Dear Mr. Prime Minister, and all those it may concern,
I know that you and the whole world is very occupied with Covid-19, and I know how important it is that you spend your time on that crisis. But I can’t let you forget about the other crisis going on at this moment.
My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker. I’m a 14 year old writer and activist and I’ve written you fourteen letters about climate change. The last three letters I’ve written you have been relatively emotional, and I thought I should counteract that with some cold hard facts. I want to tell you some stuff about oil and the economy. As the leader of a country whose economy heavily relies on oil and gas, I would assume you already knew all this stuff. But as you’re not acting on these cold hard facts, I’m going to tell you.
- Crude Prices have fallen to a point last seen in 2016 and are “expected to stay low”, says a report from RBC economics
- It is forecasted that Alberta’s (the oil capital of Canada) GDP will decline by 2.5% in 2020
- The amount of oil and gas jobs in Alberta has fallen by 10.7% compared to last year.
- According to IHS, between 2014 and 2017, investment in oil dropped 45%
These are some of the facts I found, (all on the CBC website, so I know their source is legit). Covid-19 has obviously had a horrible effect on all aspects of the economy, especially oil, so I made sure to look at information from before this pandemic so that I could show more long term trends. As you, and everyone else can see, there is very little business left in oil. The smartest thing for the economy now is to pull out. Start re-training oil workers, find a new economy. Oil is not the profitable industry that it used to be and as the Prime Minister, your job is to make people understand that and help them move forward. According to Murray Mullen, head of the Mullen Group, an oil and gas service company, the oil sands are “yesterday’s story.” What is tomorrow’s story? I’ll let you think about it.
I hope you’re having a wonderful day,
Amelia Penney-Crocker