Giving up oil and other fossil fuels is “patently unrealistic”, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said in comments on the IPCC climate report released yesterday, which warned that humankind’s window for addressing climate change was closing fast.

The report attributed—with a high to an extremely high degree of likelihood—the accelerated and increasingly dramatic changes in the planet’s climate to our use of fossil fuels and the resultant emissions.

“The notion that we can shut off a major, industrialized economy with the flick of a switch is patently unrealistic,” Alberta’s Kenney said, as quoted by CBC News, adding that giving up fossil fuels for a country with the geographical location—and climate—of Canada would come at a cost that will be measured in human lives.

Kenney went on to note that most of the world was dependent on fossil fuels, and there was “no credible way” to eliminate this dependence in the observable future.

“It is a utopian notion that we can suddenly end the use of hydrocarbon based energy,” the Alberta Premier said. “The challenge is to shrink carbon and CO2 output, and Alberta is increasingly a world leader in that respect.”…read more.