Considering we owe our entire modern standard of living to the rise of fossil fuels, and they are entwined in almost every single aspect of our lives...from plastics, food production, construction, computer chips, medicine, and pretty much every industry in the world....yeah, I'd say fossil fuels are a decent idea and we should consider keeping them around. Hell just this week we hear news of food production being affected because fertilizer prices have shot up due to low natural gas supplies. You and I can probably weather higher food costs, but for many parts of the world who spend half their income on food, that can and will be politically destabilizing and literally life-threatening.
Now that doesn't mean that we don't pursue new technologies, or we can't wean ourselves off in certain ways (like reducing our dependance on coal and relying more on nuclear for our energy needs), but we need to step back and understand that nothing on this planet happens without resource extraction, and that will not change. Even if you're 100% into renewables, you need to realize that a massive amount of fossil fuels and resource extraction goes into building, maintaining, and replacing those machines (because while the wind might be renewable, the turbines sure aren't). You don't have steel without thermal coal, you don't have wind turbines without plastics or cement, you don't have batteries without mining operations to supply us with metals, you don't have mass electric car adoption without a massive upgrade to the electric grid.
I think we can all agree that the pursuit of cleaner energy is a worthy cause, but let's at least be realistic about it, and understand that life as we know it does not exist without fossil fuels and minerals. As Canadians, we can either take advantage of that reality, and continue to enjoy the security, prosperity and sovereignty they bring, or we can cede control over to other countries with much lower environmental and human standards, but who understand the realities of human existence.
