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A future worth fighting over

This past summer saw one of the strangest exchanges ever between an

international sports star and a politician. The fact that the sports star was German and the politician was Canadian only made it more bizarre.

At this year’s Canadian Grand Prix, 4-time world champion Sebastian Vettel showed up wearing a custom helmet design—a design decrying the mining of the Alberta oil sands, calling it “Canada’s climate crime.”

The Alberta Minister of Energy, Sonya Savage, did not take kindly to this display. She countered with some harsh words for Vettel on social media before highlighting the fact that the oil sands are on the path to net-zero status.

In our guest column, Jennifer Stewart reports on Savage’s efforts to remake the image of the oil sands. There’s no doubt about it: If the oil sands can continue to generate value for Canada while still moving towards net-zero, that’s an incredibly compelling idea.

Over in the other corner, Vettel continues to support environmental efforts in his own way. Later on in the summer, he demonstrated that a 1992 Formula One car, powered by an old school internal combustion V10 engine, could run using only carbon-neutral fuel.

In a future issue, we’re going to take a closer look at this futuristic fuel. Our objective: to determine whether it’s a legitimate solution that could work alongside electrification, hydrogen, biofuel and more to keep our transportation system moving down the track.

When it comes to vitally important issues like energy security and the environment, it stands to reason that opinions will differ and arguments will ensue. There are many, many technologies competing for attention and investment dollars; not all of them will survive this particularly chaotic moment in time. So we need to have the debate. Debate is a good thing—provided it sticks to the facts like glue on hot tar.

We have decisions to make, projects to launch, work to do. Let’s get started. OCTANE

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