SENATOR Darren Henfield during yesterday’s Senate meeting. Photo: Donavan McIntosh/Tribune Staff
By LEANDRA ROLLE
Tribune Staff Reporter
lrolle@tribunemedia.net
A FORMER Cabinet minister said yesterday the country must be more “deliberate” and take aggressive steps to harness renewable energy in an effort to reduce our need for fossil fuels.
Darren Henfield made his plea in the Senate yesterday as he raised concerns about the high cost of energy, which, he said, is “prohibitive” in doing good business in the country.
Senator Henfield said he believed the country was not making enough progress to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels despite its ambitious target in generating 30 percent of its energy needs by 2030.
His comments came as senators debated the Climate Change and Carbon Markets Initiative 2022 Bill. The Bill was eventually passed yesterday.
“We have to look at it more deliberately how we invest in these types of things to cause us to become less dependent on fossil fuels because the cost of energy is prohibitive to doing good business in The Bahamas and I believe across this region it’s just too high,” Mr Henfield said. “But, I am afraid that we are not moving aggressively as we ought to in this regard so I want to sound the alarm that we need to be more deliberate, honourable AG, as we move to reduce our need to rely on fossil fuels.
“I have heard discussions since this Bill was debated in the House of Assembly, I have heard discussions about the cruise ships that come to our ports and burn harmful fuels right downtown in our city where the cities they homeport in Florida and wherever else they homeport, they can’t burn down there so why would they come here and burn those bad fuels here and you can’t burn them where you’re from. I mean we love you (because) you provided a good living for us, but, you know, just practice here what you practice at home and be good corporate citizens.
“Just to say then though we will reduce our carbon emissions by 30 percent by… 2030, that’s about eight years from now, that’s extremely ambitious. I know when we went to commonwealth heads we were determined to do away with single use plastics… so we have to be more aggressive.”
The senator also contended that the time for action is now as he called for the government to provide a plan as to how it intends to achieve its renewable energy goals.
“We just can’t make statements,” he charged. “We have to provide a roadmap and give the people due notice that this is what we intend to do and this is the timeframe in which we intend to do it so when we come and say look, we ain’t gonna let you use those them single waste plastics anymore, they won’t cuss you to high heaven. Provide a roadmap that gets us there.”
He also echoed a similar call for rebuilding hurricane resilience, noting the devastating impacts of Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and the predictions of similar storms in the future.
“We must redouble our efforts towards rebuilding resilience and every aspect of our resistance because hurricanes are a part of our natural existence. Resilience must become to us far more than a cliché of convenience, but part of our lives.”
Earlier in his speech, Senator Henfield said the country was facing “extinction” due to the worsening threat of climate change.
He added: “We had a respectable showing at COP 26 in Glasgow, Scotland, but we need far more than just a good showing if we are to survive the climate injustice being heaped upon us by the developing countries who are the principal offenders of climate change. As recognised by the prime minister and all others on the planet, we need world leaders to take concrete action on climate change.
“We are facing, and I hate to sound like an alarmist, but we are facing extinction and we just don’t have the luxury of the time for more talk and unfulfilled promises by these big countries. We don’t have the luxury for that anymore.”
Comments
joeblow 1 year, 11 months ago
... let everybody buy electric vehicles (that are made using fossil fuels) so that they could recharge using fossil fuels (energy doesn't come out of the air) and have batteries that are very difficult to dispose off. All so environmentally friendly!
ScubaSteve 1 year, 11 months ago
Yes, I agree it's not a perfect solution (as you describe in your post). There are definitely areas that need to be improved and/or changed in order for the elimination of using fossil fuels to be fully beneficial. So for example in your post, what if the factory that produces the electric vehicles was completely powered by solar panels (located on the roof of the massive car factory) instead of fossil fuels. In addition, what if the batteries that the electric vehicles use were renewable and never needed to be discarded? Would that make it more attractive in your opinion to switch from fossil fuels to something more renewable and less damaging to the environment?
Frank_Sterle_Jr 1 year, 11 months ago
Up here, even our mainstream print news-media formally support Canada’s fossil fuel industry. Conglomerate Postmedia — which, except for The Toronto Star, owns Canada’s major print publications — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy”, but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest of crudes — bitumen. [“Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry”, Nov.14 2017, TheTyee.ca]
And, yes, it does have an effect on coverage! A few years ago, Postmedia had also acquired a lobbying firm with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry's interests. Furthermore, last May, Postmedia refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation's fossil fuel extraction.
Frank_Sterle_Jr 1 year, 11 months ago
Up here, even our mainstream print news-media formally support Canada’s fossil fuel industry. Conglomerate Postmedia — which, except for The Toronto Star, owns Canada’s major print publications — is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based “energy”, but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest of crudes — bitumen. [“Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry”, Nov.14 2017, TheTyee.ca]
And, yes, it does have an effect on coverage! A few years ago, Postmedia had also acquired a lobbying firm with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry's interests. Furthermore, last May, Postmedia refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation's fossil fuel extraction. ... This is not a partisan position for any news-media giant to take, especially considering fossil fuel's immense role in man-caused climate change.
joeblow 1 year, 11 months ago
... its not just the manufacturing process that uses fossil fuels, but the vehicles themselves have multiple hydrocarbon components!
DWW 1 year, 11 months ago
why do we often hear quotes in the dailies from the losers? i don't get it
JokeyJack 1 year, 11 months ago
...and the same people who would not make Graham Weatherford Minister of Energy & Natural Resources. Uhm. So funny - easy to complain when not in power, but when they had the chance to DO something they refused.
bahamianson 1 year, 11 months ago
It is not the Bahamas' target by 2030 to reduce its dependance on fossil fuels , it is the united nations' target. We do as the masters say. We have always done so. It is in our blood to be bullied and.slav3d to others. Tell that to the americans, europeans and chinese that consume everything. I dont need 6 shower heads in my bathtub to take a shower. I dont wast3 food because I can. I dont throw something away because it is broken and walmart is right around the corner. We are a.drop iof liquid in a large lake.
carltonr61 1 year, 11 months ago
The globalist elite trillionair EU faction won't dare demand their armies to go electric. Armies are exempt from conversion to electric. Their millions of vehicles tanks,boats and planes are major polluters. But, sadly the rush to make trillions from a switch to electric vehicles was made obsolete with the creation of a half power new world order and a split in earth resources of lithium gold and copper. When the wind stopped, so did the windmills. When the clouds came, so went the solar,then, back to the Earth's created fossil fuels. The Bahamas, voted as the world's cleanest Air has a zero carbon footprint yet we live on big nations calculations for which we cannot afford and will lead us to financial ruin. All we do is repeat an energy policy handed down to us from the elites without any regard to our clean environmental air quality.
Frank_Sterle_Jr 1 year, 11 months ago
Here in the corporate-powered West, if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives would come at the expense of the traditional energy production companies, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If something notably conflicts with corporate big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully.
As individual consumers, however, too many of us still recklessly behave as though throwing non-biodegradable garbage down a dark chute, or pollutants flushed down toilet/sink drainage pipes or emitted out of elevated exhaust pipes or spewed from sky-high jet engines and very tall smoke stacks — even the largest toxic-contaminant spills in rarely visited wilderness — can somehow be safely absorbed into the air, water, and land (i.e. out of sight, out of mind). It's like we’re inconsequentially dispensing of that waste into a black-hole singularity, in which it’s compressed into nothing. Indeed, I, myself, notice every time I discard of trash, I receive a reactive Spring-cleaning-like sense of disposal satisfaction. (I even feel it, albeit far more innocently, when deleting and especially double-deleting email.) ...
Still, thinking about the awe experienced and even love felt by astronauts for the spaceship Earth below, I wonder: If a large portion of the planet's most freely-polluting corporate CEOs, governing leaders and over-consuming/disposing individuals rocketed far enough above the earth for a day's (or more) orbit, while looking down, would have a sufficiently profound effect on them to change their apparently unconditional political/financial support of Big Fossil Fuel?
TalRussell 1 year, 11 months ago
A staggering 38% chunk of Darren Henfield's North Abaco's FNM registered voters, didn't bother to turnout to polling stations to cast ballots on 2021 General Election Day, ― Yes?
Frank_Sterle_Jr 1 year, 11 months ago
With the often-unprecedented man-made global-warming-related events — in particular the bone-dry-vegetation areas uncontrollably burning — one wonders how many fossil-fuel industry CEOs and/or their beloved family members may also be caught in global-warming-related harm’s way.
Assuming the CEOs are not sufficiently foolish to believe their descendants will somehow always evade the health repercussions related to their industry’s environmentally reckless decisions, I wonder whether the unlimited-profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible to those business people, including the willingness to simultaneously allow an already threatened consumer base to continue so, if not be threatened even further? It somewhat brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.
Still, there must be a point at which the status quo can/will end up hurting big business's own bottom-line interests. ...
Also, it’s no longer prudent to have all or even most infrastructure reliant on such traditional sources of power, regardless of — or, maybe, due to — collective humankind’s vulnerable over-reliance on planet-warming fossil fuels.
But if the universal availability of a renewable-energy alternative, such as mass solar-energy harvestation, would come at the expense of the traditional ‘energy’ production companies’ large profits, one can expect obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. That applies here in the West as well as Asia.
If something notably conflicts with long-held and deeply entrenched corporate interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully. And, of course, there will be those who will rebut the renewable-energy type/concept altogether, perhaps solely on the illogic that if it was possible, it would have been patented already and made a few people very wealthy.
tribanon 1 year, 11 months ago
Communist Red China puts more dangerous and toxic greenhouse gas pollutants into our atmosphere in a single day than The Bahamas (excluding cruise ship pollution) would do in an entire century. Suggest you suck hard on that egg for a moment to ensure you properly digest it.
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