vegan and vegetarian diets will be preferred, “people need to eat less in order to solve the “obesity” epidemic,” and non-industrial food production will mean that “food will need to be rationed.”
Nemeth concludes that “Life after the Great Transformation will be constantly monitored, short, cold, and miserable, just like pre-industrial times.”
While the Nemeth Report based in the real goals of the environmental movement, its hyperbolic language is little more than a vehicle to spread dangerous conspiracies on climate change and the pandemic.
Rather than addressing the problems facing Albertans, Nemeth’s report and the Anti-Alberta Inquiry seek to blame an elaborate conspiracy that does nothing to address the real concerns of struggling workers in the oil sector or offer them a path forward. It gives them something to blame, but little else.
Climate change is real. Coronavirus is a serious issue. There is an environmental movement that is acting in good faith, but is unwilling to compromise. People in Alberta are losing their livelihoods, losing their lives during the pandemic. They are angry at Nemeth’s Transnational Progressive Movement, angry at a federal government that does little to support them, they resent being painted as pawns of the oil industry. It’s that anger that led so many Albertans to support the UCP government. They deserve more than an Anti-Alberta Inquiry that won’t accept reality.
Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this post, please subscribe to see more and follow me on Twitter for updates on the newsletter.