OP-ED: The resource boom and the green agenda

Jonathan M. Wellum says, "The green agenda is a smokescreen. The left’s obsession with renewables has little to do with saving the planet and more to do with control over the lives of people."

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By Jonathan M. Wellum

The world is witnessing an unprecedented surge in demand for resources—oil, gas, uranium, base metals, and even so-called "renewables"—to power the relentless march of digitization, artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, and robotics. This technological revolution, often championed by progressive elites, is exposing the glaring hypocrisy of green advocates who push for a "clean" future while ignoring the “inconvenient truth” that their vision requires a mining and energy revolution rooted in the very fossil fuels and commodities they like to demonize.

The rise of AI and robotics is transforming industries, from manufacturing to healthcare. Data centers, the backbone of this digital age, are being built at a record pace in order to process the vast computational needs of AI models like those powering ChatGPT or autonomous systems. These facilities consume electricity—often terawatts annually—relying heavily on oil, gas, and coal to keep the lights on. In 2024, global data center energy consumption was estimated at 460 TWh, projected to double by 2030. Meanwhile, electric vehicles (EVs), robotics, and smart grids demand batteries and infrastructure loaded with copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare earths. Even Uranium, is seeing a renaissance as nuclear power gains traction to meet baseload energy demands. Our so-called green utopia it actually turning out to be a resource-hungry steamroller.

The irony is thick. Green advocates, from Leonardo DiCaprio to Greta Thunberg, lecture the world on climate change while drinking soy milk lattes from Starbucks powered by fossil fuels and coal powered power plants and tweeting from smartphones built on the backs of child labour working in strip-mining cobalt and lithium mines. Their push for renewables, including solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries requires an explosion in mining over the next two decades. A single wind turbine needs tons of steel, copper, and rare earths, often sourced from environmentally destructive operations in places like China or the Congo. EVs require three times the copper of gas-powered cars, and lithium demand is projected to surge 40% by 2030. Yet, these same advocates vilify miners, oil drillers, and pipeline workers as planet-killers, while conveniently ignoring the strip-mined damage that is fueling their net zero 2050 fantasies. A single ChatGPT query consumes approximately 2.9 watt-hours of electricity, nearly 10 times the 0.3 watt-hours required for a Google search. With over 400 million weekly active ChatGPT users, this scales to a massive energy footprint.

This hypocrisy exposes a deeper truth: the green agenda is a smokescreen. The left’s obsession with renewables has very little to do with saving the planet and more to do with top down control over the lives of people. Oil and gas, the lifeblood of our economy, employs millions (directly and indirectly) and keeps our energy costs low, a key component to maintaining our competitiveness as a country. Yet the Trudeau (Carney) administration choked pipelines while green proponents cheered. Bill C-69 which passed in 2018 has chased billions of investment out of Canada by creating an overly complex, uncertain, and lengthy regulatory process that prioritizes to the extreme environmental and social considerations over economic development and growth. Opposition parties in Canada point to a $500 billion net outflow of investment capital from Canada to the US since 2015 as evidence of the economic carnage caused by policies like Bill C-69 and other government overreach.

Meanwhile, their AI-driven tech utopia demands more fossil fuels, base metals and rare earths than ever. The International Energy Agency warns that achieving net-zero by 2050 requires a sixfold increase in critical mineral production—hardly the eco-paradise they peddle.

We see through this charade. We champion energy independence, not reliance on Chinese-controlled rare earths or unstable foreign regimes. Domestic oil, gas, and uranium can power our tech revolution while keeping jobs in North America and especially in Canada. Mining, too, can be done responsibly within our own country, not outsourced to communist polluters abroad. Green advocates can’t have it both ways—pushing AI and EVs while demonizing the resources that make them possible. It’s time to embrace our energy might, unleash our miners, and build a future that’s strong, not woke.

Canada with its vast natural resources should be one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Our abundant reserves of oil, natural gas, and minerals like gold, nickel, and uranium should be fueling a vigorous export economy that goes well beyond the US. Canada’s extensive forests along with our fertile lands should be supporting a massive timber and agricultural goods export boom to global markets. Canada’s freshwater resources and hydroelectric potential provide renewable energy at some of the lowest costs anywhere in the world, while reducing our reliance on costly imports.

What Canada needs is leadership. Leadership and wisdom are crucial for a nation's prosperity, "without vision, the people perish" (Proverbs 29:18). Wise leaders are those who are guided by the fear of the Lord, and pursue justice and impartiality. As Solomon reminds his readers, "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 9:10). Without principled leadership, societies crumble, "when the righteous increase, the people rejoice, but when the wicked rule, the people groan." (Proverbs 29:2). Godly leadership fosters peace and progress because it aligns decisions with moral truth. The groaning in Canada today is because we have have wicked men and women ruling over us.

Jonathan M. Wellum, CFA, is President and CEO of ROCKLINC Investment Partners Inc.