by Noel Keough, with Geoff Ghitter
University of Calgary Press
2021/$34.99/256 pp.
Whether by serendipity or deliberate strategy, the timing of Noel Keough’s new book, Sustainability Matters: Prospects for a Just Transition in Calgary, Canada’s Petro-City, neatly coincided with Calgary’s municipal election. “Cities can be at the forefront of addressing the critical issues that humanity faces,” writes Keough, “but this will only happen by design.” Fortunately, Calgary’s new mayor, Jyoti Gondek, appears to understand this. Shortly after winning the election, she put forward a motion to declare a climate emergency, which passed with an overwhelming 13–2 vote, making national headlines. Upon its passage, she said, “There are so many accomplishments in the energy transition that we just haven’t been talking about. The narrative has to get out there that our city and our energy sector are doing good work.”
Alberta, more than anywhere else I have lived, seems to shape its identity through stories. And as Keough writes in the book’s introduction, “many of us now believe that we are at an epochal moment in the history of our city and of our species and that, more than ever, we need to craft a new story.” He’s right.
Sustainability Matters includes and expands upon a collection of essays, originally published in Calgary’s now-defunct Fast Forward Weekly, that bridge critical urban and sustainability theory with the on-the-ground realities of a fast-growing (and sprawling) city that also serves as HQ for Alberta’s fossil fuel sector. It grapples with a wide range of issues—sprawl, mobility, energy, culture, social justice, governance, growth and more—defining not only the challenges faced, but also a range of solutions found in research literature or in practice elsewhere.
For me, the chapter on energy proved most resonant, illustrating in stark relief how Calgary and Alberta alike have historically been defined by the production and consumption of cheap and abundant fossil fuels—and the peril this creates in an era in which the global response to climate change hastens a transition away from fossil fuels.
So when it comes to energy, what are the stories we tell ourselves and how do they fit with the global story now being written? As Keough notes, the dominant political discourse in Alberta has largely been fixated on protecting the oil and gas sector: fighting for pipelines and against climate change policy and the energy transition. But according to the recent Alberta Energy Transition Study, conducted for Calgary’s and Edmonton’s economic development organizations, the global energy transition could create 170,000 jobs in the cleantech sector in Alberta and contribute $61-billion to GDP by 2050. This opportunity is framing up a new discourse, voiced by municipal leaders including Mayor Gondek and Edmonton Mayor Amarjeet Sohi and a new cohort of forward-thinking business leaders.
As we enter 2022, two conflicting narratives present alternative visions of the province’s future. In the first, Alberta and its oil and gas sector—the current and future pillar of the economy—is a perennial victim, terrorized and thwarted at the hands of an outside enemy (a prime minister named Trudeau, “flavour of the day” investors, foreign-funded environmentalists etc). In the second, Alberta is home to strong, creative, entrepreneurial people and companies who can achieve whatever they put their minds to, including carving out a competitive and prosperous niche as the world tackles climate change and transitions to clean energy.
Only one of these stories will prevail, and for Alberta’s future the stakes couldn’t be higher. Because, as author David Korten wrote in a volume cited by Keough, “When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong.”
—Dan Woynillowicz is the principal of Polaris Strategy + Insight, a climate and energy policy advisory firm.
