The climate alarmism frenzy among politicians in Canada would make propaganda minister Josef Goebbels blush. Drastic cuts in living standards, and steep increases in the cost of living in this country will not offset all the new coal fired power plants being brought online in China and India on a weekly basis and the likes of Liz may know that too.
By Lorne Gunter of Sun News Media
With nearly every candidate in the current federal election kowtowing at the Altar of Climate Doom (and an increasing number of municipal councils declaring "climate emergencies"), it's important to understand just how useless it would be even if we sacrificed Canada's entire economy in an attempt to save the planet.
There is no practical way to reduce our carbon emissions by 30 per cent below their levels in 2005 or reach "net zero" emissions by 2030 or even 2050.
That makes every party's climate commitments meaningless, since all of them (except the People's Party) have pledged (roughly) to achieve one or the other of these two goals.
But say it was possible to reduce carbon dioxide production so drastically, just what would that require?
We could stop every new pipeline ever dreamt up by oil companies (and under the Trudeau Liberals that is effectively what Ottawa has done), but that wouldn't even come close.
We could prohibit the use of every vehicle in Canada — and I mean every one. Every bus, car, pickup, semi, train, boat, airplane and tractor. No more commuting to work or school, no more mechanized farming (oxen anyone?), no more deliveries to grocery stores, no more trips anywhere you couldn't walk or bike. Nothing.
Even if we did that, we would only reach two-thirds of the goals pledged by our illustrious political leaders.
We'd also have to stop building any and all new buildings. That, combined with shutting down all transportation, might help us fulfill our promises.
Stopping all oil and gas production wouldn't do it either. (Besides it would be difficult to heat our homes in the middle of a Canadian winter using just dung-burning stoves.)
If we stopped all agriculture AND all manufacturing, that, too, would only get us two-thirds of the way there. Turning off all electricity production gets us only halfway.
So the eco promises of our political party's (except the PPC) are so fantastical they're meaningless. Never going to happen.
Consider that in four years under the greener than-thou Liberals, Canada has increased it's CO2 production by roughly as much as it increased in the last four years of the Harper government.
But let's play-act at being a Canadian political leader for a second and pretend we could return Canadians' standard of living to mid-19th Century levels — without heated hospitals or reading lamps or paved roads, televisions, refrigerators and phones.
Even if we turned out all the lights and shut down all the life-saving machines, Canada's contribution to global carbon dioxide is so small that our society-wide suffering and lowered life expectancy would do nothing to stop climate change.
For one thing, man-made greenhouse gas emissions are only three per cent to five per cent of the worldwide annual total. The rest (95 per cent or more) comes from natural sources such as oceans, decaying plants and carcasses and other natural processes.
Of that small amount, Canada contributes just 1.6 per cent — a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.
If all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were a case of 24 one-litre water bottles, CO2 would be one bottle. The manmade contribution would be 50 ml and Canada's contribution would be 0.8 ml — less than half a thimbleful. (The whole atmosphere — greenhouse and non-greenhouses gases — would be 2,400 bottles.)
Do you honestly think shutting down major industries and radically altering our lifestyles to prevent the production of one-sixth of a thimbleful of CO2 is really going to save the Earth?
Or is it merely going to let us feel morally smug as we sit in our cold, dark shacks dying from easily preventable diseases?
Consider that China, the world's largest emitter, contributes somewhere between 10 and 15 times as much CO2 as Canada does. And it has added an amount equivalent to our entire production every three to four years.
The first casualty and sacrificial lamb in Ottawa's useless war on our emissions will be our oil and gas sector.
From Sun News Media
DEEP DIFFERENCES
Little support for Alberta oil and gas from federal party leaders and provinces
Four of the five federal party leaders have cast their lot, supporting policies that mean the end of oil and gas.
The worst-case outcome of the federal election would be a Liberal minority government, kept in power in coalition with either the NDP or the Greens, both deeply opposed to any new oil pipelines out of Alberta/ Saskatchewan, both seeking sooner-rather-than-later closure of the oilsands.
There is huge opportunity for Canadian oil and gas to be part of the solution to climate change — as has been detailed ad nauseam in this column over the last five years.
The only deal the Liberals can make to stay in power is with the Greens and/or the NDP. And that deal would have to include a tacit agreement to screw the economies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, to move hard and fast to fight global warming by accelerating the end of oil (and to a lesser degree natural gas) production and use in Canada.
Global warming solutions — using Canadian oil, natural gas and made-in-alberta technological advances — are at hand.
Every day, it seems, reports of new technologies lowering greenhouse gas emissions come out of the Canadian energy industry.
Replacing water with recyclable solvents, shipping solidified bitumen, simplifying the bitumen upgrading process ... the list goes on and on.
Alberta has been a long-simmering pot. If the heat is turned up by other Canadians wanting to cripple our economy "for the greater good", that pot will go to a full-tilt boil.
This election is about throwing Alberta and Saskatchewan under the bus.
Quote from: FashionistaThis election is about throwing Alberta and Saskatchewan under the bus.
All Canadians actually. Alberta and Saskatchewan first.
At the last election, the socialist party leader declared that the election would be about one thing...tackling climate change.
They lost the unlosable election.
Their new leader has now abandoned climate change as a central policy.
Quote from: BricktopAt the last election, the socialist party leader declared that the election would be about one thing...tackling climate change.
They lost the unlosable election.
Their new leader has now abandoned climate change as a central policy.
Aint happening here brother. Fuck I miss the real political spectrum in Australia. Canada has left and lefter.
Quote from: seoulbroWe could prohibit the use of every vehicle in Canada — and I mean every one. Every bus, car, pickup, semi, train, boat, airplane and tractor. No more commuting to work or school, no more mechanized farming (oxen anyone?), no more deliveries to grocery stores, no more trips anywhere you couldn't walk or bike. Nothing.
Stopping all oil and gas production wouldn't do it either. (Besides it would be difficult to heat our homes in the middle of a Canadian winter using just dung-burning stoves.)
If we stopped all agriculture AND all manufacturing, that, too, would only get us two-thirds of the way there. Turning off all electricity production gets us only halfway.
Is that all that is required. :laugh3:
Simple isn't. You will probably go back to Israel.
No where is Trudeau's virtue signalling more obvious than on the climate change file.
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
PM will keep pretending carbon tax works — it doesn't
With the federal election now over, what does it mean with regard to the issue of climate change, which many Canadians told pollsters was either their top concern, or in the top three?
Given the election of a Liberal minority government, the answer is simple.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will continue his failed climate policies, which will have no significant impact on industrial greenhouse gas emissions, either in Canada or globally.
Trudeau went into the election defending his carbon tax/ price policy, despite the fact it's a train wreck.
His carbon tax is $20 per tonne of emissions this year, rising to $50 per tonne in 2022. What happens after that is a mystery.
Everyone knows that if Trudeau is going to hit his United Nations' Paris climate accord target of reducing Canada's emissions to 30% below 2005 emission levels by 2030, his carbon taxes aren't going to get us there. This includes the UN, the federal environment commissioner and nine of 10 provincial auditors general, the parliamentary budget officer, and the Trudeau government itself, as stated in its own reports.
To reach that target — which the UN has already said is outdated and inadequate — the Trudeau government has been advised it will need a carbon tax of $100 to $300 per tonne of emissions by 2030.
Prior to the election, Environment Minister Cathrine Mckenna suggested the Trudeau government would freeze his carbon tax at $50 per tonne in 2022 and use other measures to achieve its Paris target.
Then she quickly backed off, given that this was inconsistent with previous government statements suggesting Trudeau's carbon tax would have to increase beyond $50 per tonne post-2022 to hit Trudeau's Paris target.
So now we have no idea of what the Liberals are planning to do.
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said if he won the election, he would scrap Trudeau's carbon tax, and its rebate system.
But as a result of the election, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh (24 seats), Bloc Leader Yves-françois Blanchet (32 seats), and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (3 seats), hold the balance of power in Trudeau's minority Liberal government.
All have called for more stringent measures to combat climate change than Trudeau's plan. That means Trudeau will be pressured to raise his carbon tax above $50 per tonne post-2022, and to take additional measures to reach Canada's Paris accord targets than those in place today.
Whatever Trudeau does, he will in reality simply continue the three-decade tradition of Liberal and Conservative governments setting and then failing to meet their emission reduction targets.
As George Monbiot, one of the world's leading climate change journalists, explained in his 2006 book, Heat: How To Stop The Planet From Burning, that's what most people living in industrialized countries want: "Our response (to climate change) will be to demand that the government acts, while hoping that it doesn't. We will wish our governments pretend to act. We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it ... political parties in most rich nations have already recognized this. They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed. They know that we will grumble about their failure to curb climate change, but that ... nobody ever rioted for austerity."
Instead, we'll accept Trudeau's carbon pricing scheme that isn't going to work, while pretending it will.
It's hard enough as it is in this country making ends meet unless you are a doctor, lawyer, celebrity or refugee. Taxing people into poverty with increasing carbon cash grabs is not helping.
Four years and four months, I am out of here.
https://business.financialpost.com/diane-francis/when-foreigners-began-attacking-canadas-oil-industry-ottawa-turned-a-blind-eye-now-its-getting-worse
When foreigners began attacking Canada's oil industry, Ottawa turned a blind eye. Now it's getting worse
Diane Francis: Foreign money funds anti-pipeline lobbyists resulting in Liberals' economically suicidal legislation like Bill C-69
In 2015, a report showed how foreign money poured in to help the Liberals and anti-oil forces but nothing changed.
Then in 2017, it was obvious that social media and foreign vested interests contributed to the electoral victory in B.C. by the anti-oil NDP and Green Parties.
The NDP and Greens — and now the Liberals with two disastrous pieces of legislation aimed against Alberta oil — march alongside the damaging "Tar Sands Campaign" south of the border that aims to strand Canada's most valuable resource assets.
So far, their efforts have cost all Canadians. The $36-billion Malaysia LNG project in B.C. was cancelled, TransCanada Corp.'s Energy East west-east pipeline has been blocked, and the Trans Mountain expansion to the Pacific has been stalled for years.
Canadian oil has been on Russian, Venezuelan, and Saudi radar screens for years because Alberta's increasing production levels threatened their markets and prices. As far back as 2011, I exposed a primitive scheme involving the attempted blockage of deliveries by trucks of gigantic oilsands equipment on its way through Montana to Alberta. A U.S. official revealed that letters and lobbying in Montana originated out of Russia, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing jurisdictions.
Their efforts have become more sophisticated, across Canada, and have helped push the Liberals to pass Bill C-69 (which will impede all resource development with endless consultations) and Bill C-48, the West Coast tanker ban. Both are economically suicidal, given Canada's huge resource base.
The oil tanker ban is discriminatory and doesn't apply to oil deliveries from Saudi Arabia to the Irving Oil refinery, from rigs off Newfoundland's coast, or to oil deliveries made to refineries in Quebec.
Worse, Ottawa has not presented any economic study or scientific research that supports its West Coast ban.
Newly elected Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has finally promised to do what Ottawa should have done years ago — hold a public inquiry into the funding of environmental organizations that have campaigned against pipelines, namely three B.C.-based organizations.
He also plans to submit challenges to the Canada Revenue Agency concerning the charitable status of those groups involved in the Tar Sands campaign, and will cut off any provincial government funding to groups that have been involved in it, including the Pembina Institute.
"I have a message to those foreign-funded special interests who have been leading a campaign of economic sabotage against this great province," he said. "To the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, to the Tides Foundation, to Leadnow, to the David Suzuki Foundation and to all of the others, your days of pushing around Albertans with impunity just ended."
Moreover, Ottawa should investigate the use of the tax system and social media, to protect Canadians against foreigners and unidentified vested interests that aim to sabotage the country and its democracy.
As long as they help the Liberals get elected, they interfere with impunity.
Quote from: FashionistaAs long as they help the Liberals get elected, they will interfere with impunity.
You have become cynical. I like it. :thumbup:
Quote from: iron horse jockeyQuote from: FashionistaAs long as they help the Liberals get elected, they will interfere with impunity.
You have become cynical. I like it. :thumbup:
A lot has changed in the last ten years.
Anything Justine does is bullshit.
(https://scontent.fyxd2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/45178837_2261674797236062_2108434587028815872_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&_nc_oc=AQmchJ0YypXF1orZNfm7l2aaVA5dcO7gO84E7jpzw6BvhMJPwj0r6q9FT2nUatUlEKzr1izZRAzD1zLF_k-nJuDG&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd2-1.fna&oh=88007d41be7ca4cef8265685daf427d3&oe=5E58BAFD)
Climate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
Quote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
No country uses more climate alarmist hyperbole than Canada. And, yes we are fed that line regularly.
Quote from: seoulbroQuote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
No country uses more climate alarmist hyperbole than Canada. And, yes we are fed that line regularly.
Which makes me think this whole thing is a hoax even more..
It is a lie... Just some bullshit some1 cooked up in his/her head.
Completely without any kind of facts to support it.
The only climate refugees I know are the ones who move from Finland to Italy/Greece/Turkey/Spain..
They say something about being tired of the finnish climate.
Quote from: OdinsonQuote from: seoulbroQuote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
No country uses more climate alarmist hyperbole than Canada. And, yes we are fed that line regularly.
Which makes me think this whole thing is a hoax even more..
It is a lie... Just some bullshit some1 cooked up in his/her head.
Completely without any kind of facts to support it.
The only climate refugees I know are the ones who move from Finland to Italy/Greece/Turkey/Spain..
They say something about being tired of the finnish climate.
It's undeniable that there's a lot of exaggeration as well as fraud surrounding climate change claims.
Quote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
Of course not. That's just another bs reason to rush more people into the country. If the Green party actually cared about climate change, they would make ending immigration part of their platform.
Quote from: iron horse jockeyQuote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
Of course not. That's just another bs reason to rush more people into the country. If the Green party actually cared about climate change, they would make ending immigration part of their platform.
David Suzuki said Canada was full.
Quote from: iron horse jockeyQuote from: OdinsonClimate refugees...
Are they really a thing?
Of course not. That's just another bs reason to rush more people into the country. If the Green party actually cared about climate change, they would make ending immigration part of their platform.
The more people we have, the more C02 absorbing mature forests have to be cleared.
Economic growth and population growth doesnt go together with climate cleaning..
And the only reason why they want more population is to man the different factory positions.
We can downsize... Its just the greedy, small dicked investor who doesnt like it..
Quote from: OdinsonEconomic growth and population growth doesnt go together with climate cleaning..
And the only reason why they want more population is to man the different factory positions.
We can downsize... Its just the greedy, small dicked investor who doesnt like it..
Aren't most factories becoming more automated and less labour intensive.
(https://scontent.fyyc2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p960x960/72039606_2447918801996265_1914385572298752000_o.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQksWX4FNKuef1GhGONVvhtK-mAVbuEQX1koaKYoYGIhzMorqKQ2bQ8-IjqQkH_Fax0&_nc_ht=scontent.fyyc2-1.fna&oh=c50a6d210c2f40eb4f7a30b84e5d6567&oe=5E4EA225)
Climate alarmism fake news abounds in Canada.
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
Political vows on climate change are fake news
It's astounding how the media, concerned as we are about "fake news", continue to report Canadian and global targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change as if they're real.
They aren't. They're fake news.
They're meaningless words on a page, whether they come from the United Nations, or Canada's environment ministry, that will never be achieved.
How do we know? Because the best indicator of future performance is past practice.
In the three decades Canadian Liberal and Conservative governments have been setting emission reduction targets to fight climate change, not one has come close to achieving them.
We know Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn't have Canada on a path to "exceed" his pledge to reduce our emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, as he promised during the election.
How? Because he's so far behind meeting his pledge to reduce our emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, he'd have to shut down the equivalent of 61% of Canada's entire transportation sector within 13 months to do it it.
We know because in the two decades since then prime minister Jean Chretien signed the UN'S Kyoto accord, the forerunner of the 2015 Paris accord, Canada's emissions have gone up, not down, by 4.2%.
We know because since 2005, while our emissions have dropped by a mere 2%, in the last year for which Canadian figures are available (2017), they went up 1.1%.
Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, which just released a report saying Trudeau would have to raise his current carbon price of $20 per tonne of emissions to $210 per tonne by 2030 to meet the 2030 reduction target he agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate accord, knows it.
It also knows the authors of the Paris accord now say the commitments almost every nation on Earth made under it in 2015, are inadequate to avert what they describe as catastrophic warming.
We know that almost every target every nation has set to reduce its emissions under the Paris accord, including Canada's, is fake news.
How? Because the just-released 2019 UN emissions report shows global emissions rose by an average of 1.5% annually for the past decade, and that to put them on track to meet the UN'S 2030 target, they will have to decrease by an average of 7.6% annually for the next decade.
That's not going to happen because of the global economic damage it would cause.
What it comes to climate change, what we have collectively opted for, as indicated by the results of the recent federal election, is the phenomenon described by George Monbiot, one of the world's most knowledgeable climate change journalists, in his 2006 book, Heat: How To Stop The Planet From Burning.
"Our response will be to demand that the government acts, while hoping that it doesn't," Monbiot wrote. "We will wish our governments to pretend to act. We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it."
Quote from: seoulbroClimate alarmism fake news abounds in Canada.
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
Political vows on climate change are fake news
It's astounding how the media, concerned as we are about "fake news", continue to report Canadian and global targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change as if they're real.
They aren't. They're fake news.
They're meaningless words on a page, whether they come from the United Nations, or Canada's environment ministry, that will never be achieved.
How do we know? Because the best indicator of future performance is past practice.
In the three decades Canadian Liberal and Conservative governments have been setting emission reduction targets to fight climate change, not one has come close to achieving them.
We know Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn't have Canada on a path to "exceed" his pledge to reduce our emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030, as he promised during the election.
How? Because he's so far behind meeting his pledge to reduce our emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, he'd have to shut down the equivalent of 61% of Canada's entire transportation sector within 13 months to do it it.
We know because in the two decades since then prime minister Jean Chretien signed the UN'S Kyoto accord, the forerunner of the 2015 Paris accord, Canada's emissions have gone up, not down, by 4.2%.
We know because since 2005, while our emissions have dropped by a mere 2%, in the last year for which Canadian figures are available (2017), they went up 1.1%.
Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, which just released a report saying Trudeau would have to raise his current carbon price of $20 per tonne of emissions to $210 per tonne by 2030 to meet the 2030 reduction target he agreed to under the 2015 Paris climate accord, knows it.
It also knows the authors of the Paris accord now say the commitments almost every nation on Earth made under it in 2015, are inadequate to avert what they describe as catastrophic warming.
We know that almost every target every nation has set to reduce its emissions under the Paris accord, including Canada's, is fake news.
How? Because the just-released 2019 UN emissions report shows global emissions rose by an average of 1.5% annually for the past decade, and that to put them on track to meet the UN'S 2030 target, they will have to decrease by an average of 7.6% annually for the next decade.
That's not going to happen because of the global economic damage it would cause.
What it comes to climate change, what we have collectively opted for, as indicated by the results of the recent federal election, is the phenomenon described by George Monbiot, one of the world's most knowledgeable climate change journalists, in his 2006 book, Heat: How To Stop The Planet From Burning.
"Our response will be to demand that the government acts, while hoping that it doesn't," Monbiot wrote. "We will wish our governments to pretend to act. We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it."
Political grandstanding.
I was watching Global news last night and they are claiming the price of food is going up because of climate change. No, the reason the price of food and other commodities is going up is because of the Liberal government's carbon tax.
It's what progtards wanted.
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/as-vancouver-drivers-suffer-gas-price-pain-carbon-tax-backers-go-suspiciously-quiet
As Vancouver drivers suffer gas-price pain, carbon-tax backers go suspiciously quiet
Since 2018, China has INCREASED emissions by 57%, India by 105%. Trudeau's favourite place from which to import oil? Up 59%. In the meantime, the United States with *no* carbon tax has decreased by 12%.
And Canada? With our punishing carbon tax? Up 1.6%. Again, despite all, Trump wins. Snigger at that Mr. Prime Minister.
(https://scontent.fyyc2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/74242746_1438122256339581_8499160256335577088_n.png?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ohc=vKNO9JazpzUAQkQOLzkK74wiFdFxz0Z3EJDmvKUvZYOTZ_FJ0D0o60grw&_nc_ht=scontent.fyyc2-1.fna&oh=ad070b5be855af071be4c4805e1b9e98&oe=5E8269DC)
Ottawa is subsidizing e-cars, but has no idea of their impact on emissions or climate change.
:crazy:
E-cars emitting carbon concerns
The federal government is unsure what impact its electric car rebate program is having on carbon emissions in canada.
In fact, Transport canada doesn't even know if the program, which has doled out $165 million in rebates for people who have bought carbon-friendly electric vehicles, is having any impact on climate change, according to blacklock's reporter.
assistant deputy transport minister anurahda marisetti, testifying monday at the senate national finance committee, said the rebates have increased the market share of electric vehicles, up 1% this year. marisetti said 31,000 rebate claims — up to $5,000 for cars priced at $45,000 or less — have been processed.
but ryan Pilgrim, the transport department's chief financial officer, had no clue about how it has reduced carbon emissions.
"Unfortunately we don't have the data with us on cost per ton," Pilgrim said.
The uncertainty had conservative senators incredulous.
"so, you don't really care whether the person drives 2,000 miles or 100,000 miles, you just give them the money? It doesn't really matter?" senator david Tkachuk asked.
apparently not, even though the program has handed over $165 million in rebates.
Quote from: FashionistaOttawa is subsidizing e-cars, but has no idea of their impact on emissions or climate change.
:crazy:
E-cars emitting carbon concerns
The federal government is unsure what impact its electric car rebate program is having on carbon emissions in canada.
In fact, Transport canada doesn't even know if the program, which has doled out $165 million in rebates for people who have bought carbon-friendly electric vehicles, is having any impact on climate change, according to blacklock's reporter.
assistant deputy transport minister anurahda marisetti, testifying monday at the senate national finance committee, said the rebates have increased the market share of electric vehicles, up 1% this year. marisetti said 31,000 rebate claims — up to $5,000 for cars priced at $45,000 or less — have been processed.
but ryan Pilgrim, the transport department's chief financial officer, had no clue about how it has reduced carbon emissions.
"Unfortunately we don't have the data with us on cost per ton," Pilgrim said.
The uncertainty had conservative senators incredulous.
"so, you don't really care whether the person drives 2,000 miles or 100,000 miles, you just give them the money? It doesn't really matter?" senator david Tkachuk asked.
apparently not, even though the program has handed over $165 million in rebates.
Good find Fash. :thumbup:
Quote from: Herman(https://scontent.fyyc2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p960x960/72039606_2447918801996265_1914385572298752000_o.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQksWX4FNKuef1GhGONVvhtK-mAVbuEQX1koaKYoYGIhzMorqKQ2bQ8-IjqQkH_Fax0&_nc_ht=scontent.fyyc2-1.fna&oh=c50a6d210c2f40eb4f7a30b84e5d6567&oe=5E4EA225)
So True Dope has more money to give to his billionaire friends.
Quote from: Shen LiQuote from: Herman(https://scontent.fyyc2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/p960x960/72039606_2447918801996265_1914385572298752000_o.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_oc=AQksWX4FNKuef1GhGONVvhtK-mAVbuEQX1koaKYoYGIhzMorqKQ2bQ8-IjqQkH_Fax0&_nc_ht=scontent.fyyc2-1.fna&oh=c50a6d210c2f40eb4f7a30b84e5d6567&oe=5E4EA225)
So True Dope has more money to give to his billionaire friends.
We all know Trudeau's carbon tax is a revenue policy not an environmental one.
Quotethe transport department's chief financial officer, had no clue about how it has reduced carbon emissions.
Only in Ottawa.
Quote from: iron horse jockeyQuotethe transport department's chief financial officer, had no clue about how it has reduced carbon emissions.
Only in Ottawa.
This is part of Trudeau's climate change plan and he has no idea of how if it works or not.
Quote from: FashionistaOttawa is subsidizing e-cars, but has no idea of their impact on emissions or climate change.
:crazy:
E-cars emitting carbon concerns
The federal government is unsure what impact its electric car rebate program is having on carbon emissions in canada.
In fact, Transport canada doesn't even know if the program, which has doled out $165 million in rebates for people who have bought carbon-friendly electric vehicles, is having any impact on climate change, according to blacklock's reporter.
assistant deputy transport minister anurahda marisetti, testifying monday at the senate national finance committee, said the rebates have increased the market share of electric vehicles, up 1% this year. marisetti said 31,000 rebate claims — up to $5,000 for cars priced at $45,000 or less — have been processed.
but ryan Pilgrim, the transport department's chief financial officer, had no clue about how it has reduced carbon emissions.
"Unfortunately we don't have the data with us on cost per ton," Pilgrim said.
The uncertainty had conservative senators incredulous.
"so, you don't really care whether the person drives 2,000 miles or 100,000 miles, you just give them the money? It doesn't really matter?" senator david Tkachuk asked.
apparently not, even though the program has handed over $165 million in rebates.
Only government could get away with wasting $165 million.
If anyone can persuade Trudeau to end his disastrous spirit quest on renewable energy, it's Michael Shellenberger
https://edmontonjournal.com/business/local-business/david-staples-if-anyone-can-persuade-trudeau-to-end-his-disastrous-spirit-quest-on-renewable-energy-its-michael-shellenberger
There is a brilliant way to build Canada with cleaner energy and higher levels of prosperity.
Sadly, it's not the way that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau proposes, with his misguided shift to renewable energy from oil and gas.
Canada should build on its impressive strength in nuclear power and its potential for liquified natural gas exports, Shellenberger says.
This will actually help the country reach or exceed its climate commitments while building its wealth, as opposed to the Trudeau Liberal plan that will gut the economy and not come anywhere close to curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/79545062_10163098390735436_950502440430469120_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_ohc=fEErmCVh7OEAQkOG6kkwD4-ffVc3TbfhakJtTCtrxyyX2_kLVK5_ZQl1A&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=119090725b7e6316ef33b9df9417cac6&oe=5E7D32BD)
For a government that says C02 emissions are a priority, they have put more C02 into the atmosphere than any previous government.
Trudeau full of hot air
PM letting taxpayers pick up the bill for climate conferences
While Canada is a bit player in emitting industrial greenhouse gases — responsible for 1.6% of global output — it's a world leader in sending bloated delegations to the annual United Nations' gabfests on climate change in the world's tourist hot spots.
This year's conference, which just concluded in Madrid, was widely condemned as an abject failure.
But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did uphold Canada's sterling reputation for sending absurdly oversized delegations to them.
In Madrid, according to figures compiled by the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation (CTF), Canada's taxpayer-funded delegation totalled 156 people — second among G20 nations only to Brazil with 158.
Canada's entourage was more than twice as large as the U.S. (71) and China (76), more than seven times the size of Australia's (21), and over 50% larger than Germany's (100).
As CTF federal director Aaron Wudrick noted:
"It's not clear why Canada needs to send twice as many people to these summits as the
U.S. and seven times as many as Australia. Is this really necessary, or just financially wasteful and environmentally irresponsible overkill?"
The answer is that it's both, and par for the course for Trudeau.
When the UN'S Paris climate accord was drafted in the City of Lights in December 2015, Trudeau, attending his first annual UN gabfest as PM, boasted that Canada was back on the global stage in fighting climate change.
What he meant was that Canada had sent a huge delegation to Paris — 155 people paid by the federal government — double that if you threw in politicians and bureaucrats paid by provincial and municipal governments.
Trudeau's 155-member official delegation to Paris in 2015 — he didn't attend Madrid — was larger than the U.S. under self-proclaimed environmental president Barack Obama.
With a population almost 10 times that of Canada, the U.S. had less than 150 delegates, the U.K. about 100. While we don't know the bill for Canada's delegation to Madrid this year, we do know what a similar-sized delegation cost in Paris in 2015, not counting four years of inflation.
The 12-day Paris climate summit cost taxpayers over $1 million.
A partial list of expenses, compiled by ipolitics.ca, included: $234,355 for travel; $349,553 for hotels; $129,423 for meals; $12,595 for hospitality; $11,537 for salaries; $164,529 for operations and $72,000 in payments to stakeholders.
Among the most controversial expenditures was a food tab of over $12,000 for just three Environment Canada bureaucrats and $6,600 to hire a freelance photographer in France to record the comings and goings of thenrookie environment minister Catherine Mckenna.
Given that global and Canadian emissions continue to rise annually despite a quarter century of these annual UN gabfests aimed at reducing them, they clearly have not given us good value for money.
More than that, they are immoral, because they are glorified photo-ops where virtue-signalling global elites gorge themselves on consumption — paid by taxpayers — while demanding austerity from those taxpayers in addressing climate change, but never austerity for themselves.
As environmental journalist George Monbiot has observed of these global elites: "Thinking like ethical people, dressing like ethical people, decorating our homes like ethical people, makes not a damn of difference unless we also behave like ethical people."
It also exposes their hypocrisy and most of all that they do not believe what they say.
Because people who genuinely believe the world is facing an imminent existential crisis from climate change would never act this way.
As of January 1st, the Federal Carbon Tax will rise to $30 per tonne, costing Saskatchewan families and businesses more.
(https://scontent.fyxd2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/81324560_2865517090159335_3312744524928778240_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ohc=rJbhXpNkYwQAQk2zJVpjPvMsf4jGivjmv4O5V6hfMvi7J6Q4hI9f5TyUQ&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd2-1.fna&oh=4c7cbd3ffa31c7b675438183f67868d4&oe=5E70B74D)
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
Time for some honesty
Conservative climate policy starts with exposing Trudeau sham
No credible body that has assessed Trudeau's climate plan — built around an ineffective sin tax on the use of fossil fuel energy — believes it will achieve the greenhouse gas emissions reductions Trudeau absurdly claims it will.
That's because Trudeau's policy isn't designed to succeed, but to make Canadians feel guilty about using fossil fuel energy, without which life would be impossible in a big, cold, northern, sparsely populated, industrialized country like Canada.
Even if it did succeed, it wouldn't matter because Canada is responsible for only 1.6% of global emissions, as Trudeau himself acknowledged on the Quebec talk show Tout Le Monde En Parle in 2018 when he blurted out the truth that: "Even if Canada stopped everything tomorrow and the other countries didn't have any solutions, it wouldn't make a big difference."
In fact, Canada's emissions — which are rising — don't make any difference, and global emissions are rising as well.
Having explained the logical fallacies in Trudeau's climate change rhetoric, the next Conservative leader could then talk about the issue honestly.
First, reducing Canada's emissions to the levels now being called for by the United Nations would require a level of economic sacrifice by Canadians equivalent to fighting a world war — one that Trudeau isn't willing to fight personally given his jet-setting lifestyle.
Purely symbolic
Second, even if we succeeded, it would be a purely symbolic gesture because it would make no significant impact on global emissions, which continue to increase fuelled by major emitters such as China, India and the United States.
These are the real choices facing Canadians and a new Conservative leader should be unafraid to raise them, laying the groundwork for an honest debate about what we should do going forward with climate policy, as opposed to the nonsense that Trudeau is offering now.
The views of Canadians on these issues range from those who believe we should do everything possible to combat human-induced climate change, whatever the cost, to those who believe there is no existential threat from climate change and that it's a hoax designed by governments to extract more money from the public.
The real question is how much of their standard of living — given Canada's abundant oil and gas resources — are Canadians willing to sacrifice to symbolically address climate change?
A Conservative leader willing to raise that question, and answer it honestly, would be a worthy prime minister.
In fact, Canada's emissions — which are rising — don't make any difference, and global emissions are rising as well.
After deliberately turning itself into a climate-change martyr, Canada needs some basic common sense
For all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change
https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/gwyn-morgan-after-deliberately-turning-itself-into-a-climate-change-martyr-canada-needs-some-basic-common-sense
After New York, Greta journeyed to Alberta where she held an anti-oilsands rally, a puzzling choice given that Canada produces just 1.6 per cent of global emissions, with the oilsands contributing just a tenth of that. Why didn't she travel to China or India, whose emissions make Canada's just a rounding error? While she was in Edmonton, the ever-determined reporters at Rebel Media asked her that question. Her answer? She "hadn't been invited." No doubt that's true, but her disparaging visit to Canada's oilsands is yet another illustration of activists' fixation on Western countries even though virtually all emissions growth is in the East.
China, India, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris climate accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired power plants. If Canada disappeared from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our emissions in a few short months.
the cornerstone of the Conservative environmental platform was recognition that Canadian natural gas exports could help halve poor-country emissions by switching their power plants from coal to natural gas. The industry hoped the government would push recognition of that reality at the recent Madrid climate conference but was, once again, disappointed.
Canada's preoccupation with national rather than global emissions leads to myriad "local action" absurdities. The award for most ludicrous goes to Victoria City Council for its plan to spend $14 million installing shore power so cruise ships can shut off their generators while moored at city docks. Council clearly doesn't understand that emissions caused by actually propelling the ships after they leave port are hundreds of times greater than their generators produce.
More tragic than ludicrous is the systematic destruction of one of the world's most technically advanced and ethically responsible oil industries. Though hundreds of thousands of trained workers have been rendered jobless and in many cases hopeless as capital investment and corporate headquarters have fled to the U.S., world oil consumption is six million barrels a day higher than it was in 2010, while the International Energy Agency forecasts demand will keep rising for at least two decades. Yet the Trudeau Liberals' progressive evisceration of our oil industry has handed that growing market to such human rights champions as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and Algeria. Adding insult to injury, Quebec, consistent with its "distinct society" status, favours its own interests over those of the country at large and continues to import oil from those countries in preference to Alberta's "dirty oil." But it happily accepts this year's equalization grant of $13.1 billion, funded disproportionately by Alberta taxpayers.
No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. And yet for all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change. Entering the third decade of this troubled millennium, we can only hope our federal government realizes the future of our confederation requires trading blind ideology for basic common sense.
(https://scontent.fyxd2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/80729184_2893778353980204_8527988295869661184_o.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=oGXt3KSifLcAX99MM7A&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd2-1.fna&_nc_tp=1002&oh=853d88c88bf9887aa69ad23adba97aaf&oe=5ED937DC)
Quote from: Herman(https://scontent.fyxd2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/s960x960/80729184_2893778353980204_8527988295869661184_o.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ohc=oGXt3KSifLcAX99MM7A&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd2-1.fna&_nc_tp=1002&oh=853d88c88bf9887aa69ad23adba97aaf&oe=5ED937DC)
We're getting charged more because of the
climate emergency.
Why is the federal government giving them any money, nevermind $2.7 million of our money to build 54 electric vehicle (EV) fast chargers at Canadian Tire locations across central and western Canada.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-canadian-tire-takes-trudeaus-corporate-welfare-for-green-cars
Canadian Tire takes Trudeau's corporate welfare for green cars
Ever notice how oil and gas activists and climate alarmists are pretty quiet when it's -40 ?
Canada's "Climate Crisis" is Entirely Political
https://c2cjournal.ca/2020/01/canadas-climate-crisis-is-entirely-political/
Western countries even though virtually all emissions growth is elsewhere. China, India, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris climate accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired electric power plants. If Canada disappeared from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our emissions in a few short months.
The Liberals and Canada's vast climate emergency movement remain preoccupied with national rather than global emissions, and this leads to myriad "local action" absurdities. The award for most ludicrous goes to Victoria's City Council for its plan to spend $14 million on installing shore power at its harbour so that cruise ships can shut off their generators while moored at city docks. Council clearly doesn't understand that emissions caused by actually propelling the ships after they leave port are hundreds of times greater than their generators produce.
No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. And yet for all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change. Entering the third decade of this troubled millennium, we can only hope our federal government somehow realizes the future of our Confederation requires leaving behind blind ideology and finding some basic common sense.
Quote from: HermanEver notice how oil and gas activists and climate alarmists are pretty quiet when it's -40 ?
Yes, I've noticed that.
Trudeau's so called climate plan is shut down Western Canada's resource sector and charge people more for everything. And it still won't meet the pointless targets they set under the useless Paris agreement.
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
PM can't have it both ways
Trudeau must choose between climate pledge and Alberta's economy
The dilemma for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on climate change and energy policy comes down to this.
If he wants to meet the promises he's made about reducing Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions, he has to gut our oil and gas sector.
He also has to do it quickly and the consequences for Alberta's economy, as well as Saskatchewan's and Canada's, will be severe.
Trudeau and his cabinet would have to reject the $20.6-billion Teck Frontier oilsands megaproject in Alberta, now up for approval after getting the goahead from federal regulators.
But even if the Liberals cancel that project, that wouldn't reduce current emissions, just slow the increase of future ones.
To meet his 2030 target of cutting Canada's current emissions to 30% below 2005 levels, Trudeau will have to eliminate the equivalent of 50 Teck oilsands megaprojects over the next decade, or five Teck megaprojects every year, for 10 years. Even using the Trudeau government's own projections of what emission levels will be in 2030, including projects it hasn't started, it would still have to cut current emissions by the equivalent of 19 Teck-like megaprojects over 10 years, or almost two every year, for a decade. To achieve his election promise of cutting Canada's emissions to net zero by 2050, Trudeau would have to cut Canada's emissions by the equivalent of 175 Teck-like megaprojects over the next 30 years — almost six Teck-like megaprojects annually, for three decades.
Canada has seven economic sectors that generate significant industrial emissions, but oil and gas has been the fastest-growing since 1990 and the largest since 2012. Today, these emissions total 195 megatonnes annually, an 84% increase since 1990.
The second-largest is the transportation sector at 174 megatonnes of emissions annually, a 43% rise since 1990, but with stable emissions since 2012.
Emissions in the electricity, heavy industry and waste sectors have gone down since 1990, while emissions in the agriculture and building sectors haven't grown significantly since 2005.
Technology in the oil and gas sector is constantly improving, reducing the carbon intensity of its emissions, meaning the energy required to produce a barrel of oil generates fewer emissions over time, but not enough to come close to meeting Trudeau's 2030 and 2050 targets. For that, Trudeau will have to slash current oil and gas production.
Trudeau's dilemma is that while he has never acknowledged the severe economic consequences to the Alberta, Saskatchewan and Canadian economies of fulfilling his climate change promises. He also doesn't have enough money — our money — to subsidize an industry his climate policies are designed to kill.
Last week we learned the price tag on completing the Trans Mountain pipeline the Trudeau government bought two years ago has increased to $12.6 billion, 70% higher than its original forecast. A report by Reuters news said Trudeau and his cabinet are considering federal aid to Alberta if they decide to reject the Teck megaproject, with the Liberals divided on what to do when they announce their decision later this month.
Vetoing Teck would be widely seen in Alberta as a deliberate, possibly fatal blow to the province's beleaguered economy by a vindictive Liberal government that no longer has a single seat there or in Saskatchewan.
Approving it would be viewed as a betrayal by those who supported the Liberals in last year's election because of Trudeau's promise to meaningfully address climate change.
Now, Trudeau has to pick a lane.
Do we still want to be a strong G7 economy or do we want to keep blocking industrial development. Do we want the rule of law or foreign funded anarchy.
By Anthony Furey of Sun News Media
The Paris accord is causing Canada trouble — time to leave it
It's fairly common to hear politicians or activists announce a campaign to tackle a social plague like poverty or homelessness and even affix a hard target to it. They give themselves a certain number of years to considerably reduce the problem or even entirely eradicate the foe.
While we all agree with the sentiment, we also all know it's not a goal that we seriously think we'll achieve. It's a symbolic gesture meant to inspire action.
"Aspirational" is a good way to put it, and that's the word Conservative leadership candidate Peter MacKay used in a recent television interview to describe Canada's Paris climate accord commitments.
There is much hand-wringing right now about whether or not Canada will rigidly meet its commitments to slash emissions by 2030. And it's that obsession with meeting these targets that is one of the key motivating factors behind so much of the current drama holding back Canada.
The controversial carbon tax; the cancellation of the Teck Frontier project; the recent criminal antics of outlandish activists, most notably Extinction Rebellion; the reason why thousands of otherwise reasonable people turn out to applaud Greta Thunberg's fire- and- brimstone road show — all of this has been propelled by the fact the federal government has officially signed on to a global accord that says we've got to phase-out the oil sands.
All of these matters would have been considered too far from the mainstream to generate the inertia they now undeniably command among the Canadian public were it not for the fact that the government de facto gave them the green light by formally signing on to the Paris climate accord shortly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's 2015 election.
Unfortunately, we have not been treating them as "aspirational" targets. Instead, we've been acting like they're laws of the land that must be followed at risk of punishment.
Even though they're not. Far from it.
What is hardly ever reported in the constant news lamenting our progress is that our 2030 commitments are what is called "Nationally Determined Contributions". That means we came up with our own goals — to hit, miss or walk away from.
Canada is now at an inflection point where we need to decide whether we are truly worthy of remaining a G7 nation, whether we are serious about having an enviable economy. Given the events of recent weeks, where the economy has been grinding to a halt because of our weak response to illegal activism, it looks like things could go either way.
Maybe regular people will get so frustrated with this series of events that public opinion veers away from over-the-top activism and towards stability, rule of law and common sense; or, maybe we're about to lose everything and throw our hands up in defeat.
One thing that would go a long way towards re-framing the narrative in the right direction is withdrawing from the Paris accord. It's clear that our fealty to this meaningless United Nations group hug has caused us more trouble than it's worth.
This doesn't mean we stop caring about the environment. It just means we do it because we want to and how we want to, not because of some international shaming ritual of false deadlines and targets. New evidence even tells us that approach may be the most productive.
As my colleague Lorrie Goldstein explained in a recent column, the United States is now the world leader in reducing emissions. This coming after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris accord — the only signatory to have done so — back in 2017. "U.S. emissions are now down almost 1 Gt from their peak in 2000, the largest absolute decline by any country over that period," reads the latest Internat i o nal Energ y Agency report cited by Goldstein.
Free market solutions to climate concerns are not only possible but likely more efficient. The activists don't want you to know that. That's because an open source response to climate change, as opposed to the current authoritarian one, takes away their influence, control and financing.
Did you hear them sing from the rooftops the recent news that University of Ottawa scientists are on the cusp of a new and improved model of carbon capture? Of course not. Because, if successful, such innovations will reduce the need for the Paris accord, carbon taxes and many other top-down green schemes.
While Peter MacKay did not call for a Paris withdrawal in his CTV News interview, he did articulate a sensible pathway forward on the issue: "Canadians can be innovators and be big contributors to the global effort because we're not the problem. We have an obligation to do our part, but I think we can be bigger in our vision and bolder in our effort to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally."
The Paris accord conversation is dominated by the very same people who are pushing to shut down the Canadian economy and our energy projects. That's just wrong. Let's shut them down instead.
The obsession with meeting these Paris targets is one of the key motivating factors behind so much of the current drama holding back Canada
No, climate change isn't lowering our birth rate
By Lorrie Goldstein
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
For example, Canada's declining birth rate, which federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson suggested Monday may be linked to human- induced climate change.
In remarks to the Vancouver Board of Trade, first cited by Blacklock's Reporter, Wilkinson said: "Given the lack of significant action over the past couple of decades, it is certainly no wonder that youth around the world are fed up with our generation. We're not acting on the science we have before us, and many question whether they see a future in which they can have children of their own."
Wilkinson said his youngest daughter, in Grade 12, constantly tells him, he's "not doing enough to fight climate change" and "her words motivate me in what I do."
It's true many young people today say they don't want to bring more children into the world given its current state. But young people have been saying that for generations.
For baby boomers, it was because of the threat of nuclear war.
As for Canada's fertility rate, it's been declining for 170 years — from 6.56 children per woman in 1851, to 1.5 today.
As Statistics Canada explains : "Canada has changed from a high-fertility society, where women had many children during their lives, to a low-fertility society where women are having fewer children overall and at increasingly older ages.
"Despite some fluctuations, the total fertility rate in Canada has been below the replacement level for over 40 years. In fact, 1971 was the last year the replacement- level fertility of 2.1 children per woman was reached — meaning that couples, on average, had produced enough children to replace themselves."
"The demographic shift ... has resulted in a transition from a country with a relatively young and growing population to one with an aging population, which is increasingly reliant on immigration for population growth."
One reason is Canada's shift from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrialized one, where families no longer need large numbers of children to work the land and care for them in their old age.
Others are the decreasing influence of religion, lower child mortality rates, improved contraception, the emancipation of women, their pursuit of education, increasing entry into the labour force, and medical advancements giving them the option of having children later in life.
The high cost of housing and the increasing prevalence of contract work vs. full-time jobs, are also reasons for Canada's low birth rate.
One could argue Wilkinson was simply making an anecdotal observation about young people being disillusioned with the world their parents gave them, which is nothing new.
But the problem is that because the Trudeau government touts human-induced climate change, as Wilkinson twice referred to it, as an "existential" threat, and the most important issue of our age, it distorts its public policies with that in mind.
Human- induced climate change is serious but it's not an "existential" threat. It doesn't threaten our existence.
Portraying it as such leads to bad political decisions fuelled by hysteria.
Climate change is one of many challenges we face, including conventional air and water pollution, toxic waste sites and the frequency of deadly viruses emerging from China and Africa, where many people live in close proximity to animals likely to jump the species barrier in transmitting disease.
Hysteria won't help us address these problems. Only good judgment and common sense will.
It doesn't seem to be threatening the birth rate across Africa.
The Conservatives need to grown a pair and stop lowering Canada's living standards by pandering to middle class destroying climate alarmism.
Conservative candidates need to push back against the climate scare
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/harris-conservative-candidates-need-to-push-back-against-the-climate-scare
It is high time every Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidate thoroughly debunked the climate scare. For climate alarmism threatens to ruin the Canada previous generations fought and died to preserve.
f you think the five-month COVID-19-induced shutdown has been rough, imagine a permanent such shutdown, but with soaring gasoline, natural gas and electricity prices. Our children have a bleak future indeed if today's climate activists get their way.
Yet, to date, only Derek Sloan has dared contest the sacred cow of dangerous human-induced climate change, promising to take Canada out of the Paris Agreement. The rest of the leadership candidates – Peter MacKay, Erin O'Toole and Leslyn Lewis – have acquiesced to the alarm.
This is a huge problem. 'Stopping climate change' has become a central organizing principle of public policy formulation, as manufacturing jobs have disappeared overseas, vitally needed oil pipelines have been cancelled or delayed, and electricity rates have skyrocketed.
This has caused severe damage to Canadian energy consumers and producers while impairing national unity. Poverty awaits for many more Canadians if current climate change and energy policies continue.
Besides wanting to avoid being labelled 'climate change deniers,' and attempting to attract left-wing voters, MacKay, O'Toole and Lewis are apparently under the impression that they must ignore rank and file Conservatives on this issue and follow what they perceive to be general public opinion. This is a mistake.
In "Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S.," published in 2012 in the journal Climatic Change, McGill University, Drexel University and Ohio State University researchers demonstrated that the stated positions of politicians and other "elites" in society is the primary factor influencing public opinion.
The study showed that when prominent Republicans worked with Democrats to support concerns about dangerous global warming, the public was far more supportive of this stance. However, following the Republican split with the Democrats on the issue in 2008, there was a quick reduction in the fraction of the public who "worried a great deal" about climate.
The same would apply in Canada. So, unless MacKay, O'Toole and Lewis actually want the public to support climate alarmism, they should clearly state that the scare is wrong, citing reports such as those of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change. These documents summarize thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals that either refute or cast serious doubt on the climate scare. Then Conservative Party of Canada leadership candidates can play their proper role of leading the public to a balanced understanding of this important topic.
Indeed, all Conservatives must 'cross the Rubicon,' and call a spade a spade: the idea that we detrimentally affect climate through our use of fossil fuels is one of the worst deceptions ever perpetrated. The primary result of the climate crusade will not be enhanced environmental protection but expanded government power, reduced individual freedom, and huge profits for alternative energy companies. Attempts to convert from reliable coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power to flimsy and expensive wind and solar power to supposedly 'save the climate' is both ridiculous and dangerous.
After all, "carbon pollution," that the government tells us we must reduce, is really carbon dioxide (CO2), a colourless, odourless gas essential for plant photosynthesis and so needed for life. It is the very opposite of pollution. It is not worth spending anything at all trying to reduce CO2 emissions.
And, yes, climate change is real. So is sunrise and gravity. That doesn't mean that we cause them, or, in the case of climate change, if we do contribute, that our impact is in any way dangerous.
And, for Conservatives too timid or uninformed to say this, they need the courage to at least state that, at 1.6% of world emissions, Canada's contribution is trivial in comparison with countries such as China, by far the largest emitter. And China clearly has no intention whatsoever of reducing emissions so Canada's sacrifice would be for nothing. The best policy is to simply adapt to climate change as it occurs.
Any Conservative leadership candidate so frightened by political correctness that they stand idly by while our nation is sucked further into the black hole of climate alarmism is not worthy of leading any party, let alone becoming prime minister.
Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition.
With the exception of Derek Sloan, all the Tory candidates are taking a cowardly stance. We know Ottawa's climate plans hurt average working Canadians and put the entire country at a competitive disadvantage while not budging the climate needle. The Tory candidates should not be afraid to tell the truth about the uselessness of Canada's climate alarmism.
Dan McTeague of Canadians for Affordable Energy just published a great post on CAE's blog about the return of Gerald Butts and what that could soon mean for your energy bill.
Butts has returned to Ottawa to head up the "Task Force for a Resilient Recovery", which last week released their preliminary report.
Unfortunately for us, what the Task Force is recommending is a repeat of Ontario's disastrous 2009 Green Energy Act, for which Butts was also a key advisor.
Yes, the same Green Energy Act that inflated energy bills in Ontario by a whopping 70% from 2008 to 2016. The same Green Energy Act that Ontarians are still paying for!
McTeague breaks down all the ominous ways in which this Task Force's recommendations are all too similar to the measures implemented in the GEA, and he has a stark warning about any energy plans that feature liberal amounts of green subsidies:
"These plans only ever result in dramatically higher costs, which are then passed down to the consumer. Prioritizing 'clean' energy is always expensive - as Ontario has demonstrated. Pretty soon all of Canada - not just Ontario - can pay the Global Adjustment Fee to fund this green agenda."
You can read the whole post here.
There is one simple way we can avoid this expensive plan. We must defeat Justin Trudeau.
"Climate alarmism" is an ideological approach that claims human use of fossil fuels has a dangerous effect on the world's climate and will lead to human extinction.
This claim is not supported by science. Thousands of studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals contradict or cast serious doubt on the claims made by climate alarmists.
Climate alarmism is a massive deception used by the left to expand government power and taxation, erode personal freedoms, and run "green energy" subsidy scams paid for by taxpayers.
Ontario is still paying for the Green Energy Act of 2009, which increased energy bills by 70% while driving businesses from the province in the name of promoting "green energy" through subsidies. Disgraced former Trudeau Principal Secretary Gerry Butts was behind the GEA, and now he heads up a group looking to launch a similar plan nationally.
Plans involving "green energy" subsidies always result in radically higher energy costs that ordinary Canadians must pay.
Even though climate alarmism is unscientific, rallying cries to "fight climate change" go unchallenged and have led to policies that cripple our energy sector, banish manufacturing jobs, make energy rates skyrocket, and shatter national unity.
The Paris Agreement was created out of climate alarmism. Attempts to meet its goals will destroy our oil and gas industry, while at the same time serving as justification for an unconstitutional carbon tax that makes life more expensive for us all.
What climate alarmism does is take money and choices away from working class people and put it into the hands of rich progressive billionaires and slimy corporations. What it does not do is stop the climate from changing.
I wouldn't mind sacrificing if the burden was shared equally between the rich and the rest of us, but we pay while they play(expand their already massive carbon footprints).
Over eighty per cent of new emissions occur in the developing world. Any sacrifices Ottawa forces Canadians to make are completely in vain.
These climate restrictions are just gonna drive the businesses to countries where there are no restrictions.
This shit doesnt work unless everybody plays a long.
The so called "climate job opportunities" are not gonna fill the void..
If they even exist... Heard nothing but words from liberal politicians.
Quote from: OdinsonThese climate restrictions are just gonna drive the businesses to countries where there are no restrictions.
This shit doesnt work unless everybody plays a long.
The so called "climate job opportunities" are not gonna fill the void..
If they even exist... Heard nothing but words from liberal politicians.
That's what Seoul has been saying to.
Quote from: FashionistaQuote from: OdinsonThese climate restrictions are just gonna drive the businesses to countries where there are no restrictions.
This shit doesnt work unless everybody plays a long.
The so called "climate job opportunities" are not gonna fill the void..
If they even exist... Heard nothing but words from liberal politicians.
That's what Seoul has been saying to.
Yes.
Quote from: OdinsonThese climate restrictions are just gonna drive the businesses to countries where there are no restrictions.
This shit doesnt work unless everybody plays a long.
The so called "climate job opportunities" are not gonna fill the void..
If they even exist... Heard nothing but words from liberal politicians.
I've only seen job losses and good jobs lost. It's all about virtue signalling. Our government knows making life unaffordable will not stop climate change.
Quote from: VelvetQuote from: OdinsonThese climate restrictions are just gonna drive the businesses to countries where there are no restrictions.
This shit doesnt work unless everybody plays a long.
The so called "climate job opportunities" are not gonna fill the void..
If they even exist... Heard nothing but words from liberal politicians.
I've only seen job losses and good jobs lost. It's all about virtue signalling. Our government knows making life unaffordable will not stop climate change.
It's all about Trudeau's ego.
The Paris Agreement enables China, India and other countries to continue to expand their emissions until 2030, whereas Canada has committed to reducing its emissions by 30 per cent during this period. Not only will this agreement do nothing for the environment, it will help to transfer more manufacturing to China – an outcome we need as much as we need a noose around our collective necks.
Globalism and multiculturalism.
Chinas gain is our gain.
Quote from: OdinsonGlobalism and multiculturalism.
Chinas gain is our gain.
China knows the West weaknesses and uses them to their advantage. That's what smart countries do.
Quote from: Shen LiQuote from: OdinsonGlobalism and multiculturalism.
Chinas gain is our gain.
China knows the West weaknesses and uses them to their advantage. That's what smart countries do.
This is so very true as it relates to climate alarmism. Convince concerned, but naive Westerners that catastrophe awaits them if the don't buy into solar and wind. Meanwhile, China has most of the world's rare earth metals required for solar panels and wind turbines and controls most of the production. They play while we pay.
Uh oh alarmists. A cold planet is more dangerous to human health than a warming one.
Study finds cold responsible for 94% of all temperature-related deaths
a new study conducted by researchers out of the University of Chicago Illinois shows cold exposure could be an even greater risk to health, and that cold-related injuries can occur year-round.
During the study, cold temperatures were responsible for 94 per cent of temperature-related deaths.
METHODOLOGY
For their paper, the team examined nearly 50,000 inpatient and outpatient temperature-related injuries at Illinois hospitals between 2011 and 2018. Among these patients, 1,935 cold-related deaths and 70 heat-related deaths were recorded -- but researchers believe the number of cold-related deaths is, in reality, much higher.
"We found five to 10 times more temperature-related deaths by linking the hospital data to data from the National Weather Service and medical examiner's data," Lee Friedman, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health and corresponding author on the paper, said in a statement.
"Hypothermia results in an insidious physiologic response that is slow and progressive. While heatstroke tends to result in death within hours to days, hypothermia is much slower, and frequently death occurs after days or weeks," Friedman tells The Weather Network in an email.
Individuals who visited a hospital due to cold exposure often suffered from multiple health issues, including electrolyte disorders, cardiovascular disease, and kidney failure.
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/news/article/study-finds-cold-weather-responsible-for-94-of-all-temperature-related-deaths
A cooling planet would be far worse than a warming one.
WInd turbines have a massive envornmental footprint. The do not come close to producing as much energy per square metre of land as concentrated sources of energy like natural gas, hydroelectric or nuclear.
Landfill begins burying non-recyclable Wind Turbine Blades
https://thedailydan.tumblr.com/post/189021268068/landfill-begins-burying-non-recyclable-wind
The CRL has entered into a deal with three Wyoming wind farms to dispose of decommissioned blades and motor houses.
Waste management experts estimate they'll take hundreds of years to biodegrade
Hundreds of giant windmill blades are being shipped to a landfill in Wyoming to be buried because they simply can't be recycled.Local media reports several wind farms in the state are sending over 900 un-reusable blades to the Casper Regional Landfill to be buried.
(https://64.media.tumblr.com/13e8668e333113da8a19c17c5bfdc1be/eed669a37131bac5-1f/s500x750/c47219ea88153e5989255de3a1573203f9a8d5c7.png)
Will the IPCC reference this study? Not on your life.
World's oceans soak up 900 million tonnes of CO2 a year MORE than previously thought — the amount emitted by 2.2 billion petrol cars
Previous models did not account for temperature differences at different depths
This alters how much carbon is soaked up by the water in total
Researchers believe the world's oceans actually soak up far more carbon, equivalent to ten per cent of global fossil fuel emissions
The world's oceans are better at soaking up carbon dioxide than most scientific models have previously found, according to a new study.
Although emissions of carbon dioxide are easily quantifiable, how much goes into the atmosphere and how much is absorbed by bodies of water is hard to calculate.
Due to a previous oversight, the oceans may actually soak up an extra 0.9 petagrams of CO2, the same as 900 million metric tonnes.
One petrol car averaging 9,000 miles a year, 40 miles to the gallon and 0.4kg of CO2 a mile will produce 408 kg of CO2 a year.
Therefore, 900 million metric tonnes of CO2 equates to the same amount of CO2 emissions as approximately 2.2 billion cars.
The researchers say this is equivalent to ten per cent of global fossil fuel emissions.
This additional figure is on top of the already known carbon absorption of the world's oceans which is around two petagrams, the same as around 25 per cent of all CO2 emissions from humans.
Carbon flux is a term used to describe the movement of the greenhouse gas.
Previous estimates of flux have neglected to take into account temperature differences at the water's surface compared to a few metres below.
Researchers from the University of Exeter factored this into their calculations and found it made a significant impact on how much carbon is trapped in oceans.
They worked out total CO2 flux from 1992 to 2018 and found that by accounting for the subsurface water, total carbon movement doubled in some places.
'Half of the carbon dioxide we emit doesn't stay in the atmosphere but is taken up by the oceans and land vegetation 'sinks',' said Professor Andrew Watson, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute.
'Previous studies that have done this have, however, ignored small temperature differences between the surface of the ocean and the depth of a few metres where the measurements are made.
'Those differences are important because carbon dioxide solubility depends very strongly on temperature.
'We used satellite data to correct for these temperature differences, and when we do that it makes a big difference - we get a substantially larger flux going into the ocean.
'The difference in ocean uptake we calculate amounts to about 10 per cent of global fossil fuel emissions.'
Less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and more in the oceans is a double-edged sword for experts.
Carbon dioxide in the marine environment literally turns the water more acidic, causing coral bleaching and forcing many animals to flee to more hospitable regions.
However, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a major driver of global warming
The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8698067/Worlds-oceans-soak-carbon-previously-thought.html
(https://scontent.fyyc3-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/119136995_10164380456585226_9185078702441621743_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=lYzbyzzi6UAAX_-_siG&_nc_ht=scontent.fyyc3-1.fna&oh=831f2d1aebf0c2495e8c9c3d5c9838cd&oe=5F8296C9)
Expect the throne speech to be an all out assault on Canadian jobs and disposable income. The CFS will be so damaging, it will make the carbon tax look benign by comparison.
By Miguel Ouellette, an economist at the Montreal Economic Institute.
Feds new fuel standard will jeopardize jobs
The federal government should encourage economic recovery by being more flexible, not by making the current regulatory framework more restrictive
Since the start of the pandemic, the federal government has been looking for ways to promote economic recovery all while minimizing the impact on employment. Wage subsidies to the left, financial aid to businesses to the right, assistance for seniors here, help for students there — it's a veritable buffet of measures.
To this must be added the golden rule for public policy: First, do no harm. Yet the existing regulatory framework, and rules likely to be added to it, are in fact harmful, and should be reassessed. This is the case, for instance, of the Clean Fuel Standard (CFS), which will be made public this fall.
The visible objective of the CFS is to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions all while favouring the use of low-carbon fuels, energy sources, and technologies. Companies will have to respect the Standard either through their own efforts or through the purchase of credits from other companies that emit less carbon.
Although the intention behind this energy policy may be laudable, its format will be detrimental to the Canadian economy, while its effect on the environment is far from certain. The Standard is meant to contribute to Canada reducing its GHG emissions to 30% below their 2005 level by 2030. Canada would become the only country in the world to include natural gas and propane in such a policy, placing numerous Canadian businesses at a competitive disadvantage.
On top of the very limited 10-year deadline to bring GHG emissions 30% below the 2005 level, the Standard will not replace federal and provincial environmental policies already in place; it will complement them. This regulatory duplication will be costly both for companies and for consumers.
Indeed, the CFS will have the effect of increasing production and transport costs for companies using fuels like natural gas, which represents a very large number of companies. And a substantial portion of the bill will be passed on to consumers.
In the manufacturing sector alone, 1.7 million jobs will be affected in Canada, including 300,000 in Quebec. It is impossible to say with any reasonable degree of precision at this stage what portion of these jobs would be lost. Yet one thing is clear: The implementation of this measure will certainly have a negative impact on the level of employment in the manufacturing sector and the Canadian economy in general, since it will add on an extra layer of costs and constraints.
On top of its negative economic effects, its ecological impact remains ambiguous. A major factor that the CFS seems to omit is that climate change is a global phenomenon, not a national one. After all, Canada is responsible for just 1.5% of global GHG emissions. While a regulatory environmental framework is necessary and desirable, the CFS would make countries like China and India more attractive. We could therefore see carbon leakage: Canada's emissions would fall, but given the possible relocation of local companies, the net global effect could well be negative.
The current COVID-19 situation is already adding a number of obstacles to the Canadian economy and international trade. The federal government should encourage economic recovery by being more flexible, not by making the current regulatory framework more restrictive. The CFS will be an extra hurdle for Canadian companies struggling to emerge from the pandemic.
Let's hope that the government reconsiders the CFS, and does a better job of analyzing its future energy policies by their potential results, and not only by the intentions behind them. The current buffet of measures is already leaving many companies far from satisfied; there's no reason to add to that a bitter aftertaste.
By Lorrie Goldstein of Sun News Media
SMOKE AND MIRRORS
Trudeau doubles down on 32 years of failed climate policies
In supposedly fighting human-induced climate change, four different Canadian governments headed by four different prime ministers have set eight major national greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in the past 32 years.
They failed to achieve any of them, or were so far behind when they left office, or are so far behind today, that none can be taken seriously.
In keeping with tradition, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ninth and 10th unattainable target in last week's throne speech, boldly declaring: "The government will immediately bring forward a plan to exceed Canada's 2030 climate goal. The government will also legislate Canada's goal of net-zero emissions by 2050."
Except Trudeau is about to miss his 2020 target.
Since he's nowhere near his 2030 target — which new Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole has foolishly adopted — promising to exceed it is nonsense. Trudeau's 2050 target is a fantasy.
How did we get here? Why are billions of public dollars being spent on dubious policies linked to imaginary targets when real-world results — that is, actually reducing emissions — don't matter, meaning taxpayers are not receiving good value for the money being spent on carbon pricing, carbon taxes and other schemes?
In 1988, Progressive Conservative PM Brian Mulroney set a target of reducing Canada's emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005.
Canada's emissions in 1988 were 588 megatonnes (a megatonne, or Mt, is a million tonnes). That made Canada's 2005 target 470 Mt.
When Mulroney left office in 1993, Canada's emissions were 615 Mt — 145 Mt or 31% above his 2005 target.
In 1990, Mulroney set a new target of stabilizing Canada's emissions at 1990 levels by 2000.
Canada's emissions in 1990 were 603 Mt. By 2000, after three years of PC government and seven of Liberal government, they were 731 Mt, missing that target by 128 Mt or 21%.
In 1993, Liberal PM Jean Chretien revived Mulroney's 1988 target of reducing emissions to 20% below 1988 levels by 2005.
In 2005, after 12 years under the Liberals, emissions were 730 Mt, missing the Chretien/Mulroney target by 260 Mt, or 55%.
In today's terms, they missed it by more than the annual emissions of Canada's entire oil and gas sector (193 Mt) and electricity sector (64 Mt).
In 1998, Chretien signed the Kyoto accord to reduce Canada's emissions to an average of 6% below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012. Canada's emissions in 1990 were 603 Mt, making Canada's 2012 target 567 Mt.
When the Liberals lost power in 2006 under Paul Martin, Canada's emissions were 721 Mt, 154 Mt, 27% higher than Chretien's Kyoto target.
Conservative PM Stephen Harper scrapped Kyoto, setting a target in 2010 of reducing Canada's emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Canada's emissions in 2005 were 730 Mt, making Canada's 2020 target 606 Mt.
When the Harper Conservatives lost power in 2015, emissions were
720 Mt, 114 Mt or 19% above their 2020 target.
In 2015, Harper set a target to reduce emissions to 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. Emissions in 2005 were 730 Mt, meaning Harper's 2030 target was 511 Mt. He agreed to "decarbonization" by 2100.
When Harper was defeated in 2015, Canada's emissions were
720 Mt, 209 Mt or 41% above his 2030 target.
In 2016, as Chretien had with Mulroney, Trudeau adopted Harper's targets — 17% below 2005 emissions by 2020, 30% below by 2030.
Canada's current emissions are 729 Mt (for 2018, the last year for which figures are available), meaning Trudeau's poised to miss his 2020 target of 606 Mt by 123 Mt or 20%.
He's behind his 2030 target of 511 Mt by 218 Mt or 43%.
Having never hit a target, the Liberals claim they're 77 Mt, or 15% above their 2030 target if all their policies work.
Some argue that without targets there's no pressure to improve.
But after 32 years of failure, the targets are clearly meaningless.
Canada needs an energy policy based on reality and on our strengths — non-emitting nuclear power, low-emitting natural gas, eliminating coal-fired electricity (Trudeau's goal for 2030), plus reducing the carbon intensity of oil production. Basing it on niche players like wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars will fail.
The only time Canada's emissions significantly dropped in the modern era was during the 200809 recession, decreasing by 8% over two years, before rising again in 2010.
They're dropping now because of the COVID-19 recession.
But you can't run an economy based on permanent recessions.
I don't have the details on this yet. But, if will mean vetoing new resource projects that create prosperity. It will mean higher energy costs and of course higher costs for everything. It will mean we continue to import energy as it will block only domestic energy development and not foreign imports.
Liberals give road map to a net-zero emissions by 2050 with new climate bill
Bill C-12 will 'cement' promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions
OTTAWA — Legislation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said "cements" his promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions within 30 years has been introduced in the House of Commons.
"This is an ambitious goal," Trudeau said Thursday morning in a virtual address at a conference as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
t will require Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to set five-year targets, starting in 2030, for curbing emissions on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Net-zero means either eliminating all emissions or ensuring any still produced are absorbed by natural means like forests and wetlands, or technology like carbon capture and storage systems.
An emissions-reduction plan, progress report and assessment report on each would need to be tabled in the house, and the bill orders the environment commissioner to audit Canada's climate change mitigation measures at least once every five years.
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/liberals-give-road-map-to-a-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-with-new-climate-bill
Quote from: seoulbroI don't have the details on this yet. But, if will mean vetoing new resource projects that create prosperity. It will mean higher energy costs and of course higher costs for everything. It will mean we continue to import energy as it will block only domestic energy development and not foreign imports.
Liberals give road map to a net-zero emissions by 2050 with new climate bill
Bill C-12 will 'cement' promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions
OTTAWA — Legislation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said "cements" his promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions within 30 years has been introduced in the House of Commons.
"This is an ambitious goal," Trudeau said Thursday morning in a virtual address at a conference as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
t will require Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to set five-year targets, starting in 2030, for curbing emissions on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Net-zero means either eliminating all emissions or ensuring any still produced are absorbed by natural means like forests and wetlands, or technology like carbon capture and storage systems.
An emissions-reduction plan, progress report and assessment report on each would need to be tabled in the house, and the bill orders the environment commissioner to audit Canada's climate change mitigation measures at least once every five years.
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/liberals-give-road-map-to-a-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-with-new-climate-bill
This is a road map to zero net economic growth. While this fucked up country does our best to commit economic suicide, the Japanese parliament has wisely exploited climate alarmism and declared a "climate emergency." What does that mean for them? They can now recommission old nuclear power plants and build new ones instead of importing LNG and coal. Japan smart, Canada stupid.
Quote from: seoulbroI don't have the details on this yet. But, if will mean vetoing new resource projects that create prosperity. It will mean higher energy costs and of course higher costs for everything. It will mean we continue to import energy as it will block only domestic energy development and not foreign imports.
Liberals give road map to a net-zero emissions by 2050 with new climate bill
Bill C-12 will 'cement' promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions
OTTAWA — Legislation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said "cements" his promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions within 30 years has been introduced in the House of Commons.
"This is an ambitious goal," Trudeau said Thursday morning in a virtual address at a conference as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
t will require Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to set five-year targets, starting in 2030, for curbing emissions on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Net-zero means either eliminating all emissions or ensuring any still produced are absorbed by natural means like forests and wetlands, or technology like carbon capture and storage systems.
An emissions-reduction plan, progress report and assessment report on each would need to be tabled in the house, and the bill orders the environment commissioner to audit Canada's climate change mitigation measures at least once every five years.
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/liberals-give-road-map-to-a-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-with-new-climate-bill
Sounds like a blueprint to bury Western Canada. But, like you said, it will be bad for all working Canadians. You better than anybody, the resource sector is our largest source of foreign and domestic investment. It also provides the best blue collar jobs in the country. But, Justine would prefer Russia, the US or Brazil get those jobs and then export their oil and LNG back to Canada. :crazy:
Our biggest export industry is oil and gas, and you can be sure they will not have a voice at the table even though they have have done more to lower their emissions through technology(and continue to do so) than any other sector of the economy.
:001_tongue:
Quote from: seoulbroI don't have the details on this yet. But, if will mean vetoing new resource projects that create prosperity. It will mean higher energy costs and of course higher costs for everything. It will mean we continue to import energy as it will block only domestic energy development and not foreign imports.
Liberals give road map to a net-zero emissions by 2050 with new climate bill
Bill C-12 will 'cement' promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions
OTTAWA — Legislation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said "cements" his promise to mostly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions within 30 years has been introduced in the House of Commons.
"This is an ambitious goal," Trudeau said Thursday morning in a virtual address at a conference as part of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum.
t will require Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson to set five-year targets, starting in 2030, for curbing emissions on the way to net-zero emissions by 2050.
Net-zero means either eliminating all emissions or ensuring any still produced are absorbed by natural means like forests and wetlands, or technology like carbon capture and storage systems.
An emissions-reduction plan, progress report and assessment report on each would need to be tabled in the house, and the bill orders the environment commissioner to audit Canada's climate change mitigation measures at least once every five years.
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/liberals-give-road-map-to-a-net-zero-emissions-by-2050-with-new-climate-bill
Prepare to be gouged even more.
Trudeau, the NDP and the Greens approach to climate change lacks common sense and does nothing to move the climate needle.
After deliberately turning itself into a climate-change martyr, Canada needs some basic common sense
For all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change
It's been almost three decades since delegates from 172 countries, meeting at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, adopted the Climate Change Convention. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show that since then the Earth's temperature has risen an average of 0.03 degrees Celsius per year. At that rate, the planet will warm 2.4 degrees by 2100. That's a sizable amount over 80 years but it's certainly not the "climate emergency" needed to galvanize people into making life-altering sacrifices like giving up cars or air travel or switching to "eco-friendly" food.
After New York, Greta journeyed to Alberta where she held an anti-oilsands rally, a puzzling choice given that Canada produces just 1.6 per cent of global emissions, with the oilsands contributing just a tenth of that. Why didn't she travel to China or India, whose emissions make Canada's just a rounding error? While she was in Edmonton, the ever-determined reporters at Rebel Media asked her that question. Her answer? She "hadn't been invited." No doubt that's true, but her disparaging visit to Canada's oilsands is yet another illustration of activists' fixation on Western countries even though virtually all emissions growth is in the East.
China, India, South Africa, South Korea, the Philippines and Japan, all signatories to the Paris climate accord, are in various stages of constructing a total of 1,800 coal-fired power plants. If Canada disappeared from the face of the Earth, those new plants would replace our emissions in a few short months.
There's little doubt Greta's visit also impacted the outcome of the federal election. Massive media coverage of her climate emergency message increased support for Trudeau's national carbon tax, a task made easier by Andrew Scheer's failure to clearly explain why the Conservative environmental policy would more effectively reduce global emissions. That shouldn't have been difficult. Virtually all experts agree the carbon tax would have to be several times higher than planned to have any perceptible impact on global emissions. By contrast, the cornerstone of the Conservative environmental platform was recognition that Canadian natural gas exports could help halve poor-country emissions by switching their power plants from coal to natural gas. The industry hoped the government would push recognition of that reality at the recent Madrid climate conference but was, once again, disappointed.
Canada's preoccupation with national rather than global emissions leads to myriad "local action" absurdities. The award for most ludicrous goes to Victoria City Council for its plan to spend $14 million installing shore power so cruise ships can shut off their generators while moored at city docks. Council clearly doesn't understand that emissions caused by actually propelling the ships after they leave port are hundreds of times greater than their generators produce.
More tragic than ludicrous is the systematic destruction of one of the world's most technically advanced and ethically responsible oil industries. Though hundreds of thousands of trained workers have been rendered jobless and in many cases hopeless as capital investment and corporate headquarters have fled to the U.S., world oil consumption is six million barrels a day higher than it was in 2010, while the International Energy Agency forecasts demand will keep rising for at least two decades. Yet the Trudeau Liberals' progressive evisceration of our oil industry has handed that growing market to such human rights champions as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria and Algeria. Adding insult to injury, Quebec, consistent with its "distinct society" status, favours its own interests over those of the country at large and continues to import oil from those countries in preference to Alberta's "dirty oil."
No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. And yet for all the economic, social and national unity pain inflicted, our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact on global climate change. Entering the third decade of this troubled millennium, we can only hope our federal government realizes the future of our confederation requires trading blind ideology for basic common sense.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/gwyn-morgan-after-deliberately-turning-itself-into-a-climate-change-martyr-canada-needs-some-basic-common-sense
They shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but private investors got tired of Trudeau's regulatory games and lest, like most resource investment in the last five years. Now, the governments misguideddomestic emissions centric climate agenda could make it difficult to find a buyer for the pipeline. :crazy:
Feds to lose money on TMX with tighter climate policy
PBO says pipeline's future value rests on Liberals' plans
OTTAWA — The federal government could end up losing money on the Trans Mountain pipeline if it further tightens its climate policy
The increased capacity wouldn't come on line until the end of 2022.
The budget officer said the pipeline remains profitable based on expected cash flows, estimating the government could make $ 600 million above its purchase price.
Quote from: seoulbroThey shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but private investors got tired of Trudeau's regulatory games and lest, like most resource investment in the last five years. Now, the governments misguideddomestic emissions centric climate agenda could make it difficult to find a buyer for the pipeline. :crazy:
Feds to lose money on TMX with tighter climate policy
PBO says pipeline's future value rests on Liberals' plans
OTTAWA — The federal government could end up losing money on the Trans Mountain pipeline if it further tightens its climate policy
The increased capacity wouldn't come on line until the end of 2022.
The budget officer said the pipeline remains profitable based on expected cash flows, estimating the government could make $ 600 million above its purchase price.
Trudeau's precious domestic emissions targets must come first. Who cares about lost jobs, higher energy imports, and the fact that all the damage that goof inflicts in the name of the Paris Agreement will not stop the climate from changing.
The maritime provinces are reliably Liberal, but that could change if he throws average Atlantic Canadian families under the bus in his selfish pursuit of accolades from the UN for his climate "leadership."
By Anthony Furey of Sun News Media
Fuel concerns come standard
Atlantic provinces push back against '2nd carbon tax'
Canada's Atlantic provinces stand united with their concerns about the federal Liberal government's "second carbon tax."
A joint letter signed by the energy ministers of the four provinces and sent to federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson opposes the incoming Clean Fuel Standard "in its present form" due to its "disproportionately negative economic impact on Atlantic Canadians" and requests the federal Liberal government make changes.
"While we support efforts to reduce emissions, we have some shared concerns about the proposed Clean Fuel Standard (CFS) and the impact it will have on the Atlantic economy and on Atlantic Canadians who have the highest levels of energy poverty in Canada," said the letter. "Statistics Canada data shows 13% of Atlantic Canadians experience energy poverty compared to the Canadian average of 8%."
The signatories are New Brunswick Natural Resources and Energy Development Minister Mike Holland, Newfoundland and Labrador Industry, Energy and Technology Minister Andrew Parsons, Nova Scotia Energy and Mines Minister Derek Mombourquette and Prince Edward Island Transportation, Infrastructure and Energy Minister Steven Myers.
The stated purpose of the CFS — described by critics as nothing more than a second carbon tax — is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 million tonnes per year.
But it will not come without its costs to consumers and industry. A 2019 study by the Canadian Energy Research Institute estimated CFS costs include gas price increases of five to 11 cents per litre by 2030 and that it will cost the Canadian economy between $7.6 billion and $15.3 billion per year. This includes $1 billion to $2 billion per year of added costs on the oil and gas sector.
The letter goes on to note that the effects of the CFS "will occur at a critical time as our economies are already struggling to recover from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic." Dan McTeague, president of Canadians for Affordable Energy, isn't surprised to hear this response.
"Atlantic provinces are united in their concern about what we've been saying since August: (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau's second carbon tax will hurt Atlantic Canadians struggling with energy poverty more disproportionately," McTeague, who was a Liberal MP from 1993 to 2011, said in an email to the Sun.
The provinces request that the feds conduct and share the results of a provincial/territorial cost-benefit analysis and the start time is pushed back to 2023 or 2024.
The Nova Scotia government said that while it is supportive of efforts to reduce emissions, the province's higher dependence on heating oil added to its concerns about the CFS.
"We are requesting a well-studied and customized approach for achieving those results in the Atlantic region that will not increase energy costs for residents and businesses in our area," said Patricia Jriege, a spokesperson for the Nova Scotia government, in an email to Postmedia Network. "To that end, the Atlantic provinces have requested a deeper analysis of the specific needs of Atlantic Canada before the publication of the draft CFS regulations." It's this analysis that McTeague believed will expose the true costs of the CFS for the whole country.
"Their conclusion that Ottawa has failed to provide a proper cost-benefit analysis, which we estimate will hurt Canadians by a factor of 6-1, speaks to just how damaging this policy will be as Trudeau attempts to ram through another devastating carbon tax that will hurt the country's most impoverished regions at precisely the wrong time," said McTeague.
"Statistics Canada data shows 13% of Atlantic Canadians experience energy poverty compared to the Canadian average of 8%." Joint letter signed by Atlantic provinces' energy ministers
Trudeau's troubling climate evangelism
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced on Friday that the Liberals plan to triple the federal carbon tax.
Not just increase it by a smidge. Not double it. But triple it. The original plan was for the tax to hit $50 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions by 2022. Now they've announced it will continue to ramp up to $170 per tonne by 2030.
This increase is going to have major consequences for regular Canadians and the economy at large.
One of the effects most directly felt by consumers is that, when all is said and done, the carbon tax will add just under 40 cents per litre to the cost of gasoline.
Again: That's not 40 cents every time you fill up at the pump. That's per litre.
Trudeau chose Friday to make this announcement because it was the fifth anniversary of the signing of the Paris agreement, the occasion that first tethered Canada to these needless commitments.
While most world leaders understand that such agreements are really just aspirational goals and shouldn't be taken that seriously, Trudeau and his climate activist fans have acted like the Paris deal is some sort of legally binding gun to our heads.
What a lot of Canadians probably don't realize is that their own emissions have actually dropped considerably. Per capita emissions in Canada decreased 20% between 2000 and 2017, largely due to energy efficiency. It is only because our population is growing that total national emissions are not decreasing.
The carbon was always a bad idea. This increase, during the pandemic, makes things even worse.
Trudeau insist on doubling down on what isn't working. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investment leaving the country along with over one hundred thousand good full time jobs be damned. The most important thing for Trudeau is his climate goals.
By Lorne Gunter of Sun News Media
Thanks for nothing, Trudeau
Liberal government's 'green' schemes tanked Alberta's economy with little to show for it
Since coming to power five years ago, Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government have run Canada's energy industry into the ground, and Alberta's economy right along with it.
For the first four years of this deliberate nosedive, the Liberals were aided by Alberta's own NDP government that went along with every cockamamie "green" scheme Ottawa concocted.
No doubt the Trudeauites would never admit their goal was the willful destruction of the oil and gas industry or the knocking of Alberta off its economic perch. But there's no arguing the results.
Alberta has one of Canada's highest unemployment rates. And according to Statistics Canada figures, Canada has lost about $ 200 billion in energy investment since Trudeau came to power in 2015.
What makes all this truly infuriating is that it has all been for nothing, environmentally.
All of the suffering the Liberals have dumped on Alberta has failed to reduce the country's greenhouse gas emissions.
So the question following the Liberals' introduction last week of an even more ambitious, anti-oil agenda – with its nearly 600 per cent increase in the carbon tax over the next decade – has to be, "What makes you think even more devastation will produce better results than your efforts over the past five years?"
The Liberals' obsession with transitioning Canada to a low-carbon, net-zero-emissions economy has become cultish. If a high level of sacrifice fails to please the climate goddess, then try a higher level. And a higher one.
And here's the kick in the teeth. Canada's sacrifice, Alberta's sacrifice isn't working.
Last week the United Nations Environment Programme released its annual "emissions gap" report comparing the level of emissions countries are actually producing versus the level they promised in the Paris accord five year ago.
Can you guess one of the world's biggest scofflaws? That's right, the Justin Trudeau-led country called Canada.
The report puts a lot of emphasis on the performance of G20 countries. Being the world's 20 largest economies, they produce roughly
70 per cent of global emissions.
The UN says nine are doing fairly well at working towards their Paris commitments, six are so-so, but five "Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Republic of Korea and the United States," have made little if any progress.
The U.S. is no longer party to the 2015 Paris accords. And Australia and Brazil were uninvited from last weekend's UN virtual climate summit because they refused to offer enough sacrifice to appease the United Nations gods.
That leaves Canada and South Korea as the two major economies at the bottom of the eco-pile.
In their five years in office, the Trudeau government has killed two pipelines – Energy East and Northern Gateway – and still not completed a third – Trans Mountain. It has choked off Teck Resources' $21-billion Frontier oilsands development (despite the project having support from all the Indigenous communities in the area).
And implemented a review regime for mega-projects that makes future ones next to impossible.
It has banned tankers full of Alberta oil (but not B.C. natural gas ) from navigating the northern B.C. coast and imposed a carbon tax it is now going to jack up sky high.
Plus, the Liberal are rushing through legislation that will give the anti-development United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples legal standing in Canadian courts. At that point, Trans Mountain, Coastal Gas Link pipeline and B.C.'s Site C Dam might all stop.
And yet by the Liberal government's own figures, Canada's emissions are about two per cent higher than they were when Trudeau took office.
All of the pain the Liberals have inflicted in the name of saving the planet has been for naught. And now they want to inflict more.
In their five years in office, the Trudeau government has killed two pipelines – Energy East and Northern Gateway – and still not completed a third – Trans Mountain.
The federal parties don't care how much their emissions targets cause pain for average families.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/136174578_10157783629315869_1600067275076629375_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&ccb=2&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=Ywynu01wq_4AX_yA4Ck&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=5adf8a4c780de779dee7cd4f83aa7cf8&oe=601DDC84)
By Matthew Lau of Sun News Media
Here's why Canada's climate targets are nonsense
There is a consensus in Ottawa that Canada must transition to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The Liberal government says that hitting this target is necessary to "avoid the catastrophic effects of a warming climate," and Erin O'Toole, the Conservative leader, recently made the net-zero target part of his policy agenda as well.
Here's the problem, though: Emissions targets are economic nonsense.
That is, whatever the targets, whatever the timeline, and whatever the plan to achieve them, emissions targets are not grounded in any economic logic. Whenever a politician, activist, or anyone else prescribes them, you can be sure that sensible policy has gone out the window.
As a general rule of economics, and a practical rule by which everybody operates in their daily lives, an activity is worthwhile if its expected benefits are higher than its expected costs. This applies in deciding whether or not to switch jobs, acquire more education, trade in an old car for a new one, or buy an ice cream cone. Deciding what to do about greenhouse gas emissions is no different.
Just as the appropriate number of ice cream cones to be consumed in 2050 depends on the costs of producing ice cream cones and the benefits to consumers of eating them, the appropriate quantity of greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 depends on the costs and the benefits associated with those emissions. It's this cost-benefit calculation that matters when deciding whether emissions should go up or down.
What the costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emissions are today, or will be in 2050, depend on countless pieces of information beyond the reach of government central planners. It makes no more sense, therefore, for the federal government to set a quantity target for greenhouse gas emissions in 2050, than it does for it to set a target for the number of ice cream cones that should be consumed in 2050.
Importantly, while emissions targets, like ice cream cone targets, do not make sense as a matter of economic principle, some targets are more harmful than others. In the case of net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the federal government's own numbers, hitting the target involves cutting carbon emissions even when the costs of doing so exceed the benefits.
To reach the net-zero target, the federal government is ratcheting the carbon tax up to $170 per tonne by 2030, and imposing other policies — for example, hundreds of millions of dollars in electric vehicle subsidies — that are even more costly.
A 2017 study from the Montreal Economic Institute estimated, very conservatively, that electric vehicle subsidies in Quebec cost taxpayers $288 or more per tonne of emissions reduced. Another estimate, from the Ecofiscal Commission, came in even higher.
By contrast, even according to Environment and Climate Change Canada's own estimates (which are likely far too high), the environmental cost of greenhouse gas emissions is around $50 per tonne today. The figure rises over time, but even in 2030 will be nowhere near the $170 level the federal government has announced.
In other words, not only has the federal government thrown good policy out the window by setting an emissions target in the first place; it has also chosen a target that, according to its own policies and estimates of the environmental costs of emissions, is not worth achieving. The federal government's climate plan, clearly, is economic nonsense.
As a general rule of economics, and a practical rule by which everybody operates in their daily lives, an activity is worthwhile if its expected benefits are higher than its expected costs.
Canada may already be carbon neutral, so why are we keeping it a secret?
A conservative estimate of Canada's existing carbon-absorption capacity indicates we could already be absorbing 20 to 30% more CO2 than we emit
https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carbon-neutral-so-why-are-we-keeping-it-a-secret
Here's a seemingly simple question: Is Canada a net carbon dioxide emitter? You would think so from reading news headlines. We've earned the scorn of environmentalists, NGOs, and media outlets galore, labelled with such juvenile epithets as "fossil of the year" or "corrupt petro-state."
Sadly, lost in all the hyperbole is the actual science. There is nothing quantitative about the vague idea that, as a "progressive nation," Canada should be expected to "do more" to fight climate change.
But therein lies the rub; Canada is poised to immediately do more to combat climate change than almost every other country in the world. How, you ask? Well, by doing more of the same. If that sounds ludicrous, let me explain.
Most Canadians would agree that our response to climate change needs to be scientifically sound, environmentally sustainable and financially realistic, as well as global, comprehensive, and holistic. Right now, our approach is none of those things; the public discourse is driven by a myopic, ideological obsession with carbon emissions alone. What else is there, you ask?
The answer comes from the most recent report (2014) of the Global Carbon Project, which states that global human-induced CO2 emissions were 36 billion tonnes. Of that, 36 per cent stayed in the atmosphere, 27 per cent was absorbed by water, and 37 per cent was absorbed by land.
That's right — absorbed by land! Not all CO2 emitted by people stays in the atmosphere. Much of it returns to the earth, mainly through the carbon absorption and sequestration power of plants, soil, and trees.
A conservative estimate of Canada's existing carbon-absorption capacity, based on land area and the global carbon-absorption average, indicates that Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit. Using the same calculation, the "Big Four" polluters of China, the U.S., the European Union, and India, which together are responsible for a whopping 60 per cent of global CO2 emissions, release 10 times more CO2 than their combined land area absorbs. Canada doesn't seem very dirty now, do we?
So when was the last time you heard a Canadian political leader, let alone the media, talk about our carbon-absorption capacity? Probably never, because we are currently ignoring that side of the equation, for a couple reasons.
We should seek out new alliances with other large, forested countries, starting with Russia, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Indonesia, and Peru. These countries, and many others, will all benefit from a new approach that rewards carbon absorption, and would bring diverse cultural voices and political interests together around this important climate issue.
Imagine the kind of eco-friendly economy that DRC Congo, Peru, or any other forested country could build by generating carbon credits to sell to Dubai, Singapore, or Luxembourg. Countries on the receiving end of cap-and-trade credits could build entire green economies around conservation, not consumption. Financial pressure to deforest would subside, replaced with incentives to manage our forests and preserve their attendant ecosystems. As a bonus, Canada and its new, green allies could label all our exports as "proudly carbon neutral."
Imagine, too, the possibilities for indigenous people all over the world to leverage their traditional role as protectors of the environment into a feasible economic opportunity. We are constantly looking for ways to bridge gaps between modern society and native cultures, so why not empower indigenous people to take on a leadership role as stewards of the world's precious forests?
Canada must successfully lobby for a world market on carbon-offset credits, where CO2 absorption is part of the equation. The potential impact is huge. Based on the aforementioned estimates of our absorption capacity, and a conservative CO2 price of $40/tonne, Canada stands to gain $10 billion per year. Think about it; we might currently be giving away $10 billion to the rest of the world, including the Big Four polluters, every year, for free.
$10 billion dollars in our coffers could go a long way toward balancing the budget, investing in sustainable energy, providing social programs, incentivizing innovation, renewing infrastructure, and generally improving Canada's fortunes. So when Prime Minister Trudeau meets with provincial, territorial, and indigenous leaders, he owes it to Canadians to put this issue on the agenda. The only thing we're really asking is for our leaders to consider the entire carbon cycle, from emission to absorption, in order to get the "balance sheet" right. Then, and only then, can our best minds get to work on making a climate plan that is fair for all Canadians, and that reflects our true contribution to the world's climate solution.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/142252201_967976933731968_4909361337738562638_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=2&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=znVdAfsI-oAAX_VE3R0&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=34e3791603406e5d27c28e8387368f42&oe=60320B40)
Quote from: HermanCanada may already be carbon neutral, so why are we keeping it a secret?
A conservative estimate of Canada's existing carbon-absorption capacity indicates we could already be absorbing 20 to 30% more CO2 than we emit
https://financialpost.com/opinion/canada-may-already-be-carbon-neutral-so-why-are-we-keeping-it-a-secret
Here's a seemingly simple question: Is Canada a net carbon dioxide emitter? You would think so from reading news headlines. We've earned the scorn of environmentalists, NGOs, and media outlets galore, labelled with such juvenile epithets as "fossil of the year" or "corrupt petro-state."
Sadly, lost in all the hyperbole is the actual science. There is nothing quantitative about the vague idea that, as a "progressive nation," Canada should be expected to "do more" to fight climate change.
But therein lies the rub; Canada is poised to immediately do more to combat climate change than almost every other country in the world. How, you ask? Well, by doing more of the same. If that sounds ludicrous, let me explain.
Most Canadians would agree that our response to climate change needs to be scientifically sound, environmentally sustainable and financially realistic, as well as global, comprehensive, and holistic. Right now, our approach is none of those things; the public discourse is driven by a myopic, ideological obsession with carbon emissions alone. What else is there, you ask?
The answer comes from the most recent report (2014) of the Global Carbon Project, which states that global human-induced CO2 emissions were 36 billion tonnes. Of that, 36 per cent stayed in the atmosphere, 27 per cent was absorbed by water, and 37 per cent was absorbed by land.
That's right — absorbed by land! Not all CO2 emitted by people stays in the atmosphere. Much of it returns to the earth, mainly through the carbon absorption and sequestration power of plants, soil, and trees.
A conservative estimate of Canada's existing carbon-absorption capacity, based on land area and the global carbon-absorption average, indicates that Canada could already be absorbing 20 to 30 per cent more CO2 than we emit. Using the same calculation, the "Big Four" polluters of China, the U.S., the European Union, and India, which together are responsible for a whopping 60 per cent of global CO2 emissions, release 10 times more CO2 than their combined land area absorbs. Canada doesn't seem very dirty now, do we?
So when was the last time you heard a Canadian political leader, let alone the media, talk about our carbon-absorption capacity? Probably never, because we are currently ignoring that side of the equation, for a couple reasons.
We should seek out new alliances with other large, forested countries, starting with Russia, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Argentina, Indonesia, and Peru. These countries, and many others, will all benefit from a new approach that rewards carbon absorption, and would bring diverse cultural voices and political interests together around this important climate issue.
Imagine the kind of eco-friendly economy that DRC Congo, Peru, or any other forested country could build by generating carbon credits to sell to Dubai, Singapore, or Luxembourg. Countries on the receiving end of cap-and-trade credits could build entire green economies around conservation, not consumption. Financial pressure to deforest would subside, replaced with incentives to manage our forests and preserve their attendant ecosystems. As a bonus, Canada and its new, green allies could label all our exports as "proudly carbon neutral."
Imagine, too, the possibilities for indigenous people all over the world to leverage their traditional role as protectors of the environment into a feasible economic opportunity. We are constantly looking for ways to bridge gaps between modern society and native cultures, so why not empower indigenous people to take on a leadership role as stewards of the world's precious forests?
Canada must successfully lobby for a world market on carbon-offset credits, where CO2 absorption is part of the equation. The potential impact is huge. Based on the aforementioned estimates of our absorption capacity, and a conservative CO2 price of $40/tonne, Canada stands to gain $10 billion per year. Think about it; we might currently be giving away $10 billion to the rest of the world, including the Big Four polluters, every year, for free.
$10 billion dollars in our coffers could go a long way toward balancing the budget, investing in sustainable energy, providing social programs, incentivizing innovation, renewing infrastructure, and generally improving Canada's fortunes. So when Prime Minister Trudeau meets with provincial, territorial, and indigenous leaders, he owes it to Canadians to put this issue on the agenda. The only thing we're really asking is for our leaders to consider the entire carbon cycle, from emission to absorption, in order to get the "balance sheet" right. Then, and only then, can our best minds get to work on making a climate plan that is fair for all Canadians, and that reflects our true contribution to the world's climate solution.
Somebody forward this to Trudeau.
Quote from: Herman(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/142252201_967976933731968_4909361337738562638_n.jpg?_nc_cat=104&ccb=2&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=znVdAfsI-oAAX_VE3R0&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=34e3791603406e5d27c28e8387368f42&oe=60320B40)
He never listens to anyone who disagrees with him.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/141560802_10157822290725869_2303964275290684852_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=2&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=54Z5jVGSXSEAX8e-TLJ&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=b26283a00b41ded1e47f15ca0c8acd13&oe=603327CC)
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/139857996_10158936880101221_2236594710716895412_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&ccb=2&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=ZuEIrguaGqoAX_FnsJa&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=e0bd258e0fc03a02fb1a3a923abf073a&oe=6032D7E7)
The Canadian Energy Research Institute calculates the Clean Fuel Standard(CFS) will cost families an extra $1,400 per year.
Combined with the hike to the carbon tax it's a significant increase to the costs of heat and transportation fuels, so it's really not just on the energy sector, it will be across the country on anything that gets transported or heated. We are a cold weather, very spread-out industrial country – pretty much everywhere you look there will be increased costs, and that will of course partly get taken out of profits and partly get passed on to consumers. When you hear about rebates for individuals, rarely are all these increased costs getting passed down factored into that.
The CFS will result in 30,000 job losses nationally, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
Like as Though We Didn't See This One Coming ac_biggrin
Kerry Blames Frigid Temperatures and Record Cold on Global Warming
https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1362850893708857350
.
I thiught AOC would be the first person in Washington to a pants on fire accusation of global warming.
riduculous
Will Mr Kerry lead by example and sell all his mansions and move into a one room solar powered cabin?
(https://scontent.fyxe2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/157679494_10157927575655869_4917858057801737930_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=BIXxaD84gvAAX_wDEZs&_nc_oc=AQm6CcUCJEe_IvF4c7OPVU0xp_ay9i14Dskz20Amag1PrSk1PdvwRRS-fOLsbFjTYBY&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxe2-1.fna&oh=19d1a90c3980fca123cd58d1758a82b5&oe=607215F3)
Net-zero won't cure the climate but it may kill Canada
It would cost upwards of a trillion dollars to expand nuclear-generated electricity, which is the only plausible, viable net-zero option
Last November the federal government introduced its Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, which establishes our pathway towards reaching that goal by 2050. But don't hold your breath. It took a full decade to build 12.5 km of electric light rail in Ottawa, arguably the largest green-energy project in Canada over that time. To electrify the rest of Canada's transportation sector in three decades, as well as our industrial and domestic energy sectors, the new Act starts by convening an advisory board to consult with Canadians on the best pathways to this target . . . tick tock.
Natural Resources Canada says Canadian electrical use is 600 terawatt hours (TWh or trillion watt-hours) annually. What few recognize, however, is that we are already over 80 per cent green with respect to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This is primarily due to our abundance of hydro and nuclear power. Nuclear is arguably our greenest source of electricity. It produces essentially no CO2; it has by far the best safety record; and we know how to safely manage nuclear waste. As for wind, despite massive subsidies it currently contributes only four per cent to our grid. It remains intermittent, off-peak and low-grade electricity, only marginally better than solar.
The challenge for net-zero, however, is not greening the remaining 20 per cent of the 600 TWh of electricity that we use. It is the 9700 petaJoules (equivalent to two billion barrels) of oil and gas we burn every year for transportation, industry and heating. Converting this to electrical would require 2000 TWh per year — more than three times our current annual use of electricity. Quite apart from the challenge of electrifying transportation, industry and heating, is a three-fold increase in our green electrical generating capacity even possible? The government's "Mid-Century Long-Term Low-Greenhouse Gas Development Strategy" (Mid-Century Strategy) suggests it is, and the Accountability Act will try to enforce it. But let's take a closer look.
Our hydroelectric capacity has largely been exploited, although the Fraser and Mackenzie rivers remain untamed. Battles over land claims, environmental impacts and daunting costs make B.C.'s Site C and Newfoundland and Labrador's Muskrat Falls perhaps the last projects for big hydro in Canada. Yet the Mid-Century Strategy assumes we double our hydro with 50 to 80 new projects on the scale of Site C.
How about big wind? Germany favours wind but has learned that its inconsistency requires baseload backup with coal-fired thermal plants. In Canada, net-zero with wind would require upwards of 300,000 turbines, or 50 times more than we have now, plus an extensive distribution network for this decentralized system, plus an equivalent thermal generation backup (unless we resolve to drive and heat our homes only on windy days).
Producing this vast number of wind turbines would require considerable quantities of rare-earth metals for the generators. For net-zero wind, we would need the entire global production of neodymium for the next 15 years — for the next 170 years for dysprosium. As it is, the Mid-Century Strategy will complement doubling hydro with up to 100,000 turbines, which will still require five years' global supply of neodymium. Conclusion? Renewables clearly cannot play a significant role in our move towards net-zero.
Offsets by planting trees (also planned in the Mid-Century Strategy) are an illusion once one looks closely at the carbon cycle. The only time Earth experienced a notable reduction in atmospheric CO2 by growing trees was during the Carboniferous Period between 350 and 300 million years ago, when our coal resources were formed. Conversely, the slashing of our forests over the past 200 years and today in the Amazon basin has had no measurable impact on atmospheric CO2.
The large-scale capture and storage of CO2 is only possible (though it remains improbable) for large thermal plants, which of course won't be a feature of our net-zero electrical grid. Capturing emissions from tailpipes or our gas-warmed homes is now impossible and seems likely to remain so.
This leaves nuclear as the only viable option for any plausible net-zero plan. Canada has 19 operating nuclear reactors at four stations, producing 15 per cent of our electricity. Net-zero would require an expansion of this fleet to over 300, operated in about 40 new nuclear power generating stations, and costing upwards of a trillion dollars.
What would we get for these efforts? Net-zero would have no measurable impact on climate, as Canada emits only about 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gases. The developing world, which emits most, is manifestly more interested in growth, not carbon reductions. Moreover, recent science shows that CO2 is not a significant driver of climate. Even the UN science reports state that the warming experienced up to 1980 was natural, that only part of warming through the 1990s was anthropogenic, and that over the past two decades warming has paused. It also shows no link to extreme weather.
The only sensible option for Canada is to invest our environmental goodwill and dollars where they can have a positive effect, such as for sustainable agriculture, biodiversity and healthy waterways — and into adapting to climate change, for the climate will indeed change. It always has.
Ian Clark is a professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Ottawa.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-net-zero-wont-cure-the-climate-but-it-may-kill-canada
Justine's efforts to destroy the middle class by sending resource jobs overseas and making life unaffordable for average Canadians are all in vain while China is only interested in energy security.
China's energy actions speak louder than its climate pledges
https://financialpost.com/opinion/patricia-adams-chinas-energy-actions-speak-louder-than-its-climate-pledges
China is hell-bent on increasing CO2 emissions to meet its often-stated strategic objective of world domination
China's Achilles heel is its dependence on foreign sources for its oil and gas, a vulnerability that the country's super-planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, admitted last year for the first time. In its 2020 annual report to China's official decision-making body, the National People's Congress, it barely mentioned climate change as China instead pledged to "ensure energy security" to "improve our contingency plans in response to major changes in supply and demand at home and abroad."
This year's report, delivered to the People's Congress on March 5, again gave short shrift to climate change — promising only what the West's environmental NGOs decried as "baby steps" towards decarbonization. The focus instead was on the priority of securing energy supplies and China's consequent determination to "promote the development of energy transportation routes, strengthen our energy reserve capacity, and improve transportation services. We will refine energy contingency plans, improve our risk and emergency response capabilities, and strengthen energy security and resilience." The planning and reform commission concluded by promising to "boost oil and gas exploration and development" and "systematically increase our ability to ensure the supply of coal."
China's dependence on foreigners for its oil has grown steadily. In 2008, its dependence on foreign oil reached 50 per cent for the first time. Last year, it was 73 per cent. The trend is especially worrying to China because, while its oil imports increased by 7.3 per cent last year, its domestic production inched up a mere 1.6 per cent. Despite its drive for self-sufficiency, Chinese production since 2017 has stalled at 3.8-3.9 million barrels per day.
Of course, China's most secure form of energy is coal, which in 2019 accounted for 58 per cent of its total energy consumption. That isn't about to stop — certainly not because of hand-wringing in the West about how it imperils the planet. Last year, China's 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power was more than three times the new capacity built in the rest of the world, and another 247 gigawatts of coal power is being planned or developed. China's proposed additional coal plants represent 73.5 gigawatts of power, five times what is proposed in the rest of the world combined.
Developing the fossil fuels that China needs to meet its strategic economic and military goals is a top priority. Climate-change targets just don't figure in China's grand schemes, except for propaganda purposes or to extract subsidies or trade concessions.
President Xi may well promise to do more on climate change in exchange for the West turning a blind eye to its treatment of Uighurs or relaxing tariffs on its exports, and the West may well accept his promises, knowing full well they won't be kept, so as to maintain the pretence of progress on the climate-change file. Climate change is a charade both sides act out for their mutual benefit.
Patricia Adams, an economist, is executive director of Toronto-based Probe International.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.18169-9/17361708_1148721848587026_4059256578170326299_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=cdbe9c&_nc_ohc=WCuHKcfgALYAX_IMU5Y&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=0dabcd53c61fa5aa1d83577406f87e76&oe=60C61845)
A dose of reality for anti oil dreamers.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/if-you-weaken-the-oil-industry-who-will-build-the-complex-energy-facilities-of-the-future/vi-BB1gToa0?ocid=mailsignout
The hollowing out of our resource sector and middle class prosperity continues. Sure, China and India should buy thermal coal from Indonesia. Their environmental standards are superior to our own. :crazy:
Canada will not approve new thermal coal mining projects
Canada will not approve new thermal coal mining projects or plans to expand existing mines because of the potential for environmental damage, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Friday.
"The government considers that these projects are likely to cause unacceptable environmental effects within federal jurisdiction and are not aligned with Canada's domestic and international climate change commitments," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canada-will-not-approve-new-thermal-coal-mining-projects-environment-minister-2021-06-11/
Quote from: seoulbroThe hollowing out of our resource sector and middle class prosperity continues. Sure, China and India should buy thermal coal from Indonesia. Their environmental standards are superior to our own. :crazy:
Canada will not approve new thermal coal mining projects
Canada will not approve new thermal coal mining projects or plans to expand existing mines because of the potential for environmental damage, Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Friday.
"The government considers that these projects are likely to cause unacceptable environmental effects within federal jurisdiction and are not aligned with Canada's domestic and international climate change commitments," he said.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/canada-will-not-approve-new-thermal-coal-mining-projects-environment-minister-2021-06-11/
Not all mines require federal approval.
Just weeks ago a majority of Swiss voters said "no" to their government's law to reduce C02 emissions and meet 2015 Paris Accord climate objectives. The Swiss government must now comply with the will of the people instead of the bullying from the Davos crowd and the UN.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pesticides-ban-terrorism-law-covid-19-aid-2021-06-12/
Quote from: HermanJust weeks ago a majority of Swiss voters said "no" to their government's law to reduce C02 emissions and meet 2015 Paris Accord climate objectives. The Swiss government must now comply with the will of the people instead of the bullying from the Davos crowd and the UN.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pesticides-ban-terrorism-law-covid-19-aid-2021-06-12/
Wouldn't it be great if Canadians decided what is best for their own lives instead of elitist globalist progs like Switzerland does.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9779781/Climate-change-Just-25-mega-cities-emit-52-cent-worlds-urban-greenhouse-gases.html
Just 25 'Mega-Cities' Produce 52 Per Cent Of The World's Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions — And 23 Of Them Are In China
Just over half of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions come from just 25 mega-cities — 23 of which are located in China — a study has reported.
The cities that emit the most greenhouse gases included Handan, Suzhou, Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin in China — but also Tokyo, Japan, and Moscow, Russia.
...... At present, China is running a whopping 1,058 coal-fired power plants — equal to more than half of the world's entire capacity.
.....China's President Xi Jinping has pledged to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement. [YA, RIGHT!! :001_rolleyes: ]
Quote from: cchttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9779781/Climate-change-Just-25-mega-cities-emit-52-cent-worlds-urban-greenhouse-gases.html
Just 25 'Mega-Cities' Produce 52 Per Cent Of The World's Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions — And 23 Of Them Are In China
Just over half of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions come from just 25 mega-cities — 23 of which are located in China — a study has reported.
The cities that emit the most greenhouse gases included Handan, Suzhou, Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin in China — but also Tokyo, Japan, and Moscow, Russia.
...... At present, China is running a whopping 1,058 coal-fired power plants — equal to more than half of the world's entire capacity.
.....China's President Xi Jinping has pledged to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement. [YA, RIGHT!! :001_rolleyes: ]
Cool post ceec. And the article says seventy percent of GHG come from cities, so those twenty five cities alone account for thirty five percent of global emissions. Thinks about that when our pointless carbon tax goes up every frickin,year.
Quote from: cchttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9779781/Climate-change-Just-25-mega-cities-emit-52-cent-worlds-urban-greenhouse-gases.html
Just 25 'Mega-Cities' Produce 52 Per Cent Of The World's Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions — And 23 Of Them Are In China
Just over half of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions come from just 25 mega-cities — 23 of which are located in China — a study has reported.
The cities that emit the most greenhouse gases included Handan, Suzhou, Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin in China — but also Tokyo, Japan, and Moscow, Russia.
...... At present, China is running a whopping 1,058 coal-fired power plants — equal to more than half of the world's entire capacity.
.....China's President Xi Jinping has pledged to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement. [YA, RIGHT!! :001_rolleyes: ]
Canadian cities are wasting billions of dollars to make their cities the greenest while Chinese cities spew record amounts of C02. That is so stupid.
Quote from: cchttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9779781/Climate-change-Just-25-mega-cities-emit-52-cent-worlds-urban-greenhouse-gases.html
Just 25 'Mega-Cities' Produce 52 Per Cent Of The World's Urban Greenhouse Gas Emissions — And 23 Of Them Are In China
Just over half of the world's urban greenhouse gas emissions come from just 25 mega-cities — 23 of which are located in China — a study has reported.
The cities that emit the most greenhouse gases included Handan, Suzhou, Dalian, Beijing and Tianjin in China — but also Tokyo, Japan, and Moscow, Russia.
...... At present, China is running a whopping 1,058 coal-fired power plants — equal to more than half of the world's entire capacity.
.....China's President Xi Jinping has pledged to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 — part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement. [YA, RIGHT!! ]
Canadian families are being forced to sacrifice to save the planet from burning up while developing countries continue to increase emissions......it doesn't make sense.
Trudeau's climate change plan of making everything more expensive for average Canadians and killing large industrial resource projects and the jobs and revenue they produce have had the affect of increasing C02 emissions. If we had made exporting LNG a priority, we wouldn't need punitive taxes and we would have good jobs and money for services.
A Practical Path to Lowering Canada's Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The zeal with which many politicians push environmental policies seems in almost inverse proportion to their practicality. The more expensive, unrealistic, utopian and unachievable, the more it animates them. Justin Trudeau and his key ministers are the apotheosis of this tendency, appearing determined to wreck western Canada's economy and ruin the prosperity of millions in an impossible quest to "save the planet." The economic carnage and impoverishment they'll wreak seems almost like a feature rather than a bug, worn like a national hairshirt or display of religious penance. Gwyn Morgan, however, believes it's still possible to craft a Canadian emissions reduction strategy based on facts and economic opportunity rather than ideology and fantasy. Canada, he explains, "can do good by doing well" – reducing global emissions by exporting to eager markets around the world a Canadian natural resource that we have in practically unlimited supply.
At last month's G7 meeting, the leaders of seven of the world's most advanced economies agreed to a greenhouse gas emissions target of "net zero" by 2050. That would require largely phasing out the use of fossil fuels. But how? The common reply is "putting a price on carbon," i.e., imposing carbon taxes everywhere. But unless there's a viable and cost-effective alternative, taxing something people can't do without only makes them poorer.
Policy makers seem to believe that "green power" – mainly meaning wind and solar – is the answer. But the World Energy Data website shows that, after several decades of hype and many hundreds of billions of dollars spent, wind and solar contribute only 3.3 percent of world energy supply. This may come as a surprise, since the richly subsidized wind and solar industries claim a much higher figure for their energy-generating "capacity." This is defined as the electricity that would be generated if the system in question operated continuously at full-speed without any downtime. For solar and wind, this would mean the sun shining all the time and the wind blowing everywhere. In other words, it's a purely theoretical claim, because it's hard to imagine those conditions existing at any time, let alone during cold, calm and dark winter nights –
when the power is most needed.
Ontario power consumers learned this first-hand after policies implemented under the previous Liberal government that subsidized the installation of thousands of costly windmills and solar panel arrays sent the province's electricity price from one of the lowest in North America to one of the highest. In addition to imposing needless costs on millions of ratepayers, this approach drove many of the province's manufacturers south to the welcoming arms of business-friendly, lower-tax U.S. states like Georgia and the Carolinas. Ontario's then-Liberal government had no excuses, because a similar mix of policies had been tried in Spain and Germany and had failed just as spectacularly.
It's clear that 'net zero' is scientifically impossible for the world as a whole, and could only be achieved in selected countries at a staggering cost that would impoverish everyone except the wealthiest and most privileged elites. Still, a substantial emissions reduction is achievable.
Given these realities, it's incredible to think that G7 leaders would agree to base the energy security of their citizens on a plan that defies the irrefutable laws of physics.
What about other alternatives to replace the 84 percent of energy supplied by fossil fuels? World Energy Data lists the following: hydroelectricity contributes 6.4 percent to world energy supply, nuclear 4.3 percent, geothermal and biofuels 1.7 percent. Hydro is a zero-emissions energy source with a long track record, but dams have already been built on many of the world's most suitable rivers and any new dam-building proposal generates massive opposition. (There's even a campaign in the U.S. to remove existing dams – and several have already been torn down.) Nuclear is also a zero-emissions energy source, and it has huge growth potential, but new plants are very capital-intensive and often face strong public opposition. Lastly, geothermal and biofuels are marginal producers that would require years of exponential growth to become meaningful contributors. So it's hard to see how any of those sources could have a material impact in the foreseeable future.
Besides the laws of physics, G7 leaders face another stark reality. The U.S., UK and the 27 EU member countries combined produce just 27 percent of global emissions. Most of the other 73 percent comes from Asian countries. Emissions from China alone equal the G7's 27 percent. And despite President Xi's virtuous green rhetoric, his country built three times more emissions-intensive coal-fired electrical capacity in 2020 than the rest of the world combined. China's energy consumption – and emissions – are going up, as are India's and those of many other developing countries. Meanwhile, based on a green energy fantasy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his G7 counterparts plan to further hobble their own economies, which are already uncompetitive with China.
Should we give up hope of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? It's clear that "net zero" is scientifically impossible for the world as a whole, and could only be achieved in selected countries at a staggering cost that would impoverish everyone except the wealthiest and most privileged elites. Still, a substantial reduction is achievable. And the biggest opportunity for cost-effective, practical emissions reduction lies in a fossil fuel in practically unlimited supply.
That fossil fuel is natural gas.
Burning coal to generate electricity currently causes 40 percent of global emissions from fossil fuel sources. Converting a coal-fired plant to natural gas reduces its emissions by almost 50 percent. Canada's utilities have already shut down the large majority of their coal-fired units, and the remaining plants' days are numbered. (Just on Monday, Transalta Corp. announced that it had completed the coal-to-gas conversion of the second of its three remaining coal-fired generating stations in Alberta.) But there is vast opportunity to do much more of this globally. We can, as the saying goes, "do good by doing well" by exporting our bountiful natural gas supplies in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to replace coal.
The $40 billion LNG Canada project now under construction in Kitimat, B.C. will reduce Chinese CO2emissions by 60-90 million tonnes per year, the equivalent of shutting down 20-40 coal-fuelled power plants. That's also the equivalent of taking some 80 percent of the cars off Canadian roads. Canada has sufficient gas supplies for many more LNG projects. A decade ago, there were 20 projects proposed. But Canada's Byzantine regulatory approval process, which has earned our country a "can't get anything done" reputation, saw project sponsors giving up after spending billions in preparation and regulatory costs.
There's also opportunity for natural gas to replace some use of crude oil. Oil used for ground transportation and shipping contributes approximately one-third of global emissions. Converting vehicles and ships to natural gas cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25 percent. And that's already happening. Worldwide there are more than 20 million natural gas-fuelled (NGV) passenger vehicles, heavy trucks and buses. Paradoxically, few of those are in the very G7 countries that vow to achieve "net zero." Asia, led by China, India and Pakistan, accounts for the majority of NGVs, no doubt motivated mainly by reducing dangerous urban smog rather than concern about greenhouse gas emissions. Iran has the world's second-largest NGV fleet, which seems surprising until one considers that switching vehicles to less expensive natural gas allows Iran to export more highly profitable crude oil.
Rather than ravaging the living standards of Canadians with carbon taxes and wasting public funds subsidizing green power, here are two things Canada can and should do to reduce both national and global emissions.
First, commission an LNG export task force made up of government, industry and directly affected populations (including First Nations) to streamline the LNG export project approval process. This will make investment in LNG more attractive and help lure back international energy companies and investors. Second, ditch Trudeau's scheme to require all vehicles sold in Canada to be electric by 2035 and instead support the immediate creation of a nationwide NGV filling station network, setting NGV fuel taxes at zero. This will enable the use of NGVs to flourish in Canada.
It's time for a Canadian emissions reduction strategy based on facts and economic opportunity rather than ideology and fantasy.
https://c2cjournal.ca/2021/07/a-practical-path-to-lowering-canadas-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
(https://c2cjournal.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Inset3-5-768x504.png)
Wealthy prog elitist scum like Naomi Klein will have control over your life and livelihood. She and Avi never had to work a day in their privileged lives. They won't let you earn a decent living.
Are Canadians ready to transition to a lower standard of living?
https://www.resourceworks.com/just-transitions?fbclid=IwAR1Y9PqBg2lWIIpP-VAjagqiZ6n2-len2bVxF_T6PTWwrWHssver9HxacnU
With the federal government now talking about "just transition" as a legislative and policy framework for re-doing the Canadian economy, anyone with a point of view on this topic should make sure they secure an invitation to an upcoming advisory process on net-zero implementation.
Although the term just transition in itself isn't particularly alarming, personally I think it makes more sense to talk about transforming our energy systems. Transition seems to imply that we must jettison the "old" economy. Since doing so also means discarding the basis of Canadian prosperity, that might not be such a good idea. Moreover, since the term just transition itself originated from the Green New Deal movement that regards capitalism as a cancer, it's not too hard to guess at the political considerations present in the minds of those who cook this stuff up.
The fact is that Canada is a small trading economy that relies for its prosperity on access to world markets for its export goods. If we're talking about transitioning away from this – which is exactly what "just transition" campaigners like Naomi Klein have for years been insisting we do – then we also need to frankly acknowledge what this transition will mean for those who must (unlike Klein and her husband after their recent uncompeted appointments to prestigious UBC sinecures) toil in the marketplace to earn a living.
Economist Don Wright recently noted that Canada is trapped in a low-wage, low-productivity model when instead we require policy that fosters high-wage, high-productivity outcomes. States Wright, in his article Rhetoric vs. Results: Shaping Policy to Benefit Canada's Middle Class for the Public Policy Forum, "Governments need to commit fundamentally to raising the standard of living of the broad middle class as a core, permanent objective."
With the phrase "just transition", drawn directly from hard left-wing eco-socialist movements, being installed as the centrepiece of Canadian economic policy, should we be concerned?
In the immortal words of Geena Davis in The Fly: "Be afraid, be very afraid."
Canada's standard of living ultimately depends on its ability to sell goods and services to the rest of the world (or replace goods and services that it purchases from the rest of the world, at competitive prices). From iPhones to orange juice, vaccines to industrial robots, there's just no way we can live as we do without trade. It turns out that half of our economy is drawn from natural resources, according to Wright. This pie chart shows the country's composition of goods and services exports in 2019:
(https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/resourceworks/pages/2608/attachments/original/1626968099/Figure-4-DW-2.png?1626968099)
https://www.resourceworks.com/just-transitions?fbclid=IwAR1Y9PqBg2lWIIpP-VAjagqiZ6n2-len2bVxF_T6PTWwrWHssver9HxacnU
It's not just that we export a lot of natural resource goods. The impact of the jobs-intensive resource economy is such that natural resources compose 50 per cent of the total base economy in British Columbia, according to a recent economic study.
So influential are natural resource exports, says Wright, that a Statistics Canada study concluded that Canadians were 18 percent richer in 2010 than they would have been in the absence of their natural resource industries.
Since the "just transition" mantra is that all natural resource activities are destructive, irremediable, and must be opposed, where does that leave Canada in economic terms?
With diddly squat, it appears.
Here is what Wright – a most level-headed and temperate of analysts – has to say about this question:
Notwithstanding the undeniable contribution natural resource industries make to a higher standard of living, there is currently considerable discourse about the need to migrate away from this part of Canada's economic base to one based on the new, emerging, green, intangible economy. The underlying model for this transition is explicitly or implicitly a version of the "Silicon Valley Model" — that Canada should invest in creating the technology ecosystems that will allow it to build its own Googles, Amazons and Microsofts.
This raises two important questions, says Wright:
How can this be done in the context of the need to raise the Canadian standard of living?
How does Canada plan to replace those higher-than-average-paying jobs and the significant net government revenue it will forgo if it shrinks the resource sector?
The answer, it seems, is that we don't need to worry about this because the pandemic has taught us that money is free, and Canada no longer has to worry about government deficits and debt levels. As a result, we can, in Wright's words, "just buy (i.e., subsidize) whatever type of economy it wants."
Wright advises us not to fall for this way of thinking. Money is not really free. Eventually, the piper will have to be paid.
Outside of the major concentrations of population in the southwest corner of British Columbia, southern Ontario and Greater Montreal there is relatively little hope for a significant economic base save for what is offered by the natural-resource sector.
Wright is hardly an advocate of brawn over brains, in fact he places innovation at the centre of what Canada must do to solve the riddle of sustainability and economic success. He credits author Dan Breznitz for these three key insights:
Don't be enchanted with the bright, shiny objects of the day;
Build on what you have, and grow, stretch and evolve from it through a clear-headed and rigorous approach to innovation; and
Pay particular attention to whether the benefits of innovation are going to be broadly shared across the population.
To me, this is a description of transformation rather than transition. Wright says that Canada will be making a major mistake, with profoundly negative consequences for its standard of living, "if it prematurely sunsets what has historically been its major comparative advantage — its natural resource-based industries."
In the Canadian context, "natural resource industries and emerging green industries should be viewed as complements to, rather than substitutes for, each other. Developing new technologies to reduce carbon emissions in resource industries can provide the base upon which emerging green technology solutions can be developed and proven out, and then sold to other industries and other countries."
Wright urges that Canada builds on the natural resource sector "through a no-illusions innovation strategy that will stretch and evolve those industries and use them as a platform to support the growth of its 'intangible economy.'"
Coming full circle back to this use of the term "just transition", you should be able to see why I share Wright's concerns. We need to reject the thinking that it's time to trade away our prosperity for the shiny objects offered by the coalition of eco-socialists, contrarians, anarchists, and pitchmen who have so effectively captured the imagination of the federal government.
Most Canadians don't agree with Naomi Klein.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/215962607_3931706070288576_690739190279631613_n.png?_nc_cat=101&ccb=1-3&_nc_sid=1cb0a9&_nc_ohc=4QpDmApkyssAX-5LDGi&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=1b327558da6b4f64c11b5bee2a58ea56&oe=61204E44)
How the hell does a journalist wannabe like Naomi Klein deciding bread and butter issues for millions of Canadians.
Muskrat Falls epitomizes the boondoggles that are to come with Trudeau's net zero emissions targets.
Canada's first 'net-zero' carbon fiasco
Muskrat Falls will not be the last green financial catastrophe
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's pre-election bailout of Newfoundland and Labrador's Muskrat Follies hydroelectric mega-boondoggle was announced last week with preposterous "build-back-better" claims about creating "a healthier and more prosperous future" that will help achieve a clean and decarbonized energy system for the province and the country.
Commentary on the bailout, announced by Trudeau jointly in an elbow-bump with Premier Andrew Furey, was enthusiastically negative, with most observers rightly denouncing the $5.2 billion in new federal aid as a gross demonstration of the ability of power-seeking politicians to turn past political scams into great achievements. The $13-billion+ Muskrat Falls generating station and associated under-sea and land-based transmission systems has been a mismanaged corporate and political boondoggle from its conception more than a decade ago.
But portraying Muskrat Falls as just another misguided megaproject plagued by unexpected cost-overruns, mismanagement, scheming executives and meddling politicians misses the overarching issue. Muskrat Falls should be seen for what it is: a major demonstration project that reveals the financial follies, to farcical levels, behind the net-zero carbon crusade.
Given these allegedly solid green credentials, one might expect to see big-name ESG-seeking financial houses rushing to fund Muskrat "green bonds" at below market rates to support the project's contribution to decarbonization and the global net-zero 2050 campaign. Not happening. Bloomberg reports that Muskrat's big green debt actually forced Newfoundland and Labrador to pay a 38-basis-point premium when it issued bonds in April.
Another irony is the source of some of the funds Trudeau is directing to the Newfoundland bailout. A big portion will come from the federal government's yearly net revenue from the Hibernia offshore oil project. Instead of curbing carbon emissions, Muskrat depends on more carbon cash to proceed.
And more carbon emissions will be needed to keep the province green and clean. In January, federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson gave three global energy giants — Chevron, Equinor and BHP — a green light to drill for fossil fuels off the coast of Newfoundland. Wilkinson, who championed net-zero federal legislation through to law in June, said the new fossil fuel exploration scheme off the coast of Newfoundland "will provide economic opportunities for many Canadians and the legally-binding conditions imposed throughout the life of the projects will protect the environment for generations to come." No mention was made of net-zero or carbon emissions.
The Big Reset also warns, however, that big green energy projects such as Muskrat carry big red risks. "While the development of the Churchill River is critical to grow the green economy, the end result of the Muskrat Falls project is potentially significant energy poverty for the people in this province."
The risk of green energy poverty is not new. A Portland State University study found that "efforts to shift away from fossil fuels and replace oil and coal with renewable energy sources can help reduce carbon emissions but do so at the expense of increased inequality" and create "energy poverty" by raising energy costs and forcing lower-income households to pay more for energy.
Muskrat isn't the only demonstration project for the risks inherent in trying to reorganize economic activity to meet speculative long-range net-zero objectives. The same fate awaits British Columbia's giant Site C green power disaster, which continues to unravel financially. Costs have soared to $16-billion and continue to rise. The project, promoted as green and clean, is now the most expensive hydro dam in Canadian history.
Many more Canadian dams like Muskrat and Site C would be needed to eliminate fossil fuels in the future. Vancouver energy consultant Aldyen Donnelly calculated that to offset lost fossil fuels, Canada would have to build 2.5 hydro power dams the size of the $16-billion Site C project somewhere in the country "every year for the foreseeable future" leading up to carbon elimination by 2050.
China has taken over the solar panel market. The Wall Street Journal reports that the rise of solar power in the U.S. and elsewhere has been fuelled by a mountain of Chinese carbon-emitting coal burned to produce the panels.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-canadas-first-net-zero-carbon-fiasco
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-doubles-down-coal-despite-global-push-go-green
China Says F.U. - Doubles Down On Coal Despite Global Push To Go Green
Zero Hedge > In spite of growing international pressure, coal continues to boom across much of Asia, with China at the helm. Although China is attempting to move away from coal, rationing electricity use to battle the rising demand of the major polluter, hot temperatures are forcing the government to keep on producing as well as importing to meet this demand.
In the Zhejiang region, only 30 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources, meaning that industrial regions across China such as these will still rely heavily on coal for years to come.
Quote from: cchttps://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-doubles-down-coal-despite-global-push-go-green
China Says F.U. - Doubles Down On Coal Despite Global Push To Go Green
Zero Hedge > In spite of growing international pressure, coal continues to boom across much of Asia, with China at the helm. Although China is attempting to move away from coal, rationing electricity use to battle the rising demand of the major polluter, hot temperatures are forcing the government to keep on producing as well as importing to meet this demand.
In the Zhejiang region, only 30 percent of its energy comes from renewable sources, meaning that industrial regions across China such as these will still rely heavily on coal for years to come.
Meanwhile Ottawa is forcing Canadians into poverty with our pointless net zero target that have no impact on climate whatsoever.
Trudeau's "Just Transition" plans for resource development have only one result-increase global emissions, pollution and send high paying jobs overseas. It's the dumbest plan anyone could possibly imagine.
We're getting too far ahead on our climate policies that kill oil and gas jobs
Federal policies that halt fossil fuel development too quickly can have only one result: to make us poorer
Is Canada moving too quickly with climate-change policies to kill oil and gas jobs? After all, while we are pushing up the carbon price to $170 per tonne by 2030, the U.S. doesn't even have a pricing policy yet. And on top of our aggressive carbon pricing, we are also adopting important — and burdensome — new measures such as clean fuel standards, electric-vehicle substitution and building retrofits. The federal government has also declared plastics toxic and introduced aggressive environmental regulations to stop fossil-fuel development.
It's one thing to pick a target; it's another to jump ahead of other countries, especially when you account for only 1.6 per cent of global GHG emissions. The fossil-fuel industry has been a source of immense wealth for decades. It could continue to be an important source of income and taxes even after an energy transformation whose details — and even broad outlines — are still undetermined. The challenge we face is to choose the best course to maximize the value of our resources both in the short and long term as we move to net-zero carbon by 2050. So far, the federal government has flunked that challenge.
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan rubbing salt in Alberta's wounds. He will ensure that the federal "Just Transition Advisory Body" will put displaced fossil-fuel industry workers at the centre of legislative action "so they won't be left behind." Alberta's Energy Minister, Sonya Savage, slapped that down, reminding everyone that "Federal policies that halt fossil fuel development too quickly can have only one result: to make us poorer. If the federal government wants to find replacement jobs, it had better figure out how to make our other industries more productive — and fast. Otherwise, we will fall farther behind, an outcome that right now it would not be smart to bet against.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/jack-m-mintz-were-getting-too-far-ahead-on-our-climate-policies-that-kill-oil-and-gas-jobs
Quote from: seoulbroTrudeau's "Just Transition" plans for resource development have only one result-increase global emissions, pollution and send high paying jobs overseas. It's the dumbest plan anyone could possibly imagine.
We're getting too far ahead on our climate policies that kill oil and gas jobs
Federal policies that halt fossil fuel development too quickly can have only one result: to make us poorer
Is Canada moving too quickly with climate-change policies to kill oil and gas jobs? After all, while we are pushing up the carbon price to $170 per tonne by 2030, the U.S. doesn't even have a pricing policy yet. And on top of our aggressive carbon pricing, we are also adopting important — and burdensome — new measures such as clean fuel standards, electric-vehicle substitution and building retrofits. The federal government has also declared plastics toxic and introduced aggressive environmental regulations to stop fossil-fuel development.
It's one thing to pick a target; it's another to jump ahead of other countries, especially when you account for only 1.6 per cent of global GHG emissions. The fossil-fuel industry has been a source of immense wealth for decades. It could continue to be an important source of income and taxes even after an energy transformation whose details — and even broad outlines — are still undetermined. The challenge we face is to choose the best course to maximize the value of our resources both in the short and long term as we move to net-zero carbon by 2050. So far, the federal government has flunked that challenge.
Natural Resources Minister Seamus O'Regan rubbing salt in Alberta's wounds. He will ensure that the federal "Just Transition Advisory Body" will put displaced fossil-fuel industry workers at the centre of legislative action "so they won't be left behind." Alberta's Energy Minister, Sonya Savage, slapped that down, reminding everyone that "Federal policies that halt fossil fuel development too quickly can have only one result: to make us poorer. If the federal government wants to find replacement jobs, it had better figure out how to make our other industries more productive — and fast. Otherwise, we will fall farther behind, an outcome that right now it would not be smart to bet against.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/jack-m-mintz-were-getting-too-far-ahead-on-our-climate-policies-that-kill-oil-and-gas-jobs
Trudeau is an out of touch idiot.
Justine himself admitted his carbon scam tax won't stop the climate from changing. Building LNG export facilities might not either, but it will lower emissions. And support good jobs at home.
Why China makes Trudeau's carbon tax irrelevant
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-why-china-makes-trudeaus-carbon-tax-irrelevant
In 2019, China for the first time generated more emissions than the entire developed world combined
Whenever human-induced climate change is discussed during Canada's upcoming federal election, keep in mind the country that matters most on this issue is China and the fossil fuel that matters most in China is coal
The reason is that whatever China does makes whatever Canada does irrelevant in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2019, China for the first time generated more emissions — 14.09 gigatonnes — than the entire developed world combined — 14.06 gigatonnes — including the 38 member nations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the 27 members of the European Union.
According to the international research company Rhodium Group, China's emissions in 2019 more than tripled compared to 1990 levels, with a 25% increase over the past decade alone.
China is also building coal-fired power plants at a faster pace than the rest of the world combined.
In March, energy journalist Michael Standaert, writing in YaleEnvironment360, published by the Yale School of the Environment, reported that in 2020, China "brought 38.4 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation, more than three times what was brought online everywhere else.
"A total of 247 gigawatts of coal power is now in planning or development (in China), nearly six times Germany's entire coal-fired capacity. China has also proposed additional new coal plants that, if built, would generate 73.5 gigawatts of power, more than five times the 13.9 gigawatts proposed in the rest of the world combined."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has committed Canada to reducing our emissions up to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. (No federal government — Liberal or Conservative — has ever achieved a single target it has set in more than three decades.)
China's focus is on having enough energy to feed its 1.4 billion people today, not global temperatures 80 years from now.
China's reliance on coal makes everything Trudeau is doing in Canada irrelevant — including his national carbon tax/price — a policy the Americans have refused to implement to this day.
That said, many Canadians agree with Trudeau that regardless of what China does, we have to do something, given rising global temperatures.
Fair point. Just remember that what Canada does is irrelevant, other than as a symbolic gesture.
" The reason is that whatever China does makes whatever Canada does irrelevant in terms of greenhouse gas emissions."
Makes Trudeau's carbon tax and job exporting government bills that have caused a lot of pain nothing more than pointless gestures.
Quote from: Thiel" The reason is that whatever China does makes whatever Canada does irrelevant in terms of greenhouse gas emissions."
Makes Trudeau's carbon tax and job exporting government bills that have caused a lot of pain nothing more than pointless gestures.
I saw an article that stated forty nine per cent of Canadians demand action from Ottawa on climate change..
How are cancelling pipelines and carbon consumption taxes on working families in Canada action on
climate change?
What Trudeau does to us is irrelevant.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/s960x960/222669402_594684821938894_7714807051196483744_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=qCkiykoZZskAX_BMXk4&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=898cc923f19ec394c4d0e89e942faed9&oe=6145146C)
China is planning to build 43 new coal-fired power plants and 18 new blast furnaces — equivalent to adding about 1.5% to its current annual emissions — according to a new report.
The report on China's new coal plants was written by the Helsinki-based research organization the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the U.S. group Global Energy Monitor (GEM) and released on Aug. 13
Justine is a denier.
Ottawa's climate plan ignores the science
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/ottawas-climate-plan-ignores-the-science
During the election, Prime Minister Trudeau ran as a bold leader in the fight against climate change. Yet even if we agree that the voters have given Trudeau's Liberals a mandate to enact policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, these policies should still make sense. Unfortunately, several features of Trudeau's climate agenda do not accord with standard economics.
First and most obvious, Trudeau supports a carbon tax that will rise by $15 per tonne each year starting in 2023 until maxing out at $170/tonne in 2030. His support for a carbon tax is in line with what many economists would recommend, as they view it as an efficient (i.e. least costly) way to communicate the harm of GHG emissions to businesses and households as they make decisions.
But the level of Trudeau's carbon tax is much higher than standard estimates of the "social cost of carbon," which quantifies the climate change damages flowing from an additional tonne of carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the Biden administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates the "social cost of carbon" in 2030 at $62 per tonne (measured in 2020 U.S. dollars using the standard 3 per cent discount rate). That means Trudeau's favoured carbon tax is more than double the appropriate level. At such high levels, Trudeau's carbon tax becomes counterproductive, because it causes more damage to Canadians (in the form of higher energy prices and reduced economic growth) than it would spare the world in climate change.
Beyond the specifics of Trudeau's carbon tax, a broader problem is adherence to the temperature targets set forth in the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Although many environmental activists take it for granted that policymakers should strive to respect such a ceiling, it's not supported by the literature.
For example, William Nordhaus won the 2018 Nobel Prize for his work on the economics of climate change. He believes climate change is a serious problem and supports a modest carbon tax that (in his projections) would limit global warming to 3.5 degrees by 2100. On the other hand, the Paris Agreement's tighter ceiling of 1.5 to 2.0 degrees Celsius would slow economic growth so much that, according to Nordhaus' work, it would be better for humanity if governments did nothing at all to reduce GHG emissions, rather than foolishly pursuing such a draconian policy. The Paris temperature target is just another mismatch between Trudeau's climate policies and actual numbers in the expert literature.
As a final example, consider Trudeau's proposed "Clean Fuel Standard" (CFS), which requires those who produce and import fossil fuels to reduce the carbon emissions of their products, and it mandates for more electric vehicles. From the point of view of climate change economics, these top-down regulations/mandates are counterproductive in the presence of a carbon tax. One of the textbook virtues of a carbon tax is that it augments the price system so households and businesses face the right incentives when deciding whether to buy a conventional vehicle or an electric one; they don't need officials forcing a particular choice. By implementing a carbon tax that is far too high and imposing specific outcomes on how many electric vehicles must be made, Trudeau's government merely appears to be "tough on climate change" while ignoring actual recommendations from the expert literature.
The city of Vancouver is making it difficult for people with limited means to make ends meet.
Vancouver climate fees for new car purchases could cost up to $1,000
Drivers who are purchasing new cars in 2023 and beyond will need to pay even more in climate fees.
This comes on the heels of news that parking permits for Vancouver residential streets could begin in early 2022.
City officials are calling it a pollution charge, and it could cost drivers up to $1,000, on top of the $45 overnight parking permit fees.
Climate fees will be prescribed for high emission vehicles "to encourage decisions to choose low or zero emission vehicles."
A Vancouver City Council ruling on the matter is set to take place on October 5.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-charge-climate-fees-2023
Trudeau, the NDP and the Green's obsession with our rounding error emissions is so stupid. The only thing it does is reduce living standards in this country. If they were smart they would make LNG export facilities their environmental and industrial priority.
India says it has ample coal stocks for power sector
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has ample coal stocks to meet power sector demand, a coal ministry statement said on Sunday, a day after the Delhi Chief Minister said a shortage of the fuel meant the Indian capital could face a power crisis
State-run Coal India Ltd is using its 40 million tonne stocks to replenish utilities, which together have 7.2 million tonnes of inventory, equivalent to four days' requirements, the ministry statement said.
In a separate statement, the power ministry said coal supplies to power utilities on Saturday rose to 1.92 million tonnes, while consumption was 1.87 million tonnes.
It said the level of coal stocks held by power companies will rise as Coal India is ramping up the supplies.
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2021-10-10/india-says-it-has-ample-coal-stocks-for-power-sector
Quote from: seoulbroTrudeau, the NDP and the Green's obsession with our rounding error emissions is so stupid. The only thing it does is reduce living standards in this country. If they were smart they would make LNG export facilities their environmental and industrial priority.
India says it has ample coal stocks for power sector
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India has ample coal stocks to meet power sector demand, a coal ministry statement said on Sunday, a day after the Delhi Chief Minister said a shortage of the fuel meant the Indian capital could face a power crisis
State-run Coal India Ltd is using its 40 million tonne stocks to replenish utilities, which together have 7.2 million tonnes of inventory, equivalent to four days' requirements, the ministry statement said.
In a separate statement, the power ministry said coal supplies to power utilities on Saturday rose to 1.92 million tonnes, while consumption was 1.87 million tonnes.
It said the level of coal stocks held by power companies will rise as Coal India is ramping up the supplies.
https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2021-10-10/india-says-it-has-ample-coal-stocks-for-power-sector
What all the parties in parliament are doing to Canadians in the name of "climate.action" is dumb. Unless of course they are trying to destroy blue collar workers, and the bastards probably are.
We have a carbon tax. It's slated to go to $170/tonne by 2030. If it's the right tax, then also capping oil and gas emissions constitutes doing "more, more expensively, in more complex ways in other parts of their economy."
Many of those oil and gas activities could be — probably are, given current world prices — very valuable. If they can survive after paying their carbon tax, let them. If oil and gas companies can figure out ways to reduce their carbon-intensity and survive the carbon tax, more power to them. By the prime minister's own argument, that's exactly what should happen.
Marriages disintegrate at a much higher rate for couples who meet online, study says
How to pair AirPods with your iPhone and other Apple devices in just 3 seconds
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders' Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1, 2021. © Provided by Financial Post Prime Minister Justin Trudeau presents his national statement as part of the World Leaders' Summit of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland on Nov. 1, 2021.
Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)
My colleague John Ivison wrote yesterday that he agrees with Justin Trudeau about as often as there is a solar eclipse, so he was surprised to find himself agreeing with something the prime minister said in Glasgow about carbon taxes. Well, pass me those ultraviolet blockers and make it a double blue moon, because I also agreed with something Trudeau said in Glasgow about carbon taxes (though is it really so surprising that people arriving in Scotland should suddenly be overcome with good sense?).
What struck me as sensible was the following statement : "As people look at the hard work of reducing emissions, they'll realize that not putting a price on pollution in their jurisdictions is going to mean having to do more, more expensively, in more complex ways in other parts of their economy."
Exactly! That is the entire case for a carbon tax summed up in 42 words, which is only 15 or 20 more than necessary. Granted, "pollution" is a tendentious term for carbon dioxide, a substance essential to life as we know it. But if you're convinced that, at the global margin, production of more carbon dioxide has harmful effects, you should impose a tax on it equal to your best estimate of the harmful effects and then just police the tax.
Where the extra carbon dioxide comes from activities that have high social value, people will pay the tax, mutter darkly while doing so and keep on with those activities — which is exactly what you want them to do: if the benefits of the activity exceed its costs, now including any damage to the environment, you want that activity to continue.
On the other hand, if the benefits of the activity aren't very great, then its normal costs plus the carbon tax will exceed them and the activity will die out — which is also what you want. Activities whose benefits are less than their normal costs plus their environmental costs shouldn't continue.
Moreover, it's not actually all-or-nothing, survive-or-die. If the people engaging in lower-benefit activities can figure out relatively inexpensive ways to reduce their carbon dioxide output, then some of these activities can continue, too — being no longer so harmful.
The beauty of all this, as economists have long argued, is that it's automatic. Once the carbon price is set, all decisions are taken locally. The government can't quite retire from the field: it has to enforce the tax. But that's all it has to do. Forty million Canadians, responding to the tax, will figure out the least-cost way of dealing with the problem.
The prime minister's Glasgow statement suggests he understands all that. Which is why the government's decision to also cap emissions in the oil and gas sector is so puzzling. We have a carbon tax. It's slated to go to $170/tonne by 2030. If it's the right tax, then also capping oil and gas emissions constitutes doing "more, more expensively, in more complex ways in other parts of their economy."
Many of those oil and gas activities could be — probably are, given current world prices — very valuable. If they can survive after paying their carbon tax, let them. If oil and gas companies can figure out ways to reduce their carbon-intensity and survive the carbon tax, more power to them. By the prime minister's own argument, that's exactly what should happen.
The economy is a gigantic, complex black box that no single person or artificial intelligence can even begin to understand — not Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos or IBM's Watson, to say nothing of Justin Trudeau or Stephen Guilbeault. But it is infinitely adaptable. Force it to take a cost into account and it will do all the calculations for you and spit out the least-cost way of accommodating the new constraint you've imposed.
Or do you suppose there's political gain to be had from euthanizing the country's oil and gas sector? There are no seats to be lost in Alberta for carbon-eradicators and haven't been for a couple of generations, not since Pierre Trudeau declared the first war on oil and gas in 1980. And there may be seats to be gained in the east: some central Canadians seem as contemptuous of Albertans as they are of Americans.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/few-willing-to-change-lifestyle-climate-survey
Few Willing To Change Lifestyle To Save The Planet, Climate Survey Finds
(https://blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/climate-change-agw-hypocrites.jpg)
Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.
"The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act," the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.
Quote from: cchttps://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/07/few-willing-to-change-lifestyle-climate-survey
Few Willing To Change Lifestyle To Save The Planet, Climate Survey Finds
(https://blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/climate-change-agw-hypocrites.jpg)
Citizens are alarmed by the climate crisis, but most believe they are already doing more to preserve the planet than anyone else, including their government, and few are willing to make significant lifestyle changes, an international survey has found.
"The widespread awareness of the importance of the climate crisis illustrated in this study has yet to be coupled with a proportionate willingness to act," the survey of 10 countries including the US, UK, France and Germany, observed.
As we saw from the C02 emissions festival that was COP26 national leaders are not going to make any significant changes either.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/p843x403/250332199_650170259723683_8746064018332303079_n.jpg?_nc_cat=105&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=5sERHrLbkVEAX-q8Oah&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=75fa838b1a32d257343791011916e28a&oe=619398EB)
Australia is leading the way!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/australia-ranked-last-of-60-countries-for-policy-response-to-climate-crisis
Quote from: BricktopAustralia is leading the way!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/australia-ranked-last-of-60-countries-for-policy-response-to-climate-crisis
:20utj4j_th: ac_drinks
Quote from: BricktopAustralia is leading the way!!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/09/australia-ranked-last-of-60-countries-for-policy-response-to-climate-crisis
The Guardian?? The ranking listed Australis behind Indai, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Latvia, Thailand, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Russia, Algeria and Malaysia, That CCPI report is as believable as the Clinton's Trump-Russia collusion scam.
A more efficient combustion engine.
A more clean burning fuel.
A carbon dioxide filter to every car.
Surely demolishing 1,5 billion cars and then replacing them with new electric cars, is not the most green solution.
Quote from: OdinsonSurely demolishing 1,5 billion cars and then replacing them with new electric cars, is not the most green solution.
It's not even close to being possible either.
The Paris Climate Agreement will cost $100 trillion US dollars to reduce global temperatures .3 degrees by the end of this century. And that is if everything they promise actually happens.
When it comes to climate change, Canada is not the problem. So why then does Trudeau constantly remind us that we need to do more to protect the climate?
A look at the data will show you that Canada's climate emissions have stayed at relatively the same levels in the past 20 years, while other countries like China continue to pollute at breakneck speeds.
Anthony Furey has more to say on this in his latest video.
Quote from: HermanWhen it comes to climate change, Canada is not the problem. So why then does Trudeau constantly remind us that we need to do more to protect the climate?
A look at the data will show you that Canada's climate emissions have stayed at relatively the same levels in the past 20 years, while other countries like China continue to pollute at breakneck speeds.
Anthony Furey has more to say on this in his latest video.
A good video Herman.
:smiley_thumbs_up_yellow_ani:
(https://scontent-ort2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.6435-9/72784956_10221299687348673_3683903207668449280_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=ckQ5ZdfJMvYAX8KvLn3&_nc_ht=scontent-ort2-1.xx&oh=4b465d4d46adeaf9c0d073de61c8a927&oe=61BC6545)
Analysis by Sabrina Maddeaux:
There's one overarching problem with climate change policy that nobody seems to address: Many of the countries and organizations tasked with fixing it are corrupt as hell. Sabrina Maddeaux's many cited examples include rampant embezzlement of climate funds in Bangladesh, as well as carbon credits being funnelled to political cronies in Eastern Europe. "You can throw all the money in the world at green initiatives, but if that money goes missing into the coffers of kleptocrats and their friends, we've actually made the problem worse," she writes.
Once again, western nations are the only virgins in the whorehouse.
Quote from: BricktopOnce again, western nations are the only virgins in the whorehouse.
ac_toofunny
What a waste of money.
The simple arithmetic of wind power
https://www.cfact.org/2021/11/22/the-simple-arithmetic-of-wind-power/
Nations have spent hundreds of billions of dollars hoping to replace coal and natural gas to no avail. Australians and Germans have suffered from the government's decisions the most. They now have sky-high energy costs and frequent blackouts. Both are returning to coal with as little fanfare as possible.
Why is this true? The answer is the little-known and less well-understood Ciccone/Lehr electric power Rule of Thumb which states, "All Solar and Wind Power on an Electric Grid Must Be Backed Up With an Equal or Great Amount of Fossil Fuel Power Running on Standby 100% of The Time. Although, I will admit that Germany thinks they can manage with only 80% back up which one has to doubt as we have seen their electric costs triple.
Nonsensical as it may seem, President Biden's plan for a climate-friendly electric grid depends on the ability to construct thousands of miles of power lines to bring energy from the wind and sun-rich states across the nation to replace all the electricity currently supplied by coal and natural gas.
As the sun sets in New York and the wind calms, California may be able to keep its lights on for a few more hours before all goes dark. Regardless, Biden wants to harness all the nation's wind without even understanding that the landmass of the contiguous 48 states is not large enough to fit all the wind turbines required.
The cost of wind power can never be competitive with coal and natural gas, and their industry only exists due to huge government subsidies that keep wind and solar companies rich and the public poor.
While we should be opposing all money spent on the wind, the deck has been stacked against us by the wind power lobby. These lobbyists have convinced state legislatures to require electric utilities to obtain some of their power from the wind "supposedly. "This legislation is called Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). "Supposedly" is my keyword because, for every kilowatt-hour of wind power, the utility must build additional coal or natural gas power to fully back up the wind capacity they added to their system. So the net gain to the utility is increased cost, not increased energy, which ends up on the monthly bill to its customers.
Let's look at why this is so. As we know, the wind is consistently inconsistent or better described as intermittent. In a word, it is not reliable. No electric grid can afford to be unreliable. Our three electric grids, East, West, and Texas, all operate at 60 hertz of electric power. A hertz is a single electric cycle of alternating current per second. No grid can vary by more than half a hertz for any period, meaning 60.5 hertz or 59.5 hertz are its limits of variability. Beyond these limits, the system will crash, which means all down the line equipment will shut off or, at times, may actually explode.
This has never happened before. If it did, the cost to society would be in the billions and the loss of life in the thousands. In February 2021, the Texas grid came within 5 minutes of crashing. The grid was only saved by unloading the huge power users from the system. This is why all electric utilities sign agreements with large users giving them the right to pull the plug on them in times of emergency. An emergency is the loss of balance between the electric power generated and the electricity the system is demanding.
Let's look at why wind is even more intermittent than you could imagine. Every turbine has a range of wind speeds, usually between 30 miles per hour (mph) and 55 mph, in which it will produce its maximum rated electric output. At slower speeds, the production falls off considerably. Physics tells us that when you double wind speed, the power of the wind increases by a factor of 8 (that's 2 cubed 2x2x2). Conversely, when the wind speed is halved, the wind turbine output power declines 8 fold.
Another poorly understood aspect of wind turbines is their size. Wind output is essentially limited by the land area used to harness it. You can have very large turbines with very long blades in small numbers, which will not interfere with each other. Or you can have smaller turbines in larger numbers and get the same kilowatt-hours of power from the land. It should be obvious that turbines must be spaced at precise distances apart not to interfere with each turbine's ability to capture the wind. Unfortunately, the country is moving toward bigger and bigger turbines that will make disposal of these giant blades nearly impossible.
To give a sense of scale, to replace the energy from one average natural gas power plant sitting on 4 acres of land would require 2500 acres of large wind turbines. Each turbine has a rated capacity of the number of Megawatts of electricity (commonly 2.5 megawatts) they could produce if they turned 24/7 at the most optimum revolutions per minute. The wind industry projects the annual output of their turbines to be 30 to 40% of capacity. However, experience for the past decade indicates that annual outputs are more commonly between 15 and 30%. For example, when 137 US wind projects self-reported to the US Energy Agency in 2003, their average capacity was 26.9%. 9 years later it rose to 30.4 %. However, 27 European Union countries reported their efficiency in 2007 to be only 13%. The saddest reality is that wind turbines produce no power 70% of the time.
When the industry describes its total capacity, it adds up the plated capacity number of all existing turbines. This is really ridiculous. Having now burdened you with a variety of numbers relating to our 60,000 wind turbines across America. But keep in mind as we debate how much a wind turbine can produce, my purpose for this 3 part tutorial is to convince all readers that all wind turbines add up to no contribution whatever to America's electricity for its cost. This is a hard sell to make as it seems unreasonable to the average person. But it is no different than blaming humans for the planet's temperature while ignoring nature.
Well, today at rush hour when decent people are trying to get home to their families for the weekend,
anarchist climate screamers are planning to block all traffic on the Lion's Gate Bridge - a vital artery for Vancouver
That will really bring people to their cause :001_rolleyes:
I think they need a new cause promotion manager
(They are taking away the driver's human rights to drive home ac_smile )
Quote from: ccWell, today at rush hour when decent people are trying to get home to their families for the weekend,
anarchist climate screamers are planning to block all traffic on the Lion's Gate Bridge - a vital artery for Vancouver
That will really bring people to their cause :001_rolleyes:
I think they need a new cause promotion manager
(They are taking away the driver's human rights to drive home ac_smile )
Drive over them.
Quote from: ccWell, today at rush hour when decent people are trying to get home to their families for the weekend,
anarchist climate screamers are planning to block all traffic on the Lion's Gate Bridge - a vital artery for Vancouver
That will really bring people to their cause :001_rolleyes:
I think they need a new cause promotion manager
(They are taking away the driver's human rights to drive home ac_smile )
That is so selfish.
(https://scontent.fyxd1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/260223041_10159918176119267_5753823820162638470_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=jELi7HmxOOAAX8ehNn8&_nc_ht=scontent.fyxd1-1.fna&oh=d46555a6d79b24abfcbad27f4dca8954&oe=61A82DF6)
So far, progressive climate policies such as carbon taxes have often disproportionately impacted low and middle income groups, while leaving consumption habits of wealthiest groups. The very wealthy are unaffected by an extreme carbon tax that forces working class people to choose between driving, heating their home or turning off their tv when not in use. This is what Trudeau's eventual $170/tonne carbon tax does to working people. It does nothing to rich people like himself which is why rich progs don't care about his carbon tax.
Quote from: iron horse jockeySo far, progressive climate policies such as carbon taxes have often disproportionately impacted low and middle income groups, while leaving consumption habits of wealthiest groups. The very wealthy are unaffected by an extreme carbon tax that forces working class people to choose between driving, heating their home or turning off their tv when not in use. This is what Trudeau's eventual $170/tonne carbon tax does to working people. It does nothing to rich people like himself which is why rich progs don't care about his carbon tax.
Good point. None of Justine's carbon bullshit has any affect on him or his rich prog wanker pals. They don't lose jobs when pipelines are cancelled. They can afford to fly to multi-million dollar mansions in Tofino no matter how expensive flying becomes.
The transition is fake
Japan Building 22 New Coal Power Plants
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/12/09/japan-building-22-new-coal-power-plants/
(https://149366104.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/image_thumb-34.png)
Our former premier said this four year's ago today about Justine's carbon tax.
In his year-end interview, Prime Minister Trudeau declared that Brad Wall shouldn't be worried about how much a carbon tax will cost "his farmers".
First of all, they aren't my farmers... they are Canada's farmers who are literally feeding Canada and the world, and creating thousands of Canadian jobs in the process. And their national government should be working with the Saskatchewan government, not against it, to ensure Canadian agricultural production remains as cost effective as possible in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
The new federal carbon tax will render this Canadian sector and many others less competitive globally. But that's fine, says the Prime Minister, because Brad Wall can just return the money to "his farmers".
Mr. Prime Minister, then what is really the point of this bureaucratic merry-go-round? If the solution is just to give the money back, then what is the point of collecting this tax in the first place?
Let's focus on technology to solve the global climate problem and stop this ill-conceived carbon tax scheme.
The Fallacy Of Green Thinking
Bjorn Lomborg is correct that man-made climate change from now on is a comparatively minor global problem amongst many others, that could be much cheaper to address and would have vastly more worthwhile results.
Any extra, relatively minor warming is likely to be advantageous rather than detrimental.
Man-made global warming is not an immediate and existential global catastrophe caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
The problem of man-made climate change has been deliberately blown out of all proportion and is used as a mechanism to undermine the West.
There is no reason to destroy the economy of the West to combat man-made global warming.
The logarithmic diminution of the effectiveness of CO2 as a warming agent means that any future man-made CO2 emissions can only ever be marginal.
This view is well-rehearsed by Professor Will Happer, former scientific advisor to the US government. It is also well understood by the IPCC, (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).
It is included in their detailed reports, but the crucial diminution effect, making future man-made climate change irrelevant is never admitted in the IPCC Summaries for Policy Makers.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/the-fallacy-of-green-thinking/
Every reason Trudeau gave us to justify his forced inflationary carbon tax has been false.
Trudeau's carbon tax failed to do what he promised
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ostensible plan to transition Canada from fossil fuels to green energy is in shambles.
When Trudeau became PM in 2015, he told Canadians that a carbon tax would create the "social licence" necessary to build oil and gas pipelines. That the profits from our increased capacity to get our oil and gas resources to tidewater and from there to international markets — as opposed to selling them at huge discounts to the U.S. — would help pay for Canada's expensive transition to a green economy.
Seven years later, exactly none of that has happened.
Environmental activists have not stopped opposing pipelines or their global campaign against Alberta's oil sands because of Trudeau's carbon tax, which started at $10 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 and will rise to $50 per tonne on April 1, on its way to $170 per tonne in 2030.
Trudeau's carbon tax did not stop Quebec from opposing the Energy East pipeline, which was then scrapped.
It did not stop two U.S. presidents — first Barack Obama and then Joe Biden — from killing Keystone XL, after Donald Trump briefly revived it.
It hasn't ended opposition to the Coastal Gas Link pipeline from hereditary Indigenous chiefs, although elected band councils support it.
Trudeau's carbon tax did not end opposition to the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) pipeline from British Columbia, which prompted Houston-based Kinder Morgan to abandon it in 2018, whereupon the Trudeau government bought it for $4.5 billion.
First, imposing a carbon tax would make it easier to build pipelines which would get our oil and gas resources to tidewater and from there to global markets so we weren't forced to sell them at a huge discounts to the U.S..
Second, the billions of additional dollars that would flow annually into the Canadian economy, and into federal and provincial governments through increased taxes, would help finance Canada's transition to a green energy economy.
But again, none of that happened.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeaus-carbon-tax-failed-to-do-what-he-promised
Trudeau failed to meet his 2020 emissions target (which used to be former PM Stephen Harper's target) of reducing Canada's emissions to 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.
Even with the 2020 recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw emissions plunge globally as fewer goods and services created by using fossil fuels were purchased, Trudeau wasn't anywhere near his target.
This despite the fact Trudeau and then environment minister Catherine McKenna repeatedly assured Canadians they were on track to meet the 2020 target, which they formally set in 2016.
Trudeau's 2020 target was to lower Canada's annual emissions to 615 million tonnes.
Canada's actual 2020 emissions were 672 million tonnes — 57 million tonnes above target, the equivalent of all emissions in Canada's electricity sector in 2020 (56.2 million tonnes).
Trudeau's failure is the ninth consecutive time since 1988 that Canada's federal governments have set an emissions target and failed to achieve it, five times by Liberal governments, four times by Conservative ones. No target has ever been met. Having failed to meet his 2020 target, Trudeau now promises to reduce Canada's emissions to 40% to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030.
That's absurd. It would require the federal government to shut down the equivalent of Canada's entire oil and gas sector and entire buildings sector in eight years, and that would still miss Trudeau's target.
It would also impose a devastating recession on Canadians.
These unattainable targets make it impossible to assess whether Canadians are getting good value for money spent on "fighting" climate change, given that the taxpayers' bill is already $100 billion and rising.
Given that federal governments have failed to achieve nine consecutive emission targets going back 34 years, it's time to abandon this farce and replace it with an honest system that reports on reductions only after they have been achieved, not before.
The same people that brought energy poveryt to Ontarians are in charge of Trudeau's energy policies. Canadians will be poorer because of it.
Trudeau electricity plan could lead to blackouts, soaring bills
Electricity has been the most successful sector of the Canadian economy in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, albeit at an enormous cost to provincial taxpayers and hydro ratepayers.
But a new plan by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to achieve net zero emissions by 2035 could lead to blackouts, brownouts, soaring electricity bills and massive new debt.
Since 2001, emissions in Canada's electricity sector have plummeted from 129.2 million tonnes annually to 56.2 million tonnes in 2020, the last year for which government data are available.
Today, electricity accounts for only 8.4% of Canada's emissions and 82% of the grid is emissions free — relying on non-emitting sources of energy such as hydro and nuclear power and low-emitting natural gas.
Wind and solar power are costly bit players in this transformation — multi-billion-dollar boondoggles — because they cannot provide base load power to the electricity grid on demand.
But the success in lowering emissions came at a huge public cost — with Ontario being the case study providing a dire warning to the rest of the country.
Between 2003 and 2014 the then Liberal provincial government eliminated the use of coal to produce 25% of the province's electricity, one of the fastest reductions in emissions anywhere in North America.
But there was a staggering price paid by Ontario taxpayers and hydro ratepayers — a doubling of electricity rates in 10 years that threw thousands of households into energy poverty and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, in part because businesses couldn't cope with runaway electricity prices.
Now the Trudeau government has decreed Canada's electricity sector must achieve net zero emissions by 2035, 15 years earlier than the rest of the economy, even though it is the provinces that will have to do it by blowing up their electricity systems.
If a province gets this electricity transformation wrong, then all other sectors of the economy will suffer because the availability of reliable electricity is vital to all of them.
Once again, the canary in the coal mine is Ontario where the Ford Progressive Conservative government, pressured by several dozen municipal councils, has asked the operators of the province's electricity grid — already 94% emissions free — to consider achieving net zero emissions by 2030 by eliminating natural gas, five years earlier than even the Trudeau plan.
Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator responded this would cause blackouts, cost $27 billion and increase residential electricity bills, already being massively subsidized by taxpayers and ratepayers, by 60% or $100 a month.
Logically, this makes zero sense because natural gas is needed to back up intermittent wind and solar power anyway.
The Trudeau government last month released a "discussion paper" on its "Clean Electricity Standard" policy to make Canada's electricity sector achieve net zero emissions by 2035.
In a response written by Robert Lyman and Parker Gallant for the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses, a non-profit organization representing small and medium sized companies across Canada, they rightly described the discussion paper as a word salad of nonsense.
They wrote it's oblivious to the complexity of transforming the electricity grid, has no concept of the time frames needed to build new power plants and no understanding of the enormous costs.
In other words, it's another example of politicians running through the hallways with scissors because they have no understanding of energy issues and the dangers of blowing up the electricity grid in pursuit of an unattainable, ruinously expensive goal.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-electricity-plan-could-lead-to-blackouts-soaring-bills
I will bet one of the biggest exports from Canada in the future will b skilled workers. There won't be opportunities to get ahead in this country.
(https://scontent.fyqr2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/278011917_752245489516159_2213608629139413521_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_s960x960&_nc_cat=108&ccb=1-5&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=PPNhoa2Dik4AX_wi8Yc&_nc_ht=scontent.fyqr2-1.fna&oh=00_AT9gjhqaMUDT3PYVri5LRMGzRH3DtgE7iT8VqUA9d7YVBA&oe=62738BCC)
More polarization – Africa/Asia investing hundreds of billions in hydrocarbon infrastructure out of necessity, the west arranges deck chairs on the Titanic
Energy polarization is fascinating because it is so all-encompassing and the stakes can't be higher. To top it off, the West, not at all done with colonization, has decided for the umpteenth consecutive century that it will dictate how the world shall develop.
It is important to note first that Canada's energy industry is in fact moving mountains to comply with the wishes of our federal leaders. The marching orders have been given, and the oil patch has shifted accordingly. Some won't believe that, because death of the industry is an imperative (AOC, T Berman, D Suzuki, Greenpeace, Ecojustice, 350.org, and on and on), but the facts are that the oil patch is abuzz with energy transition/emissions reduction work. Progress is happening at a staggering pace.
Here's the view from the other side of the world, in a few headlines, that reflect the polar opposite of our western narrative – a desperation for survival. "India risks widespread power blackouts this summer", because coal stocks are low, and natural gas is unavailable. "Electricity shortfall hits 6000MW"; Pakistan is unable to generate enough electricity because it cannot compete with western Europe in a bidding war for natural gas. "Despite Oil and Gas Reserves, Africa Feels Pressure of Rising Energy Costs"; Africa relies heavily on imported petroleum products and is fearful of natural gas shortages that will impact fertilizer supply.
India, Pakistan and Africa are populated by 2.8 billion people, and they are running out of fuel. Running out of fuel means running out of air conditioning, food, and transport options. It is serious business. And there are a few billion more in that camp as well, I simply stopped gathering headlines after a few minutes.
Mercifully, the "advice" of western activists is being ignored. Africa is currently constructing the Dangote refinery in Nigeria, owned by an African, that will supply over 12 percent of Africa's product demand, increase fertilizer production at an associated facility, and reduce the continent's reliance on imported fuels.
Asian governments are currently building out $350 billion worth of new natural gas infrastructure. That's in addition to adding renewables as fast as they can.
https://boereport.com/2022/04/21/column-more-polarization-africa-asia-investing-hundreds-of-billions-in-hydrocarbon-infrastructure-out-of-necessity-the-west-arranges-deck-chairs-on-the-titanic/
Quotethe West, not at all done with colonization, has decided for the umpteenth consecutive century that it will dictate how the world shall develop.
That's a good point Thiel.
Global events since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 have demonstrated the futility of governments making empty promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions almost in half by 2030 and achieve "net zero" by 2050.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is at the forefront of making these unrealistic and fanciful promises, but he's hardly alone as similar commitments are being made by governments all over the world.
The reality, however, is that the only time global emissions have plummeted in the modern era were because of two events that had nothing to do with United Nations climate treaties or carbon taxes.
The first was the global recession caused by the subprime mortgage derivative scandal in 2008-09 that led to a global credit freeze, which began with massive financial fraud on Wall Street, for which almost no one went to jail.
In recessions, emissions go down because people have less money to buy goods and services, almost all of which are produced using energy generated from fossil fuels — oil, natural gas and coal.
The second was the pandemic which caused a sudden and massive reduction in domestic and international trade and travel due to pandemic restrictions on the economy imposed by governments.
Finance Minister and Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland will release the Trudeau regime's fiscal update today. Ottawa has a lot more money this year thanks to rising oil and natural gas royalty revenues. One thing that will be in the update is money for Canadian energy workers for training/education who want to transfer out of the industry. Energy service contractors are having a hard time finding trained workers and Ottawa is making it more difficult to fill vacancies. We are in a energy crisis and Ottawa wants to make it worse with this self destructive waste of money and another carbon tax increase on January 1 2023.
Jesus H, there will not be a middle class Canadian left by the time we get Justine out of office.
COMING JULY 1st – Taxpayers Better Brace for Trudeau's Two Carbon Taxes
https://energynow.ca/2023/06/coming-july-1st-taxpayers-better-brace-for-trudeaus-two-carbon-taxes/
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a summer special for taxpayers: a second carbon tax.
On July 1, the Trudeau government's second carbon tax will take effect. Trudeau buried the tax in fuel regulations that require producers to reduce the carbon content of their fuels. If companies can't meet the requirements, they'll be forced to buy credits. Those costs will be passed onto consumers through higher pump prices.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government's independent budget watchdog, recently released analysis of Trudeau's second carbon tax. In 2030, when the regulations are fully implemented, it will cost the average family up to $1,157 and will increase the price of gas by up to 17 cents per litre.
The government's own analysis shows the second carbon tax will "disproportionately impact lower and middle-income households, as well as households currently experiencing energy poverty." That will especially harm "single mothers" and "seniors living on fixed incomes."
The second carbon tax will also lead to 24,000 fewer jobs in 2030, according to a report commissioned by Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Taxpayers will need to pay an extra $85 million to fuel the bureaucracy administering this regulatory quagmire, according to the government. Canadians will have the pleasure of paying higher taxes so more federal paper-pushers can increase our fuel prices and force our neighbours out of a job.
To make matters worse, there are no rebates with the second carbon tax, and it's being layered on top of Trudeau's current tax.
Trudeau's current carbon tax is already costing the average family up to $710 more per year than they get back in rebates, according to the PBO.
Higher fuel prices also mean higher sales taxes, which the federal government applies on top of gas taxes. Canadians will pay $429 million more this year in GST because of this tax-on-tax.
Trudeau is cranking up his current carbon tax until it reaches more than 37 cents per litre of gas by 2030. By the end of the decade, Trudeau's two carbon taxes will increase the price of gas by about 55 cents per litre and cost the average family more than $2,000 annually.
All this pain is for nothing.
Making it more expensive for Canadians to gas up their car or keep the natural gas running during winter will have a negligible impact on the environment.
With Canada making up just 1.5 per cent of global emissions, the PBO notes that "Canada's own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change." In 2018, Trudeau himself acknowledged that "even if Canada stopped everything tomorrow, and the other countries didn't have any solutions, it wouldn't make a big difference."
Trudeau's tax is especially self-defeating when more than three-quarters of countries don't have a national carbon tax, as highlighted by the World Bank. Meanwhile, Canada will soon have two.
Ottawa increased gas taxes while other countries cut them. Australia cut its gas tax in half. South Korea reduced gas taxes by 30 per cent. The United Kingdom provided billions of dollars in gas tax relief. New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Israel and Portugal also cut fuel taxes, along with provinces like Alberta, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Canadians need another carbon tax like we need a kick in the head. A government that was even remotely serious about making life more affordable would immediately back away from carbon taxes.
I'd like to heat my house in the winter by burning tires.
Quote from: LokmarI'd like to heat my house in the winter by burning tires.
I want to heat my house in the winter by burning progs.
Quote from: HermanJesus H, there will not be a middle class Canadian left by the time we get Justine out of office.
COMING JULY 1st – Taxpayers Better Brace for Trudeau's Two Carbon Taxes
https://energynow.ca/2023/06/coming-july-1st-taxpayers-better-brace-for-trudeaus-two-carbon-taxes/
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has a summer special for taxpayers: a second carbon tax.
On July 1, the Trudeau government's second carbon tax will take effect. Trudeau buried the tax in fuel regulations that require producers to reduce the carbon content of their fuels. If companies can't meet the requirements, they'll be forced to buy credits. Those costs will be passed onto consumers through higher pump prices.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government's independent budget watchdog, recently released analysis of Trudeau's second carbon tax. In 2030, when the regulations are fully implemented, it will cost the average family up to $1,157 and will increase the price of gas by up to 17 cents per litre.
The government's own analysis shows the second carbon tax will "disproportionately impact lower and middle-income households, as well as households currently experiencing energy poverty." That will especially harm "single mothers" and "seniors living on fixed incomes."
The second carbon tax will also lead to 24,000 fewer jobs in 2030, according to a report commissioned by Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Taxpayers will need to pay an extra $85 million to fuel the bureaucracy administering this regulatory quagmire, according to the government. Canadians will have the pleasure of paying higher taxes so more federal paper-pushers can increase our fuel prices and force our neighbours out of a job.
To make matters worse, there are no rebates with the second carbon tax, and it's being layered on top of Trudeau's current tax.
Trudeau's current carbon tax is already costing the average family up to $710 more per year than they get back in rebates, according to the PBO.
Higher fuel prices also mean higher sales taxes, which the federal government applies on top of gas taxes. Canadians will pay $429 million more this year in GST because of this tax-on-tax.
Trudeau is cranking up his current carbon tax until it reaches more than 37 cents per litre of gas by 2030. By the end of the decade, Trudeau's two carbon taxes will increase the price of gas by about 55 cents per litre and cost the average family more than $2,000 annually.
All this pain is for nothing.
Making it more expensive for Canadians to gas up their car or keep the natural gas running during winter will have a negligible impact on the environment.
With Canada making up just 1.5 per cent of global emissions, the PBO notes that "Canada's own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change." In 2018, Trudeau himself acknowledged that "even if Canada stopped everything tomorrow, and the other countries didn't have any solutions, it wouldn't make a big difference."
Trudeau's tax is especially self-defeating when more than three-quarters of countries don't have a national carbon tax, as highlighted by the World Bank. Meanwhile, Canada will soon have two.
Ottawa increased gas taxes while other countries cut them. Australia cut its gas tax in half. South Korea reduced gas taxes by 30 per cent. The United Kingdom provided billions of dollars in gas tax relief. New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Israel and Portugal also cut fuel taxes, along with provinces like Alberta, Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Canadians need another carbon tax like we need a kick in the head. A government that was even remotely serious about making life more affordable would immediately back away from carbon taxes.
This country is sooooooo FUBAR!
More wasted money.
Canada pledges $450 million for UN climate change fund
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/canada-pledges-450-million-for-un-climate-change-fund/ar-AA1dLPdD?ocid=socialshare&pc=U531&cvid=c1e9ea597b5a40c88b2fb8da8ffd48c3&ei=12
Canada will contribute $450 million to the United Nations' main fund to help developing countries cope with climate change, the country's climate minister said on Wednesday.
Steven Guilbeault said the commitment was a 50% increase from Canada's previous pledge, made in 2019, to the UN Green Climate Fund. He called on other countries to also step up their contributions.
It is your failing government that has given us a lost decade and record high spending and debt that should be voted out next election, not our oil and gas sector.
Canadian minister: Fossil fuels must be phased out 'no later than 2050'
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/interview/canadian-minister-fossil-fuels-must-be-phased-out-no-later-than-2050/
World nations must agree to phase out unabated fossil fuels "no later than 2050" and earlier if possible, says Steven Guilbeault – with any residual oil and gas emissions mitigated thanks to carbon capture and storage technology, he told EURACTIV in an interview.
Steven Guilbeault is Canada's minister of environment and climate change. A founding member of the Quebec environmental group Équiterre, he was director and campaign manager for the Quebec chapter of Greenpeace for ten years.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
Canada aligns with Europe's objective to accelerate the deployment of renewables, increase energy efficiency and reduce dependency on fossil fuels at the COP28 summit in Dubai.
Ottawa will soon table regulations for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.
Canada has "a more agnostic view" than the European Commission about which sectors should or shouldn't use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
"2023 is the year" when rich nations will meet their $100 billion commitment to developing nations on climate change.
And if it means unaffordable energy, reduced living standards, blackouts and homelessness so be it. You will be pleased to know it will not affect Justine.
Politicians clueless about implications of 'net zero' crusade
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-politicians-clueless-about-implications-of-net-zero-crusade
"Net zero" is a popular talking point among many politicians and members of the commentariat. It refers to the idea of eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to the production and use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and thermal coal) by 2050 or sooner. Many believe this is necessary to stem the warming of the Earth's atmosphere that's been occurring since the late 1800s.
In Canada, the Trudeau government has embraced net zero and adopted a host of laws, policies and regulations intended to reduce GHG emissions including to fully "decarbonize" the electricity sector by 2035, only a dozen years from today.
To be sure, moving away from fossil fuels as an electricity source is necessary if policymakers are committed to net zero. However, doing so won't be easy. Few champions of net zero have any idea how much additional electricity — not just capacity, but reliable "watt-hours" — will be needed to meet this goal. Fewer still understand the infrastructure requirements of developing an entire energy system centred around electricity. And almost none have a handle on the gargantuan capital investments needed to finance and engineer a rapid energy transition, or what this means for Canada's existing regulatory processes.
Canada is unusual globally in that our electricity system already is relatively "green," with about four-fifths of electricity generation coming from water, nuclear, wind and other renewables. But there's a qualification: electricity satisfies only a modest slice — roughly one-fifth — of Canada's total primary energy demand. Fossil fuels supply most of the energy used in transportation, heating, agriculture and industrial activity.
Converting aggregate energy consumption to a single common unit — gigawatt hours, which is how we measure useable electricity — policy analyst Denise Mullen has calculated that Canada would need at least 20 new power generation projects, each matching the output of British Columbia's Site C dam, to reach a 100% clean electric system.
Site C is a large and complex project that's been plagued by delays and soaring costs. It's hard to imagine Canada pursuing 20 or more projects of similar size within the next decade. Another option might be to build hordes of smaller generation facilities, possibly with a couple of bigger ones tossed into the mix, to significantly expand the production of clean electricity. The federal government seems to be leaning in this direction, with billions of dollars set aside in Budget 2023 to subsidize the roll-out of new clean electricity generation and transmission infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Canada has acquired a reputation as a difficult place to pursue industrial development, including "linear" infrastructure such as pipelines and power lines. It can easily take more than a decade to get a mid-sized project approved, permitted and constructed, even with strong government support, Due to our environmental review processes, permitting systems, legal obligations to consult with and accommodate Indigenous communities, and frequent public and interest group opposition.
Are policymakers in Ottawa and across the country prepared to overhaul project review and approval processes to realize net zero? Does the public understand the costs and risks involved in massive new investments in power generation and transmission? Such questions tend to be waved away by politicians and pundits captivated by the vision of net zero. But bold vision without a solid grasp of the facts and context and a realistic plan of execution amounts to hallucination. There's plenty of that in Canada today.
Jock Finlayson is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute
Quote from: HermanAnd if it means unaffordable energy, reduced living standards, blackouts and homelessness so be it. You will be pleased to know it will not affect Justine.
Politicians clueless about implications of 'net zero' crusade
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-politicians-clueless-about-implications-of-net-zero-crusade
"Net zero" is a popular talking point among many politicians and members of the commentariat. It refers to the idea of eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to the production and use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and thermal coal) by 2050 or sooner. Many believe this is necessary to stem the warming of the Earth's atmosphere that's been occurring since the late 1800s.
In Canada, the Trudeau government has embraced net zero and adopted a host of laws, policies and regulations intended to reduce GHG emissions including to fully "decarbonize" the electricity sector by 2035, only a dozen years from today.
To be sure, moving away from fossil fuels as an electricity source is necessary if policymakers are committed to net zero. However, doing so won't be easy. Few champions of net zero have any idea how much additional electricity — not just capacity, but reliable "watt-hours" — will be needed to meet this goal. Fewer still understand the infrastructure requirements of developing an entire energy system centred around electricity. And almost none have a handle on the gargantuan capital investments needed to finance and engineer a rapid energy transition, or what this means for Canada's existing regulatory processes.
Canada is unusual globally in that our electricity system already is relatively "green," with about four-fifths of electricity generation coming from water, nuclear, wind and other renewables. But there's a qualification: electricity satisfies only a modest slice — roughly one-fifth — of Canada's total primary energy demand. Fossil fuels supply most of the energy used in transportation, heating, agriculture and industrial activity.
Converting aggregate energy consumption to a single common unit — gigawatt hours, which is how we measure useable electricity — policy analyst Denise Mullen has calculated that Canada would need at least 20 new power generation projects, each matching the output of British Columbia's Site C dam, to reach a 100% clean electric system.
Site C is a large and complex project that's been plagued by delays and soaring costs. It's hard to imagine Canada pursuing 20 or more projects of similar size within the next decade. Another option might be to build hordes of smaller generation facilities, possibly with a couple of bigger ones tossed into the mix, to significantly expand the production of clean electricity. The federal government seems to be leaning in this direction, with billions of dollars set aside in Budget 2023 to subsidize the roll-out of new clean electricity generation and transmission infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Canada has acquired a reputation as a difficult place to pursue industrial development, including "linear" infrastructure such as pipelines and power lines. It can easily take more than a decade to get a mid-sized project approved, permitted and constructed, even with strong government support, Due to our environmental review processes, permitting systems, legal obligations to consult with and accommodate Indigenous communities, and frequent public and interest group opposition.
Are policymakers in Ottawa and across the country prepared to overhaul project review and approval processes to realize net zero? Does the public understand the costs and risks involved in massive new investments in power generation and transmission? Such questions tend to be waved away by politicians and pundits captivated by the vision of net zero. But bold vision without a solid grasp of the facts and context and a realistic plan of execution amounts to hallucination. There's plenty of that in Canada today.
Jock Finlayson is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute
None of Triudeau's dictatorial decrees will impact global emissions nor will affect the climate in Canada. What it will do is cause widespread hardship across Canada. Even the Parliamentary Budget Office acknowledged that.
Quote from: DKGQuote from: HermanAnd if it means unaffordable energy, reduced living standards, blackouts and homelessness so be it. You will be pleased to know it will not affect Justine.
Politicians clueless about implications of 'net zero' crusade
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-politicians-clueless-about-implications-of-net-zero-crusade
"Net zero" is a popular talking point among many politicians and members of the commentariat. It refers to the idea of eliminating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions attributable to the production and use of fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and thermal coal) by 2050 or sooner. Many believe this is necessary to stem the warming of the Earth's atmosphere that's been occurring since the late 1800s.
In Canada, the Trudeau government has embraced net zero and adopted a host of laws, policies and regulations intended to reduce GHG emissions including to fully "decarbonize" the electricity sector by 2035, only a dozen years from today.
To be sure, moving away from fossil fuels as an electricity source is necessary if policymakers are committed to net zero. However, doing so won't be easy. Few champions of net zero have any idea how much additional electricity — not just capacity, but reliable "watt-hours" — will be needed to meet this goal. Fewer still understand the infrastructure requirements of developing an entire energy system centred around electricity. And almost none have a handle on the gargantuan capital investments needed to finance and engineer a rapid energy transition, or what this means for Canada's existing regulatory processes.
Canada is unusual globally in that our electricity system already is relatively "green," with about four-fifths of electricity generation coming from water, nuclear, wind and other renewables. But there's a qualification: electricity satisfies only a modest slice — roughly one-fifth — of Canada's total primary energy demand. Fossil fuels supply most of the energy used in transportation, heating, agriculture and industrial activity.
Converting aggregate energy consumption to a single common unit — gigawatt hours, which is how we measure useable electricity — policy analyst Denise Mullen has calculated that Canada would need at least 20 new power generation projects, each matching the output of British Columbia's Site C dam, to reach a 100% clean electric system.
Site C is a large and complex project that's been plagued by delays and soaring costs. It's hard to imagine Canada pursuing 20 or more projects of similar size within the next decade. Another option might be to build hordes of smaller generation facilities, possibly with a couple of bigger ones tossed into the mix, to significantly expand the production of clean electricity. The federal government seems to be leaning in this direction, with billions of dollars set aside in Budget 2023 to subsidize the roll-out of new clean electricity generation and transmission infrastructure.
Meanwhile, Canada has acquired a reputation as a difficult place to pursue industrial development, including "linear" infrastructure such as pipelines and power lines. It can easily take more than a decade to get a mid-sized project approved, permitted and constructed, even with strong government support, Due to our environmental review processes, permitting systems, legal obligations to consult with and accommodate Indigenous communities, and frequent public and interest group opposition.
Are policymakers in Ottawa and across the country prepared to overhaul project review and approval processes to realize net zero? Does the public understand the costs and risks involved in massive new investments in power generation and transmission? Such questions tend to be waved away by politicians and pundits captivated by the vision of net zero. But bold vision without a solid grasp of the facts and context and a realistic plan of execution amounts to hallucination. There's plenty of that in Canada today.
Jock Finlayson is a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute
None of Triudeau's dictatorial decrees will impact global emissions nor will affect the climate in Canada. What it will do is cause widespread hardship across Canada. Even the Parliamentary Budget Office acknowledged that.
Western governments are giving the world, including their own countries, to china.
Imagine this. You're at home on a crisp prairie winter evening. You go to turn up your heat, but then you hesitate. You feel a chill but it isn't from the cold outside. It's from the thought of your power bill that is surging by 200% to 500% or even more.
That's what the future could look like if Justine's plan for a net-zero electricity grid by 2035 moves forward.
According to a new report from the Public Policy Forum, backed up by the Conference Board of Canada, the cost of Justine's latest ideological crusade could soar past a trillion dollars. That's almost as big as the entire Canadian economy.
Regardless of whatever causes Climate change or environmental destruction, the planet has a severe overpopulation problem.
Even conservatives in this forum who often disagree with me, at least agree on this point. So when conservative and liberals actually agree on common facts or principles then the both must be correct.
Nevermind climate change, if we don't get the populatin down, we're in trouble:
(https://openlearncreatelive-s3bucket.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/c0/04/c0044aff74270d509de49000d95a52730022b3a6?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22m2_ss2_fig2.1web.jpg%22&response-content-type=image%2Fjpeg&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAUGDHWV25PIQSIQVT%2F20230721%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20230721T063121Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=86379&X-Amz-Signature=b58c1efe888521ebd6d2718957146b0a039aa304ca4c0e75b271e941539f7fe9)
We've added more people in less than 50 years, then ever existed on the planet for millions of years. In fact we're even ahead of schedule according to the above graph which I suspect was made prior to 2023.
Yeah, I'm not surprised that things are falling apart. Socially, economically, environmentally, climatically.
It's like filling up a building meant for 50 people with 100.
And of course the building starts to fall apart.
so overpopulation is essentialy the same idea.
Joey, Thiel needs to Calgon your arse like a Klingon bird of prey between the sheets...
Just say yes.
Quote from: FroodJoey, Thiel needs to Calgon your arse like a Klingon bird of prey between the sheets...
Just say yes.
how much time do you think we have left, Frood?
10 years? 20? 30? 40?I can't see the world lasting as a functional whole beyond 2060.
And that...is optimistic.
Quote from: JOEQuote from: FroodJoey, Thiel needs to Calgon your arse like a Klingon bird of prey between the sheets...
Just say yes.
how much time do you think we have left, Frood?
10 years? 20? 30? 40?I can't see the world lasting as a functional whole beyond 2060.
And that...is optimistic.
Minimum of a few months... maximum of 5 years.
So love Thiel back before you die with regrets...
Quote from: FroodQuote from: JOEhow much time do you think we have left, Frood?
10 years? 20? 30? 40?I can't see the world lasting as a functional whole beyond 2060.
And that...is optimistic.
Minimum of a few months... maximum of 5 years.
So love Thiel back before you die with regrets...
Why don't you, Frood?
Heck you once claimed in this forum that you were a woman who had a fully formed adult vagina. Lol! Isn't that what seamajor razzes you about all the time?
so ya'd be far better suited for that purpose than I
Quote from: JOEQuote from: FroodMinimum of a few months... maximum of 5 years.
So love Thiel back before you die with regrets...
Why don't you, Frood?
Heck you once claimed in this forum that you were a woman who had a fully formed adult vagina. Lol! Isn't that what seamajor razzes you about all the time?
so ya'd be far better suited for that purpose than I
Seaboobs razzes me about as much as bluegill or sunny razzes a baited hook.
I've seen the way you and Thiel look at each other's "posts"... there's sumfink sumfink there, mate....
An excellent editorial in Sun Media about Trudeau's impossible net zero power transmission goals that will bankrupt Canada and have Canadians having freezing in the dark.
Federal Libs' net-zero ambitions a pipe dream
The Conference Board of Canada and the Public Policy Forum think-tank estimate the cost of converting Canada's power grid to net-zero emissions will be $1.7 trillion over the next 25 years if we are to meet Ottawa's enviro targets.
Converting to net-zero power generation is easy for some provinces. They have plenty of hydroelectricity and nuclear generation.
Already about 80 per cent of Canada's power comes from near-zero sources.
Can you guess which provinces will have the easiest time meeting Ottawa's goal? Which provinces will have to spend the least money and go through the least-painful transitions?
Why, yes, you guessed it — Liberal-loving Ontario and Quebec. Ontario has lots of nuclear power. And both provinces built giant hydroelectric projects back in the days when Liberals didn't object to landscape-altering dams and river-changing spillways.
Quebec's James Bay project generates the same amount of electricity as 15 average-sized nuclear power plants, so who cares whether it displaced thousands of First People, killed off tens of thousands of caribou and mercury-contaminated major watersheds?
Quebec gets an environmental pass from Ottawa.
Alberta spent billions in the past decade converting its generating plants from coal to clean natural gas. But nat-gas isn't clean enough for the eco-zealots who run the Liberal government. So now Alberta must spend tens of billions (or hundreds of billions) closeting its natural gas plants in favour of ... well, presumably in favour of wind and solar plants, because even if we had the necessary rivers to dam up, it is unlikely we could get federal regulatory approval to do the kind of eco-damage Quebec got away with in the 1970s and '80s.
Now for the true kicker: The Conference Board of Canada and the Public Policy Forum think-tank estimate the cost of converting Canada's power grid to net-zero emissions will be $1.7 trillion over the next 25 years if we are to meet Ottawa's enviro targets.
That's roughly the same as one year of Canada's annual GDP. It's a preposterous sum.
As the Public Policy Forum put it, "Canada's national landscape is currently dotted by more than 100 power plants of at least 250 MW." To meet the expected growth in demand for electricity (think electric vehicles) and to meet the Liberals' net-zero target, "soon we will need 220 to 340 of them."
Canada will need at least double the number of power plants (or the equivalent in solar and wind farms) in just over a decade and triple the number by 2050. All at a cost of one year's total GDP.
That would require an effort equivalent to refighting the Second World War — twice — in terms of money, construction and manpower. And Ottawa hasn't even begun to mobilize that kind of national effort.
So when the Alberta government says the feds are living in an eco Lalaland that will lead to a quintupling of home heating and power bills, understand they are not being eco dinosaurs or outdated sticks-in-the-mud. They're just being pragmatists.
I put this in the big politics thread but as it concerns Canada and retarded policies due to climate alarmism it probably fits here better.
https://www.rebelnews.com/federal_emission_targets_require_drastic_cuts_to_fertilizer_use_and_would_jeopardize_economic_viability_of_farming_report#google_vignette
Quote from: JOERegardless of whatever causes Climate change or environmental destruction, the planet has a severe overpopulation problem.
Even conservatives in this forum who often disagree with me, at least agree on this point. So when conservative and liberals actually agree on common facts or principles then the both must be correct.
Nevermind climate change, if we don't get the populatin down, we're in trouble:
(https://openlearncreatelive-s3bucket.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/c0/04/c0044aff74270d509de49000d95a52730022b3a6?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22m2_ss2_fig2.1web.jpg%22&response-content-type=image%2Fjpeg&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAUGDHWV25PIQSIQVT%2F20230721%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20230721T063121Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=86379&X-Amz-Signature=b58c1efe888521ebd6d2718957146b0a039aa304ca4c0e75b271e941539f7fe9)
We've added more people in less than 50 years, then ever existed on the planet for millions of years. In fact we're even ahead of schedule according to the above graph which I suspect was made prior to 2023.
Yeah, I'm not surprised that things are falling apart. Socially, economically, environmentally, climatically.
It's like filling up a building meant for 50 people with 100.
And of course the building starts to fall apart.
so overpopulation is essentialy the same idea.
Dumb. Most of the 1st and old 2nd world have collapsing populations and only 3rd world crapholes have quickly growing populations.
Quote from: OerdinI put this in the big politics thread but as it concerns Canada and retarded policies due to climate alarmism it probably fits here better.
https://www.rebelnews.com/federal_emission_targets_require_drastic_cuts_to_fertilizer_use_and_would_jeopardize_economic_viability_of_farming_report#google_vignette
Justine can stick it up his ass. I am not complying.
Canadians aren't interested in paying more to fight climate change despite the Trudeau government's plans to take Canada in that direction.
A new poll finds just 18% support continuing to increase the tax while the majority want the tax reduced or eliminated altogether.
In fact, more than twice as many Canadians, 37%, want the tax eliminated than want it to increase. Meanwhile, a further 18% want the tax reduced while 27% say it should stay where it is now.
The Leger poll of 1,564 Canadians was conducted from Sept. 15-17 and asked a number of questions about the Trudeau government's plans to make Canada a net=zero emitter by 2050. Seems most aren't aware of the plans and then once made aware, don't find the plans to be realistic.
The poll even asked a direct question about paying more for gasoline and the response was an overwhelming no. After explaining that the current carbon tax contributes about 14 cents per litre to the price of gas and the planned increase will contribute 40 cents per litre by 2030, poll participants were asked, "Do you support paying more for gasoline as part of Canada's climate net-zero policies?"
A stunning 68% said no, they don't want to pay more for gas while just 20% said yes and 12% said they didn't know.
Among those who said they don't want to pay more for gas were 25% of those who said they want to keep seeing the carbon tax increase. Seems those advocating for the carbon tax to go up really mean they want other people to pay more, not themselves.
But most Canadians don't want to pay more for gas and most don't want the carbon tax to go up. That might be because despite what the people at the top keep telling us, average Canadians know this tax is making life less affordable and despite what the government says, you aren't getting more in rebates than you pay.
Former Finance Minister Joe Oliver tells it like it is.
Canada will soon be alone and ignored in its climate obsession
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/opinion-canada-will-soon-be-alone-and-ignored-in-its-climate-obsession/ar-AA1hG0O4?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=6d5d20f8510f44a593e31973d99b3b56&ei=13
In its fervour to achieve net zero emissions the federal government is increasingly isolated internationally, while its influence on other countries has vanished as, through incompetence and worse, it has tarnished Canada's brand as a country to emulate.
As Mike Tyson once said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face." The European Union had a plan to reach net zero by 2050 but its member states have now been hit by a severe energy crisis and are backing off in response to popular discontent.
In a "brave new approach to politics" designed to stave off electoral defeat next year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reversed course and approved development of a giant offshore oil and gas field. And he delayed signing off on green policies that would have imposed "unacceptable costs" — calculated to be five times their economic benefits — borne disproportionately by blue-collar workers.
n support of Sunak's belated awakening to economic and political reality, the Telegraph queried, "If the consequences are prohibitively expensive and involve saddling millions of households with additional expenditure for unknowable benefits in an unfair way, why would anyone make the transition?" Why, indeed, Mr. Trudeau, when according to a Leger poll only 15 per cent of Canadians think net zero is realistic? The question has added poignancy since the green policies of both countries can have only a negligible influence on global emissions and none on temperatures.
According to the EU's top energy official, with renewables unable to make up for the disappearance of Russian natural gas, Europe will need U.S. fossil fuels for several more decades. No mention of Canada, the world's sixth largest gas producer, since we literally cannot deliver either to Europe or to the vast Asian market. So much for Justin Trudeau's inane comment that there is no business case for exporting Canadian natural gas. Strong global demand for oil will now be supplied by less environmentally conscious petro-states, rather than from our proven reserves, the fourth largest in the world.
Germany's finance minister — Germany's — recently criticized the EU for its "enormously dangerous" green plans that threaten social peace. He is busy trying to reverse the de-industrializing effect of the high green energy prices that now have people calling his country "the sick man of Europe." In France, President Emmanuel Macron has given no date for banning fossil fuels. India's Narendra Modi warns Western countries not to impose "restrictive" climate-change policies on the developing world, while for its part, China has six times more coal plants under construction than the rest of the world combined. Its emissions have tripled since 1990.
In the U.S., moving entirely to EVs could cut union employment by half in electorally crucial Rust Belt states. If Republicans score a 2024 trifecta of presidency, Senate and House, that likely would lead to dramatic reversals in green policies, including increased drilling for oil and gas. Then Canada would be virtually alone in its fixation on climate apocalypse.
The progressive conceit that Canada can serve as a moral leader on climate change was always egotistical nonsense. The world is bemused by our self-harm and irritated by our hectoring, especially since we have missed our Paris Accord commitments and every other target we ever set. Canadians are very tolerant and fair-minded, with much to be proud of. But our prime minister has talked down our brand by decrying our supposedly "genocidal" past and systemically racist present.
Because the rush to net zero is a) unattainable, b) colossally expensive and c) without appreciable environmental benefit, it should be a political loser. But true believers, rent-seekers, socialist ideologues, mainstream media devotees and compromised academics inundate the public with hyperbolic fear-mongering, while alternative voices, including reputable scientists who don't self-censor, are banned or ignored. Without determined political leadership to fundamentally change direction, we will fall even further behind a world that is increasingly indifferent to Canada's climate jeremiads.
It is past time to stop our indulgent moralizing about climate change. We need to reverse policies that are causing severe economic and social damage and start acting rationally in our national self-interest.
The 2EF'w goal is to destroy western society, end democracy, and create an unexpected totalitarian state run by them. They want to lock you down, prevent you from traveling, they want to impoveriah you, they 2ant energy to be unobtainable for you but easy to get for them, and they even want to be able to dictate to you what you can and cannot spend your money on.
There's so much anger against them, but people keep using them. See, in China, in school they tell you the fossil fuels are terrible and they're destroying our planet or not? No. Okay, but in America, do they tell you fossil fuels are terrible and hey're just destroying our planet? Yes. This is one of the main things we teach kids is they're terrible and they're destroying our planet. And yet kids hear this and they go and put gas in their car. Why are people doing it?
The Parliamentary Budget Officer reports the carbon tax will cost Canadian farmers close to $1 billion by 2030.
But it's not just transportation and food that gets hit with Trudeau's carbon tax.
Home heating is punished too. The current carbon tax costs 12 cents extra per cubic metre of natural gas, 10 cents extra per litre of propane and 17 cents extra per litre of furnace oil.
An average Canadian home uses about 2,800 cubic metres of natural gas per year, so the carbon tax will cost them about $337 extra to heat their home. Costs are similar for propane and furnace oil. Home heating is essential for a place like Alberta.
Punishing Canadians with a carbon tax is pointless and unfair.
It's pointless because the carbon tax won't fix climate change. As the PBO has noted, "Canada's own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change."
It's unfair because ordinary people who are driving to work, buying food for their families and heating their homes are backed into a corner. Carbon tax cheerleaders tell them to "switch."
Switch to what?
What abundant, reliable, affordable alternative energy source is available to Canadians? This isn't like choosing between paper or plastic bags, this is about surviving the winter and affording food, or not.
Canadians should not be punished for staying warm and feeding their families.
Canada's Supreme Court Deals Blow to Justin Trudeau's Liberals, Rules That a Federal Climate Alarmist Law Is Unconstitutional
(https://i.imgur.com/GLC5kXQ.png)
In yet another political defeat, the Liberal government of Canadian Globalist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has seen their climate alarmist policies overturned by the country's supreme court.
In a Friday decision, Canada's Supreme Court dealt a blow to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government as they ruled that a federal law on the environment is mostly unconstitutional.
The Impact Assessment Act (IAA) is designed to measure how major projects – such as coal mines and oil sands plants – impact the environment.
The Supreme Court decision is a victory for the provincial government of Alberta, Canada's main fossil fuel-producing region.
Alberta challenged the IAA, saying it gave the federal government in Ottawa too much power to discontinue natural resource projects.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/canadas-supreme-court-deals-blow-justin-trudeaus-liberals/
Quote from: Oliver the Second on October 14, 2023, 02:50:52 PMCanada's Supreme Court Deals Blow to Justin Trudeau's Liberals, Rules That a Federal Climate Alarmist Law Is Unconstitutional
(https://i.imgur.com/GLC5kXQ.png)
In yet another political defeat, the Liberal government of Canadian Globalist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has seen their climate alarmist policies overturned by the country's supreme court.
In a Friday decision, Canada's Supreme Court dealt a blow to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government as they ruled that a federal law on the environment is mostly unconstitutional.
The Impact Assessment Act (IAA) is designed to measure how major projects – such as coal mines and oil sands plants – impact the environment.
The Supreme Court decision is a victory for the provincial government of Alberta, Canada's main fossil fuel-producing region.
Alberta challenged the IAA, saying it gave the federal government in Ottawa too much power to discontinue natural resource projects.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/canadas-supreme-court-deals-blow-justin-trudeaus-liberals/
Bill C-69 was blatant federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction.
Canada's constitution splits most major responsibilities between federal and provincial governments, while a few are shared jointly. Using the environment as an excuse, the Trudeau government was trying to rewrite the basic law of the land.
The Supreme Court ruled the Trudeau government "plainly overstepped the mark" with the IAA. The act can apply to federally funded projects on federal land, or Canadian projects outside the country, but, the court decided 5-2, the feds cannot use the alleged climate crisis as an excuse to override the constitutional division of powers between the federal government and the provinces.
Hallelujah!
The act was appallingly "woke" and entirely impractical. In fact, it could easily be argued the law was designed to thwart all new energy projects.
For instance, it contained clauses elevating "Indigenous knowledge" and gender sensitivity to the same level as scientific assessment of environmental impact in determining whether future pipelines, hydro dams, oilsands developments and other energy projects should go ahead.
Supposedly deliberately, the act never properly defined what was meant by Indigenous knowledge.
A prime example is the Coastal GasLink pipeline in northwestern B.C. Its construction was not popular with the Trudeau government, which would rather not see the development of a liquid natural gas industry in Canada.
The elected chiefs of the Indigenous communities along the route were in favour, but the largely ceremonial hereditary chiefs were opposed. It would have been very easy under the IAA for federal regulators to ignore the democratic chiefs and kill the GasLink line, which is currently expected to be completed later this year or early next.
There was another great hazard if the Supreme Court had upheld the IAA – the threat to national unity.
Not only had Ottawa crushed provincial constitutional jurisdiction through the IAA, it had effectively declared war on the oil and gas industry and those parts of the country that rely on the energy sector.
Friday's ruling at least won't add to western alienation and the possibility of western separatism becoming a force.
The IAA ruling may also set a precedent against other federal overreach, such as last month's clean electricity regulations that mandate wildly unrealistic net-zero emission goals for electricity generation by 2035.
That is a similar federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction.
I heard record numbers of people who had moved to Canada are now leaving.
Trudeau will be gone soon. But what will his legacy be? Legalization of marijuana? If he got his way it would be the total elimination of a prosperous middle class using the climate emergency as his excuse.
Meeting UN's absurd emission targets would bankrupt Canada
Every major United Nations conference on climate change ends the same way – with absurd political hype over adopting meaningless catch phrases and setting imaginary goals that its 195 member nations will then fail to achieve.
This year's global gabfest in Dubai, located in an uber-wealthy Mideast petrostate, will be no different, so for the next few days, be prepared to endure endless ginned up media hysteria about whether member countries, including Canada, will agree to either:
The Trudeau government's position has been to phase out unabated fossil fuels – meaning the use of oil, natural gas and coal to produce energy where there is no mechanism to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions they produce, such as carbon capture.
The new way the Trudeau government says it is that Canada's policy is to phase out unabated fossil fuels, meaning fossil fuels will still be used even under the government's policy to achieve "net zero" emissions by 2050, although overall production will be drastically reduced.
Regardless of what wording this latest UN global gabfest on climate change comes up with – and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is one of the conference's "co-facilitators" working on the issue – public skepticism is warranted.
That conference grandiosely announced all member nations, including Canada, would adopt policies to limit the increase in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Eight years later, the UN's climate czars announced last month heading into the Dubai conference that current international commitments to reduce emissions will only lower them to 2% below 2019 levels by 2030, when a 43% reduction is needed to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Applying that target to Canada, our greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 totalled 724 million tonnes.
A 43% reduction by 2030 would mean cutting our annual emissions to 413 million tonnes in seven years, significantly more stringent than Canada's current target of 439 million tonnes.
Canada's current annual emissions based on the latest federal government data from 2021 were 670 million tonnes.
That means Canada would have to cut our annual emissions by 257 million tonnes annually by 2030 to meet the UN target.
That would mean reducing our emissions by the equivalent of all annual emissions from Canada's oil and gas sector (189.2 million tonnes) plus the agriculture sector (68.5 million tonnes) in seven years.
The negative impact on our economy of achieving that target would be devastating, so the real issue is how much economic damage is the Trudeau government prepared to inflict on us in attempting to achieve an impossible target?
What the Trudeau government has consistently failed to understand is that Canadians are ready to help lower emissions if they have realistic ways to do so that do not impose unfair economic burdens on them, particularly in the tough economic times and affordability crisis they are currently facing.
However, they will, and are, rejecting federal policies that simply increase their cost of living with no demonstrable benefit to the environment.
That's because with 1.6% of the global total, Canada's emissions are not enough to materially impact climate change, as the parliamentary budget officer has reported, along with the fact that when the negative impact on the Canadian economy of the federal carbon tax is factored in, most Canadian households paying it end up worse off financially, despite federal rebates.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-meeting-uns-absurd-emission-targets-would-bankrupt-canada
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault will mandate that all new cars be zero-emission by 2035, with a government official claiming the move is to allow quicker access to electric vehicles, according to an anonymous official.
The law will require that 20% of car sales be electric cars in 2026, 60% in 2030, and of course 100% by 2035. Companies can also reportedly receive credits toward their zero-emission vehicle sales before the regulations are put into effect in 2026.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced that 20% of all new vehicles sold in Canada "must be" EVs by 2026.
That's at least double the share now. So, what is Guilbeault's strategy for pulling off this radical transformation? He plans to reduce the time consumers must wait for delivery of electric cars. According to the brains trust in Ottawa, buyers are shying away from EVs because they have to wait too long for them to show up.
That might have been the problem two or three years ago, but now the reverse is true. Now, dealers across the country have unsold EVs piling up on their lots because automakers overestimated consumer demand, made too many of them and ended up shipping the extras to dealerships whether the retailers wanted them or not. There are now too many EVs and not enough customers.
Ford and General Motors have announced huge reductions in EV production because consumer demand just isn't there.
Trust Justine's government to propose a costly solution to a problem that no longer exists.
The problem is, EVs remain too expensive for middle-class buyers. Once manufacturers satisfy the demand of wealthier customers for EVs as symbols of their upper-middle-class eco commitment, there is far less uptake among people earning under $100,000 or more.
Last year, our federal Natural Resources department even admitted the push for all new vehicle sales to be EVs by 2035 would make cars and light trucks too expensive for 25% of Canadians. When it is no longer possible to buy internal-combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, one-quarter of Canadians will just have to go without cars. That doesn't seem to bother Guilbeault, Trudeau or their pals in the environmental movement.
Also, contrary to Liberal hype, EVs not only cost more to buy, they cost more to maintain and repair. Their range between charges is poor in the winter and recharging times are long.
Consumer Reports magazine recently found EVs are 73% less reliable than gasoline and diesel vehicles. Because they are so much heavier, they chew through tires 40% faster. When they are in collisions, they cause more damage and are more expensive to repair, so are costlier to insure.
Contrary to Liberal bumph, over their lifetimes, they are not cheaper than internal combustion engine vehicles.
And don't forget, we aren't building new power plants fast enough to charge them all.
I saw this on a Postmedia link.
Carbon tax a fraction of total carbon costs
The Trudeau government's argument that the federal carbon tax is only a minor contributor to inflation wouldn't be as aggravating if it was the only thing in its climate plan.
But it's just one thing in that plan that is adding to the cost of living for Canadians.
We're told that, at the current inflation rate of about 3%, the carbon tax on fossil fuels contributes only 0.15 percentage points of the total; a bit more if you factor in its indirect costs on most goods and services, including food.
But that's not the only cost.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in April the government's spending commitment on climate change is north of $200 billion — so far.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said last year that when you factor in the negative impact of the carbon tax on the economy, 60% of households paying it are already paying hundreds of dollars more in carbon taxes annually than they get back in climate action incentive payments.
The Trudeau government's argument that the federal carbon tax is only a minor contributor to inflation wouldn't be as aggravating if it was the only thing in its climate plan.
But it's just one thing in that plan that is adding to the cost of living for Canadians.
We're told that, at the current inflation rate of about 3%, the carbon tax on fossil fuels contributes only 0.15 percentage points of the total; a bit more if you factor in its indirect costs on most goods and services, including food.
But that's not the only cost.
Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said in April the government's spending commitment on climate change is north of $200 billion — so far.
Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said last year that when you factor in the negative impact of the carbon tax on the economy, 60% of households paying it are already paying hundreds of dollars more in carbon taxes annually than they get back in climate action incentive payments.
In some provinces, that will increase to 80%, as the carbon tax increases from its current $65 per tonne of greenhouse gas emissions to $170 per tonne in 2030.
There are federal clean fuel and clean electricity standards which will add to our cost of living, increasingly, over time.
There's the cost of upgrading the electricity grid — with the heavy lifting to be done by provincial taxpayers and ratepayers.
That will be necessary to handle the increased demand for electricity, due to mandated federal electric vehicle sales targets, rising from 20% of the market in 2026 to 100% in 2035.
Because EVs are more expensive, less reliable and have less range than traditional gas-powered vehicles, costs to buyers are being subsidized by federal and some provincial governments — paid by taxpayers.
Setting up a supply chain for EVs is costing taxpayers money, as well as establishing a national charging system for them, plus the costs faced by EV owners for installing home charging stations.
True, some of this money will create new jobs and tax revenue but that's offset by the government downgrading Canada's oil and gas sector, costing our economy billions of dollars annually, even though, as the PBO noted, Canada's emissions — 1.6% of the global total — aren't enough to materially impact climate change.
All these regulations and taxes do are destroy the living standards of Canadians without doing anything for the environment. I am convinced that is what the fascists at the woke WEF want though. They want the west to destroy itself so it can be replaced by other countries.
Quote from: Oerdin on December 23, 2023, 11:15:28 PMAll these regulations and taxes do are destroy the living standards of Canadians without doing anything for the environment. I am convinced that is what the fascists at the woke WEF want though. They want the west to destroy itself so it can be replaced by other countries.
There is no question our declining living standards are intentional. While Trudeau's so called climate action is creating a lot of poverty in Canada, countries like Vietnam and India are building coal fired power plants.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/HwYjMrQnIlE
Policies like an emissions cap that hurt Canada's oil and gas industry will only help prolong the use of coal as a major global fuel source. Coal was responsible for 76% of all CO2 emissions from the world's power sector in 2022. Replacing it with cleaner LNG from trusted suppliers like Canada could do significantly more to lower emissions on a global scale than any sort of industry-specific emissions cap.
https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022
I think I'm going to start burning all my old tires.
Pat Gray plays a clip of CBS News' Ben Tracy attempting to answer this question by linking "climate change" and "arctic chill."
"It has been really cold in most of the country for the past week or so, and you've probably heard some people say, 'So much for global warming,'" Tracy said. "Well, when we talk about climate change, we're talking about the planet warming over the course of many decades, not what just happens in one winter or over the course of a couple of weeks."
"Keep that in mind: the same thing does not apply in summertime when it's 106. That is unprecedented; it is unreal; it is unsustainable ... but in the winter, totally explainable," interjects Pat sarcastically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E_L6NiopCc&t=32s
Trudeau government doesn't know how much its carbon tax reduces emissions
So how can Canadians possibly know if they're getting good value for the money they're spending on the carbon tax?
QuoteGiven that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's carbon tax is costing the average Canadian household hundreds of dollars annually when factoring in its negative impact on the economy, how much is it lowering Canada's greenhouse gas emissions?
The answer is the Trudeau government doesn't know.
In response to an order paper question by Conservative MP Dan Mazier last week (hat tip to commentator Spencer Fernando for reporting it), Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said:
"The government does not measure the annual amount of emissions that are directly reduced by federal carbon pricing. Retroactively attributing specific GHG reductions to a specific action, such as carbon pricing, a discrete regulation, or a specific incentive, is difficult given the multiple interacting factors that influence emissions, including carbon pricing, tax incentives, funding programs, investor preferences and consumer demand. The National Inventory Report, which reports annually on historical GHG emissions, does not include this information."
Given that, how can Canadians possibly know if they're getting good value for the money they're spending on the carbon tax?
Mazier posted on X that, "Trudeau's radical Environment Minister admits the government DOES NOT measure how many emissions are 'reduced' by their costly carbon tax. Why? Because the carbon tax is not an environmental plan – it's a tax plan."
Parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux reported last year that 60% of Canadian households paying the federal carbon tax (in all provinces except Quebec and B.C., which have federally-approved carbon pricing plans) are paying more in carbon tax than they receive in climate action incentive rebates, when factoring in its negative impact on the Canadian economy.
The PBO says this will increase to 80% in Nova Scotia in 2025, 80% in Ontario in 2026, 80% in Manitoba in 2029 and 80% in Alberta and P.E.I. in 2030.
Here are the PBO's estimated net costs for people living in provinces under the federal carbon tax regime. The first figure is the estimated average household cost this year, with the carbon tax at $65 per tonne of emissions, the second in 2030 when it will be $170 per tonne:
Alberta $710, $2,773; Ontario: $478, $1,820; Saskatchewan $410, $1723; Manitoba $386, $1490; Nova Scotia $431, $1,513; P.E.I $465, $1,521; Newfoundland and Labrador $347, $1,316.
The PBO's calculations did not include New Brunswick because it joined the federal carbon tax system after it did these estimates.
As for the carbon tax's effectiveness as part of what the Trudeau government says is its $200 billion plan to address climate change, Canada's emissions in 2021 increased by 1.8% to 670 million tonnes compared to 2020.
The Trudeau government's goal is to reduce Canada's annual emissions by 40% to 45% compared to 2005 levels in 2030.
In 2021, they were 8.5% lower than 2005 levels.
We won't know Canada's 2022 emissions until April, because the government reports them two years after the fact.
The PBO says Canada's emissions – 1.5% of the global total – are too small to materially impact climate change.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeau-government-doesnt-know-how-much-its-carbon-tax-reduces-emissions
https://twitter.com/MBDan7/status/1753530481218392171?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1753530481218392171%7Ctwgr%5E76e1ef4ca9448d1caf2c43bb30f2ef79a0a0d38d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftorontosun.com%2Fopinion%2Fcolumnists%2Fgoldstein-trudeau-government-doesnt-know-how-much-its-carbon-tax-reduces-emissions
The federal carbon tax has not reduced Canada's emissions. It has reduced living standards though.
Justine's team knows Canadians are tiring of their climate obsession. Therefore, some softening of the blunt force climate trauma they are hitting Canadians with.
This was written by Lorne Gunter of Sun News.
According to internal polling by Pierre Poilievre's party, the federal environment minister, Steven Guilbeault is an enormous drain on Liberal popularity everywhere, except in Montreal and Toronto.
So, it's not surprising, in a party desperate for broader support, that Guilbeault climbed down (sort of) from his pledge to stop giving federal money to new highway construction and is now also backpedalling on his net-zero power grid rules.
No concessions yet on his EV mandate (that only electric vehicles will be available for sale in Canada by 2035), but I am sure that's coming.
This has been quite a week for the Trudeau Liberals' "green" agenda. It's clear Canadians are beginning to push back against the federal government's constant haranguing and preaching on climate change and its hypocritical application of the carbon tax.
On Monday, Guilbeault told a conference of transit planners from across the country that the Liberals had decided the country's current network of highways is "adequate." Therefore, Ottawa would no longer be handing over cash for new construction.
According to the downtown Montreal MP, Canadians should consider living in more densely packed neighbourhoods and taking transit or walking more (as if those options were a possibility outside of three or four downtown city cores).
Just consider the math behind Guilbeault's claim.
The federal government is letting in a million new Canadians each year (more if you count foreign students). Just as that is creating a housing shortage, it is quite quickly going to create a road shortage, too.
It staggers the imagination that a government that is flooding the country with newcomers could insist the current roadway system would remain adequate for more than a year or two.
Of course, by Wednesday, after Canadians had thoroughly mocked Guilbeault's proposal, the minister insisted he hadn't said what he very clearly had said in front of cameras and witnesses.
The point is, someone at Liberal HQ or the PMO was making the radical eco-minister back down, even if only a bit.
Then on Friday, Guilbeault hinted he might soften his net-zero power grid regulations, too, released just before Christmas. He told premiers and other critics "they have been heard" and he soon expected to outline as many as a dozen "major changes."
The Liberals' polling must be revealing what the Conservatives' is – namely that voters outside the blinkered "progressive" bubbles in Montreal and Toronto have had enough of expensive, inconvenient, "green" pipe dreams.
Indeed, a survey of Canadians' attitudes, conducted by the very pro-Trudeau, very "green" Privy Council Office, found 70% of Canadians "strongly or somewhat agree environmentally friendly options are too expensive."
An EV might sound like a nice idea in theory, but when middle-class Canadians go to pay for one, the 40% higher sticker price dulls their enthusiasm to save the planet.
xpect the vote-hungry Liberals to shortly announce they'll permit us to buy gasoline- and diesel-powered cars a bit longer, so long as we please, please, please agree to vote for them again.
They will have to be smarter backing away from EVs than they were backing away from their carbon tax. That reversal applied mostly to Atlantic Canada, because that reliably Liberal region was abandoning the party. But the move didn't save Liberal fortunes there, while at the same time, the obvious favouritism cost them even more support elsewhere.
However, the carbon tax controversy caused the Liberals to try to prove they weren't being inconsistent. So, they voted down a law eliminating the carbon tax on farm fuels, which will cost Canadian farmers nearly $1 billion this year and further raise the price of groceries.
Good strategy, guys.
The Liberals, led by Trudeau and Guilbeault, are suffocating their electoral chances with their "green" obsessions.
Here are the PBO's estimated average net costs (after rebates) for households in provinces under the federal carbon tax regime this year, with the carbon tax at $65 per tonne of emissions, followed by the estimated net cost in 2030, when it will be $170 per tonne.
Alberta $710, $2,773; Ontario: $478, $1,820; Saskatchewan $410, $1723; Manitoba $386, $1490; Nova Scotia $431, $1,513; P.E.I $465, $1,521; Newfoundland and Labrador $347, $1,316.
The idea that the increased costs faced by Canadians paying Trudeau's carbon tax up to 2030 — we don't know what happens after that — will result in savings because of less severe weather in Canada by 2030, when our emissions aren't large enough to materially impact climate change, is absurd.
The PBO estimates the GST portion of the carbon tax or "tax on a tax" will raise $486 million for the federal government this year, rising annually to more than $1 billion in 2030.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says the Trudeau government has not returned $2.5 billion in carbon tax revenues collected since 2019 to small businesses in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, despite promises to do so.
In reality, we don't know how effective the carbon tax is because the Trudeau government doesn't keep track of its impact on emissions. It guesstimates it will account for up to one-third of emission reduction in 2030.
According to the latest available federal government data, Canada's emissions in 2021 went up by 1.8% to 670 million tonnes, compared to 2020.
The U.S., without a national carbon tax, has been more successful than Canada at reducing emissions.
Since the Trudeau government insists 80% of Canadian households paying the federal carbon tax receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes, here's what independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said when he examined the carbon tax last year.
He concluded 60% of households in provinces paying the federal carbon tax (Quebec and B.C. have their own systems) were already paying more in carbon taxes than they received in rebates, rising to 80% in Nova Scotia in 2025, in Ontario in 2026, in Manitoba in 2029 and in Alberta and P.E.I. in 2030.
Here's the net cost, after rebates, the PBO calculated for average households, from 2024 to 2030, as the carbon tax increases by 23% from $65 per tonne of industrial greenhouse gas emissions to $80 on April 1 and then rises by $15 annually to $170 in 2030.
Alberta: 2024 $911; 2025 $1,137; 2026 $1,445; 2027 $1,783; 2028 $2,136; 2029 $2,453; 2030 $2,773.
Ontario: 2024 $627; 2025 $799; 2026 $987; 2027 $1,184; 2028 $1,396; 2029 $1,605; 2030 $1,820.
Saskatchewan: 2024 $525; 2025 $687; 2026 $871; 2027 $1,079; 2028 $1,345; 2029 $1,545; 2030 $1,723.
Manitoba: 2024 $502; 2025 $633; 2026 $791; 2027 $951; 2028 $1,122; 2029 $1,305; 2030 $1,490.
Nova Scotia: 2024 $537; 2025 $665; 2026 $826; 2027 $987; 2028 $1,162; 2029 $1,351; 2030 $1,513.
Newfoundland and Labrador: 2024 $377; 2025 $488; 2026 $637; 2027 $802; 2028 $974; 2029 $1,141; 2030 $1,316.
Prince Edward Island: 2024 $550; 2025 $671; 2026 $838; 2027 $1,007; 2028 $1,172; 2029 $1,345; 2030 $1,521.
New Brunswick isn't included because it joined the federal system after these calculations were made; the three-year carve-out on paying the carbon tax for households heating their homes with oil will temporarily reduce costs for them. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan is refusing to collect the carbon tax on natural gas.
Quote from: DKG on March 22, 2024, 11:51:40 AMSince the Trudeau government insists 80% of Canadian households paying the federal carbon tax receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes, here's what independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said when he examined the carbon tax last year.
He concluded 60% of households in provinces paying the federal carbon tax (Quebec and B.C. have their own systems) were already paying more in carbon taxes than they received in rebates, rising to 80% in Nova Scotia in 2025, in Ontario in 2026, in Manitoba in 2029 and in Alberta and P.E.I. in 2030.
Here's the net cost, after rebates, the PBO calculated for average households, from 2024 to 2030, as the carbon tax increases by 23% from $65 per tonne of industrial greenhouse gas emissions to $80 on April 1 and then rises by $15 annually to $170 in 2030.
Alberta: 2024 $911; 2025 $1,137; 2026 $1,445; 2027 $1,783; 2028 $2,136; 2029 $2,453; 2030 $2,773.
Ontario: 2024 $627; 2025 $799; 2026 $987; 2027 $1,184; 2028 $1,396; 2029 $1,605; 2030 $1,820.
Saskatchewan: 2024 $525; 2025 $687; 2026 $871; 2027 $1,079; 2028 $1,345; 2029 $1,545; 2030 $1,723.
Manitoba: 2024 $502; 2025 $633; 2026 $791; 2027 $951; 2028 $1,122; 2029 $1,305; 2030 $1,490.
Nova Scotia: 2024 $537; 2025 $665; 2026 $826; 2027 $987; 2028 $1,162; 2029 $1,351; 2030 $1,513.
Newfoundland and Labrador: 2024 $377; 2025 $488; 2026 $637; 2027 $802; 2028 $974; 2029 $1,141; 2030 $1,316.
Prince Edward Island: 2024 $550; 2025 $671; 2026 $838; 2027 $1,007; 2028 $1,172; 2029 $1,345; 2030 $1,521.
New Brunswick isn't included because it joined the federal system after these calculations were made; the three-year carve-out on paying the carbon tax for households heating their homes with oil will temporarily reduce costs for them. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan is refusing to collect the carbon tax on natural gas.
Quote from: DKG on March 22, 2024, 11:51:40 AMSince the Trudeau government insists 80% of Canadian households paying the federal carbon tax receive more in rebates than they pay in carbon taxes, here's what independent, non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said when he examined the carbon tax last year.
He concluded 60% of households in provinces paying the federal carbon tax (Quebec and B.C. have their own systems) were already paying more in carbon taxes than they received in rebates, rising to 80% in Nova Scotia in 2025, in Ontario in 2026, in Manitoba in 2029 and in Alberta and P.E.I. in 2030.
Here's the net cost, after rebates, the PBO calculated for average households, from 2024 to 2030, as the carbon tax increases by 23% from $65 per tonne of industrial greenhouse gas emissions to $80 on April 1 and then rises by $15 annually to $170 in 2030.
Alberta: 2024 $911; 2025 $1,137; 2026 $1,445; 2027 $1,783; 2028 $2,136; 2029 $2,453; 2030 $2,773.
Ontario: 2024 $627; 2025 $799; 2026 $987; 2027 $1,184; 2028 $1,396; 2029 $1,605; 2030 $1,820.
Saskatchewan: 2024 $525; 2025 $687; 2026 $871; 2027 $1,079; 2028 $1,345; 2029 $1,545; 2030 $1,723.
Manitoba: 2024 $502; 2025 $633; 2026 $791; 2027 $951; 2028 $1,122; 2029 $1,305; 2030 $1,490.
Nova Scotia: 2024 $537; 2025 $665; 2026 $826; 2027 $987; 2028 $1,162; 2029 $1,351; 2030 $1,513.
Newfoundland and Labrador: 2024 $377; 2025 $488; 2026 $637; 2027 $802; 2028 $974; 2029 $1,141; 2030 $1,316.
Prince Edward Island: 2024 $550; 2025 $671; 2026 $838; 2027 $1,007; 2028 $1,172; 2029 $1,345; 2030 $1,521.
New Brunswick isn't included because it joined the federal system after these calculations were made; the three-year carve-out on paying the carbon tax for households heating their homes with oil will temporarily reduce costs for them. Meanwhile, Saskatchewan is refusing to collect the carbon tax on natural gas.
It's so hard for young people to get ahead anywhere in Canada now......my children have chosen good careers, but they will struggle more than my husband and I did......unless we change course soon.
Trudeau has gathered some agreeable economists to try and give credibility to his deeply unpopular carbon tax. But, he is cherry picking. Even they have said that all the other measures he is using to try and hamstring the economy into lowering C02 emissions are ineffective.
Trudeau's climate plan makes no sense – according to Trudeau
The U.S. does not have a national carbon tax and has been more successful at lowering emissions than Canada
If Trudeau believes his carbon tax is the most efficient and least costly way to reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, why doesn't his government keep track of how much it is reducing emissions, as opposed to other government measures?
Instead, the Trudeau government guesstimates that the carbon tax (meaning the clean fuel standard and the output-based pricing system for large emitters) will be responsible for no more than one-third of planned emission reductions in 2030.
That means Trudeau is relying on other, presumably less efficient measures according to his own argument, to achieve at least two-thirds of Canada's emission reductions in 2030.
(The Canadian Climate Institute said recently it is actually the output-based pricing system for large emitters that will be responsible for most emission reductions, as opposed to the fuel charge aimed at Canadian consumers.)
But if Trudeau prefers a carbon tax to "the heavy hand of government regulation", why does his plan, in addition to his carbon tax, include "clean fuel" and "clean electricity" regulations, a "Regulatory Framework for an Oil and Gas Sector Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cap" and "regulated targets for zero-emission vehicles" under "Canada's Electric Vehicle Availability Standard"?
In terms of his claim that his carbon tax was the alternative to "incentives ... subsidies and rewards" to private industry, what does he call the multi-billion-dollar subsidy war his government is in with the U.S. to attract electric vehicle battery plants to Canada, along with other forms of industrial green technology?
The difference from Canada, or course, is that the U.S. does not have a national carbon tax and has been more successful at lowering emissions than Canada.
In the wake of last year's federal budget, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault boasted that the Trudeau government's total investment to address climate change is now "north of $200 billion" on "more than 100 measures to support climate action" in addition to the carbon tax.
Logically, if Trudeau believes his national carbon tax is the most efficient and economical way to reduce emissions, he should increase it far above his current policy of raising it to $80 per tonne of emissions on April 1, increasing to $170 per tonne in 2030, along with hiking carbon tax rebates.
Then he should eliminate most if not all of the regulations and subsidies he says he doesn't support, which are currently the biggest part of his climate change plan.
Of course, that's unlikely to happen given that his government is currently under siege for its 23% hike to the carbon tax effective Monday, to $80 per tonne, up from $65, during an affordability crisis for Canadians.
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/goldstein-trudeaus-climate-plan-makes-no-sense-according-to-trudeau
Gasoline prices across Canada rise at midnight. The carbon tax goes up by 23 percent.
Greece signalled its interest in purchasing Canadian LNG, to supply not only its own needs, but those of the Balkans, eastern Europe and potentially Ukraine, as well. "Canada is a country with which we share so many values" and geopolitical interests, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told CTV.
"Apparently, however, those interests do not extend to energy security for our allies. Germany and Japan also voiced interest in purchasing Canadian LNG nearly two years ago, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau torpedoed the idea.
"At the time, his government was hard at work drafting its "Inefficient Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Government of Canada Guidelines," which were unveiled last summer. (Yes, that is the actual title of the policy, perhaps dreamed up by Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault rereading Karl Marx by organic-candle light.)
Justine's carbon pricing bullshit aint working. I mean it is working at making life less affordable, but it aint reducing C02 emissions.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/other/charlebois-debating-the-path-to-carbon-pricing/ar-BB1l7IXP?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=e40bad003ea444f58194a77da762b999&ei=32
Over 340 economists have penned an open letter in support of Canada's prevailing carbon tax policy.
Despite the misleading information noted in the letter regarding the carbon tax's impact on our climate and its effect on our cost of living – specifically referencing the Bank of Canada's erroneous calculations – the group certainly has the right to express its viewpoint.
However, the letter seemed overtly partisan, which, frankly, is our most significant challenge.
Canada stands at a pivotal crossroads concerning its climate change strategy, especially regarding its essential agri-food sector. The debate over using a carbon tax as the main instrument for reducing greenhouse gas emissions has been fervent, with advocates urging for national standards to prevent a competitive 'race to the bottom' among provinces.
This stance, particularly when applied to the agri-food industry, is laden with risks and oversimplifications.
Climate change remains indifferent to geopolitical lines. If the business climate in Canada worsens due to rigid carbon tax policies, it might prompt agri-food enterprises to move to more economically accommodating regions outside Canada.
Such a migration would represent not just an economic setback but also a strategic error in the broader battle against climate change.
There's a growing demand for a definitive, measurable basis that proves the policy's efficiency in curbing emissions without stunting economic growth.
A detailed and transparent discussion on the carbon tax policy is overdue. Since its introduction in 2015, the policy has shown minimal impact on climate change.
It aint working. It is all pain for no gain. Not that drastically reducing our insignificant emissions should have been a serious priority.
I fot this from pressreader.
Despite assurances from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government that Canada's industrial greenhouse gas emissions would follow a steady downward path in the wake of the 2020 COVID-19 recession, new federal data released May 2 shows the opposite is happening.
This raises serious questions about the credibility of the Liberals' climate change program, to which they have committed more than $200 billion of taxpayers' money earmarked for more than 100 government programs, including the federal carbon tax, currently $80 per tonne of emissions, rising to $170 per tonne in 2030.
Contrary to what the Liberals previously predicted, the latest data shows Canada's emissions rose again in 2022 (federal reporting is always two years after the fact) to 708 million tonnes, up from 698 million tonnes in 2021 which was up from 686 million tonnes in 2020.
This means Canada is moving further away from Trudeau's target of reducing emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.
Cutting emissions was the reason Trudeau said he introduced his federal carbon tax in 2019, which increases the cost of almost all goods and services because almost all of them consume fossil fuel energy.
What has happened flies in the face of what then-environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson told the Globe and Mail three years ago, when he said 2019 would be Canada's last year of rising emissions and going forward there would be "year-on-year reductions – absolute reductions – starting in 2020, through to 2030."
It's true emissions dropped in 2020 compared to 2019 because of the pandemic recession, but ever since then they've been increasing.
Keeping track of Trudeau's target of reducing emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 is difficult, because the feds constantly change emissions from previous years retroactively, saying it's due to improving measuring methods.
Last year, the feds said 2005 emissions were 732 million tonnes. This year they say it was 761 million tonnes.
Using the newest figures, Canada's emissions have only decreased by 7% compared to 2005 levels, compared to Trudeau's target of at least 40% by 2030.
While the Trudeau government was frantically putting a positive spin on the latest numbers Thursday, in reality it's the same old story — the carbon tax keeps going up and so do our emissions.
SE Asia is using their resources to adapt to climate change rather than follow Canada's failed climate policies of forcing poverty on it's citizens.
Quote from: Shen Li on May 04, 2024, 01:12:26 AMSE Asia is using their resources to adapt to climate change rather than follow Canada's failed climate policies of forcing poverty on it's citizens.
Indonesia is ripping out the rain forests... they are environmental vandals.
Quote from: Shen Li on May 04, 2024, 01:12:26 AMSE Asia is using their resources to adapt to climate change rather than follow Canada's failed climate policies of forcing poverty on it's citizens.
It's a lot cheaper and produces real results. Trying at all costs to reduce our international rounding error emissions is so short sighted as well as expensive.
Quote from: DKG on May 04, 2024, 09:55:53 AMIt's a lot cheaper and produces real results. Trying at all costs to reduce our international rounding error emissions is so short sighted as well as expensive.
Singapore introduced a carbon tax, but it isn't like Canada's. It is more like the one Alberta used to have on large emitters.
It aint just one province. Right across the country, agriculture costs are soaring because of Justine's carbon tax.
The crushing impact of the federal carbon tax on agriculture
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-the-crushing-impact-of-the-federal-carbon-tax-on-agriculture
Alberta is a centre for advanced agricultural practices and irrigation, yet the federal carbon tax stands as a formidable challenge.
It is particularly damaging to the province's competitiveness in exporting crops, including the export hay market. Designed to reduce carbon emissions, this tax inadvertently threatens the viability of our most vital agricultural exports by inflating farm and freight costs, eventually eroding market share.
The carbon tax's effect is severe on all operations that produce crops or add value to primary crops. This sector's reliance on energy-intensive processes such as seeding, harvesting and baling, which are powered by diesel-fuelled machinery, means that every uptick in fuel costs driven by the tax directly diminishes profitability, forcing farmers to raise prices in the domestic market.
Value-added operations are saddled with the tax that increases freight, drying and utility costs directly. The damage extends across all ag sectors, including potatoes, sugar beets, canola, peas and specialty grains. These crops undergo additional processing to enhance their market value — cleaning, sorting and packaging — all of which consume significant energy, now more costly due to the carbon tax. Grocery prices have to increase to cover the carbon tax burden.
This tax places Alberta's agricultural export producers at a stark disadvantage. Our main competitors, notably from the United States, are not subject to such fiscal burdens. They benefit from lower production costs, affording them a competitive edge in pricing their products on the international market. As a result, Alberta's value-added crops are at risk of being priced out of the market, potentially costing not only immediate sales but also relationships with global buyers.
Justine says there aint no business case to be made for LNG export facilities. Business says Justine is an idiot.
LNG exports offer a wealth-creating way to reduce global emissions
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-lng-exports-offer-a-wealth-creating-way-to-reduce-global-emissions
Pierre Poilievre's Axe the (carbon) Tax campaign is a spectacular success. But the Conservative party needs its own plan to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Paradoxically, it's a fossil fuel that provides the answer.
Canada's rich endowment of natural gas offers us the chance to both reduce global emissions and also rescue a Canadian economy ravaged by the Liberal government.
How? By exporting liquefied natural gas (LNG) to China, Japan, South Korea and the other coal-dependent Asia-Pacific countries. Switching from coal to natural gas reduces CO2 emissions by 50 per cent while also eliminating the toxic compounds and lung-clogging particulates that shorten the lives of millions in Asian cities.
A November 2022 study by respected consulting firm Wood Mackenzie concluded that:
· "Canada is well-positioned geographically: Western Canadian LNG is much closer to Asia relative to the U.S. Gulf Coast LNG, which needs to be shipped to Asia through the Panama Canal."
· "LNG from Canada would be cost-competitive for northeast Asian importers."
· "Asia will not be able to produce enough natural gas domestically to meet its escalating demand. With its high environmental standards and stewardship, Canada would be a great partner to fill the LNG demand gap."
In 2010, there were more than 20 LNG projects in the works in British Columbia, representing hundreds of billions in investment. These included ExxonMobil's $25-billion West Coast Canada project, Chinese-owned CNOOC's $36-billion Aurora project, Malaysian firm Petronas's $36-billion Pacific Northwest project and the Shell-led $31-billion Kitimat LNG Canada project.
After a decade of trying to navigate Canada's byzantine regulatory process, LNG Canada is the only one left standing. And it succeeded only because South African project leader Andy Calitz refused to give up.
After five years of construction, the LNG Canada terminal is nearing completion with the first ship scheduled to sail to China in mid-2025. The $31 billion invested in the Kitimat liquefaction plant is just one component of Canada's first LNG export project. TC Energy Corp's $15-billion Coastal GasLink will carry natural gas from northeastern B.C. gas fields to the Kitimat terminal.
The economic benefits are myriad. B.C. natural gas royalties are forecast to double, from $700 million in 2024 to $1.4 billion in 2027. There are significant employment and business opportunities for First Nations, including Haisla Marine's 50 per cent interest in a $500-million contract.
A major barrier for LNG project sponsors has been the fixation of Canadian regulators on the project's domestic emissions, which are minuscule compared to the global emissions reductions they make possible. Rather than let the project use on-site natural gas-powered electricity generation, regulators insisted that LNG Canada use zero-emissions hydropower. Having BC Hydro build a new dam and costly new transmission line delayed the project significantly.
Before COP24, the UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland, in 2018, the federal Conservatives urged the leaders of the Canadian delegation to propose that national emissions reductions include reductions from displacement of coal with exported LNG. Our prime minister and his team of anti-fossil fuel eco-zealots declined this advice. A new government that encourages LNG projects may well see a return of the ExxonMobil, CNOOC and Petronas projects driven off by government intransigence.
As an alternative to the carbon tax, LNG export not only does better in emissions reduction but it also creates tens of billions of dollars in economic benefits for a beleaguered Canadian private sector.
Stepped-up LNG export is a vastly superior environmental alternative to the economically destructive and politically divisive carbon tax, and it would help reverse a proud, thriving nation's decline into an indebted, unproductive, government-dominated basket case.
This appered in the Sun newspaper chain. Trudeau is throwing good after bad.
QuoteEven as the much-vaunted electric vehicle (EV) transition slams into stiff headwinds, the Trudeau government and Ontario's Ford government will pour another $5 billion in subsidies into Honda, which plans to build an EV battery plant and manufacture EVs in Ontario.
This comes on top of a long list of other such "investments" including $15 billion for Stellantis and LG Energy Solution, $13 billion for Volkswagen (with a real cost to Ottawa of $16.3 billion, per the Parliamentary Budget Officer), a combined $4.24 billion (federal/Quebec split) to Northvolt, a Swedish battery maker, and a combined $644 million (federal/Quebec split) to Ford Motor Company to build a cathode manufacturing plant in Quebec.
Some would-be EV makers or users are postponing their own EV investments. Ford has killed its electric F-150 pickup truck, Hertz is dumping one-third of its fleet of EV rental vehicles and Swedish EV company Polestar dropped 15% of its global workforce while Tesla is cutting 10% of its global staff.
And in the U.S., a much larger potential market for EVs, a recent Gallup poll shows a market turning frosty. The percentage of Americans polled by Gallup who said they're seriously considering buying an EV has been declining from 12% in 2023 to 9% in 2024. Even more troubling for would-be EV sellers is that only 35% of poll respondents in 2024 said they "might consider" buying an EV in the future. That number is down from 43% in 2023.
Overall, according to Gallup, "less than half of adults, 44%, now say they are either seriously considering or might consider buying an EV in the future, down from 55% in 2023, while the proportion not intending to buy one has increased from 41% to 48%." In other words, in a future where government wants sellers to only sell EVs, almost half the U.S. public doesn't want to buy one.
And yet, Canada's governments are hitting the gas pedal on EVs, putting the hard-earned capital of Canadian taxpayers at significant risk. A smart government would have its finger in the wind and would slow down when faced with road bumps. It might even reset its GPS and change the course of its 2035 EV mandate for vehicles few motorists want to buy.