The apocalyptic language of United Nations alarmists is back.
The 2,913 pages of the United Nations’ “Climate Change 2022” report make clear only that nothing is clear. Written in the incomprehensible language of climate science, there are only two things that are easily understood: the word taxes, which appears 270 times, and the word costs, which appears 1,585 times.
At the beginning of the 19th century, Chicago had a problem: the city was only slightly higher in elevation than Lake Michigan, which caused sewage and other runoff to pool at the centre of town, leading to smelly living conditions and numerous disease outbreaks. To solve it, engineers physically raised the city — buildings, streets, sidewalks and all — and installed a citywide sewage system. This is the power of human ingenuity, and it offers a lesson in how we can tackle some of the world’s most intractable problems, such as climate change.
“With winter fast approaching, Europe finds itself in an energy crisis—and reliant on the tender mercies of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It’s a self-induced disaster years in the making”.
That was how an October 20, 2021 editorial in the Wall Street Journal began, before Russia amassed its troops on the Ukrainian border and no analyst or think tank imagined that the unthinkable was around the corner.
The federal government’s plan to require a 42% reduction in emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector by 2030 is based on assumptions divorced from reality and will ultimately hurt Canadians.
Setting aggressive targets to cap and reduce the sector’s pollution – while no other major producing nation does the same – is misleading about the future and sends the wrong message to our allies and the world.
With the United Nations issuing yet another report Monday warning global greenhouse gas emissions must peak and begin to decline by 2025 to avert catastrophic warming, it’s time for our climate emperors to admit they have no clothes.
Perhaps the Real Collusion is with Leftist Environmental Groups and Russia
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made a startling statement in the summer of 2014: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organizations—environmental organizations working against shale gas—to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas.”
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is calling Ottawa’s federal emissions plan that was tabled in the House of Commons last week “nuts,” and is pledging to fight it “with everything we’ve got.”
The federal government says the country’s oil patch is capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 42 per cent below 2019 levels by 2030.
Kenney told his weekly phone-in radio show on Saturday that the plan would require a production cut, which he says would only shift energy production from Canada to places such as “Putin’s Russia and the OPEC dictatorships.”
Calling federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault a “former Greenpeace radical,” he also characterized the plan as “a full-frontal attack on the 800,000 people who work in the energy sector.”
As climate-heating fossil fuel emissions continue to rise, renewed efforts to slash them must be fair and take into account countries’ other key priorities – such as development in poorer nations – or they will likely fail, scientists warned on Monday.
Emissions will have to be cut swiftly and deeply across economies to limit global warming to internationally agreed temperature limits, they said in a new flagship science report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But “if you do that at the expense of justice, of poverty eradication and the inclusion of people, then you’re back at the starting block”, said Fatima Denton, one of its 278 authors.
Go Incognito
With the federal budget slated to be unveiled on Thursday, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault says we could see more climate-related elements in the budget.
Speaking to Evan Solomon on CTV’s Question Period, he said it’s “fair” to say that new programs to fight climate change could be in the budget.
“I’m not the finance minister. I don’t know what will be in the budget, but it is possible that that there will be new elements announced in the budget,” Guilbeault said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, which rose by 25% to $50 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions on Friday, doesn’t just increase the cost of gasoline.
The tax, which came into effect in 2019 at $20 per tonne and increases annually on April 1, applies to 22 types of fossil fuel energy.
That’s why the cost of almost everything goes up when the carbon tax increases, because almost all goods and services use fossil fuel energy.
Climate change is the unofficial state religion of the Biden administration. In his commentaries on mass movements, Eric Hoffer warned of the “religiofication” of practical purposes into holy causes and noted, “Blind devotion and religiosity leads to belief that the movement is virtuous and a source of strength. The adherent identifies as a supporter and defender of a holy cause.”
The head of the United Nations announced the appointment Thursday of an expert panel led by Catherine McKenna, Canada’s former environment minister, that will scrutinize whether companies’ efforts to curb climate change are credible or mere “greenwashing.”
McKenna, who was minister of environment and climate change from 2015 to 2019, will chair the panel.
Recent years have seen an explosion of pledges by businesses — including oil companies — to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to “net zero” amid consumer expectations that corporations bear part of the burden of cutting pollution. But environmental campaigners say many such plans are at best unclear, at worst designed to make companies look good when actually they are fuelling global warming.
When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, the oil and gas and transportation sectors generate just about the same amounts of CO2, methane and other gasses that allegedly make climate change worse.
In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, oil and gas were responsible for 26% of Canada’s total emissions, transportation for 25%.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change plan is built around his theory that Canadians most likely to vote Liberal want him to set tough targets for reducing Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions and then fail to meet them.
Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault on Tuesday unveiled a $9.1-billion climate change plan he says will achieve Canada’s 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction target, despite the fact it shows the Trudeau Liberals failed to meet their 2020 target.
