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So, by 2020, we'll be using up our own resources, rather than buying much of what we need at tolerable prices from others.
It's a prediction, predictions are often wrong. There are others that say NA will need foreign oil for a long time yet. The hardcore solar camp predicts that the shift to solar is inevitable because of improvements in technology, and by 2020, solar panels will be cheap enough to displace fossil fuels cost-efficiently.
Predictions, take yer pick.
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This appears to be driven by private industry, as usual.
Our culture is capitalist-based and our well-being depends to a great extent on the benefits that that brings in. I've read reports on international conferences where "even Canada is beginning to realize the benefits of capital flowing in for development"... yep, the Great White North is open for business. The US has been at it longer, IIRC US communists were eliminated or blacklisted during the fifties.... j/k...
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And we know from past North American history that private industry will exhaust any resource and leave a mess behind.
Um, there's still a great deal of oil, natural gas and coal in NA that hasn't been exhausted yet. As far as messes being left behind, yes, there is that, OTOH that has to be weighed against the economic benefits that the development brings in. Need a job, a house, a vehicle, a kevlar canoe made possible by the polluting corporate greedhead swine at DuPont?
The antidote to all that mess in America and Canada, is the system of protected natural areas kept free from development... some say that world-class natural areas protection is made possible by capitalism, since wealth is necessary first, before environmental protection can be made possible. The poor developing nations are evidence of that.
OK, the caffeine's beginning to wear off... I'm done.
PS... Stephen Harper is flying back from Malasia bringing $36 billion to develop natural gas for export... even BC's "pipeline, over my dead body" premier is happy with that.