Trudeau's climate "leadership" is tearing Canada apart

[Anonymous]

By Lorrie Goldstein



Mckenna misleading Canadians on carbon pricing



It's not helpful to a rational discussion about carbon pricing when federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine Mckenna misleads Canadians about what it is and what it does.



Responding to a tweet by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FAO) Tuesday that Premier Doug Ford's decision to cancel the cap-and-trade program of the previous Liberal government, "will worsen Ontario's budget balance by a total of $3 billion over the next four years," Mckenna tweeted: "Ontario's financial watchdog says Ford's decision to scrap a price on pollution will lead to $3 billion in lost revenue, making Ontario families worse off. This shouldn't be surprising. If you don't have a plan to fight climate change, you don't have a plan to grow the economy."



Except the FAO'S tweet said nothing about families being worse off.



It said, logically, that Ford's decision to scrap cap-andtrade means Ontario families and businesses will pay $3 billion less to the new PC government in Ontario over four years than would have been the case under the previous Liberal one.



[size=150]No form of carbon pricing, whether a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, which raises retail prices instead of the taxes on most goods and services, is a source of free money for governments, the public, or the economy.

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It's money paid by ordinary citizens to government, which then dispenses it as it sees fit, sometimes giving it to lower-income Canadians to help them cope with the increased cost of living carbon pricing brings, sometimes going to subsidize heavy industries which are the most intensive greenhouse gas emitters.



Contrary to Mckenna's claim, carbon pricing isn't good in and of itself.



Rather, it can be effective or ineffective in lowering industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.



When, in 2016, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk evaluated[size=150] the Ontario Liberal cap-and-trade scheme Ford scrapped, she described it as a poorly conceived plan which would not lower emissions effectively, nor come close to reducing them to the levels the government was claiming in the time frames it proposed.[/size]



She said the rules for the then-looming carbon market between Ontario, California and Quebec, and the money it would generate were so poorly defined that b[size=150]illions of dollars "may be leaving the Ontario economy for no purpose other than to help the government claim it has met a target."[/size]



Contrary to Mckenna's assertion, "if you don't have a plan to fight climate change, you don't have a plan to grow the economy", [size=150]Lysyk concluded the now-defunct Ontario Liberal government's climate change plan to rake in $8 billion over four years from the public through cap-and-trade would waste public money.[/size]



The ultimate irony of Mckenna's position is that the Trudeau government is now saying it will impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax on all provinces, including Ontario, that don't have their own carbon pricing plan, and then return all the money it raises to the public in the form of direct grants or income tax cuts.



That policy, called carbon fee and dividend, acknowledges that people are better equipped to spend their own money, rather than having governments do it for them, in making consumer choices to purchase low-carbon intensity goods.



This flies in the face of traditional Liberal philosophy that if you let people keep more of their own money instead of giving it to the government, they'll just blow it on beer and popcorn.

[Thiel]

Catherine Mckenna is the dumbest person ever to hold the environment cabinet position. She was appointed to it by the dumbest pm we have ever had.

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[Anonymous]

Nunavut says there's too many polar bears



There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn't yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.



The proposed plan — which is to go to public hearings in Iqaluit on Tuesday — says that growing bear numbers are increasingly jeopardizing public safety and it's time Inuit knowledge drove management policy.



"Inuit believe there are now so many bears that public safety has become a major concern," says the document, the result of four years of study and public consultation.



"Public safety concerns, combined with the effects of polar bears on other species, suggest that in many Nunavut communities, the polar bear may have exceeded the co-existence threshold."



Polar bears killed two Inuit last summer.



The plan leans heavily on Inuit knowledge, which yields population estimates higher than those suggested by western science for almost all of the 13 included bear populations.



scientists say only one population of bears is growing; Inuit say there are nine. environment Canada says four populations are shrinking; Inuit say none are.



The proposed plan downplays one of the scientific community's main concerns.



"although there is growing scientific evidence linking the impacts of climate change to reduced body condition of bears and projections of population declines, no declines have currently been attributed to climate change," it says. "(Inuit knowledge) acknowledges that polar bears are exposed to the effects of climate change, but suggests that they are adaptable."



Environment Canada's response says that's "not in alignment with scientific evidence." It cites two studies suggesting the opposite.



Andrew Derocher, a University of Alberta polar bear expert, is blunter.



"That's just plain wrong," he said. "That's been documented in many places now — not just linked to body condition but reproductive rates and survival."



The government of Nunavut declined an interview request.



Its position is strongly supported by the 11 Inuit groups and hunters' organizations that made submissions.



"(Inuit knowledge) has not always been sufficiently incorporated by decision makers," says a document submitted by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the Inuit land-claim organization. "The disconnect between the sentiment in certain scientific communities and (Inuit knowledge) has been pronounced."



Pond Inlet wants to be able to kill any bear within a kilometre of the community without the animal being considered part of the town's quota. Rankin Inlet simply wants to lower bear populations.

[Anonymous]

Trudeau's carbon tax a pig in a poke



Here's a simple request of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.



Explain to Canadians how his national carbon price/tax will meet the industrial greenhouse gas emission cuts he committed to when he signed the Paris climate accord in December, 2015.



This is crucial information because reducing emissions is the sole purpose of carbon pricing.



It's not to increase government revenues. It's not to make everyone richer through carbon tax rebates, a nonsensical claim in any event.



And it's not to provide massive subsidies to businesses to keep them from bolting to other countries that don't have a national carbon tax.



The sole purpose of carbon pricing, and carbon taxes, is to reduce emissions to avert catastrophic anthropogenic (man-made) climate change.



When Trudeau signed the United Nations' Paris climate accord, he committed Canada to reduce our emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030 — 12 years from now.



To achieve this, we will have to lower our annual emissions from 704 megatonnes (Mt) in 2016 — the last year for which Canadian figures are available — to 512 Mt by 2030.



That's a 192-Mt cut, requiring the equivalent of shutting down Canada's entire oil and gas sector



(189.5 Mt annually) in 12 years.



In addition, the UN'S Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently announced signatories to the Paris accord, like Canada, must now achieve even more drastic cuts to avert catastrophic climate change, reducing emissions to 45% below 2010 levels by 2030.



To achieve that, Canada will have to cut emissions from 704 Mt in 2016 to 382 Mt annually in 2030, a drop of 322 Mt.



Again, the cost of actually keeping that promise would require the equivalent carbon reduction of shutting down our nation's entire oil and gas sector (189.5 Mt annually), plus 76.6% of its transportation sector (132.5 Mt annually), in 12 years.



[size=150]Trudeau's mandatory carbon price is currently set at $20 per tonne of emissions next year, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022.



Given that his government's own experts have said this is far too low to achieve even Trudeau's Paris accord targets, how much higher does he plan to raise his carbon price after 2022 to meet his targets?



Because without that information, what Trudeau is really doing is asking Canadians to buy a pig in a poke.[/size]