Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs – Page 24

From Wyoming to Australia, Coal’s Heartlands Are Retreating – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – October 24, 2019)

October 24, 2019

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg Opinion) — From the Rocky Mountains to the Rhineland and Australia’s Great Dividing Range, the great tide of the coal industry is receding.

The entire Powder River Basin, the region spanning the states of Montana and Wyoming that provides about half of America’s thermal coal, is “distressed,” Moody’s Investors Service wrote in a report last week.

All companies producing coal there are now focusing on mining coking coal elsewhere in the U.S., the ratings company wrote. Output “will likely fall significantly in 2020,” it said.

Nuclear energy is a vital part of solving the climate crisis – by John Gorman (Globe and Mail – October 24, 2019)

October 24, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

I never thought I would become a passionate champion for nuclear energy. But after 20 years of advocating for renewable energy, I’ve overcome the misconceptions I had in the past and I am convinced by the evidence we can’t fight climate change without nuclear.

When I was the chief executive of the Canadian Solar Industries Association, I thought the “holy grail” was to make renewable energy cost-competitive so it could fulfill our energy needs. Today, wind and solar are among the cheapest forms of energy in many places around the world. The generous subsidies that fuelled early growth are no longer at play, yet the growth of wind and solar continues.

Despite the strong growth, the percentage of emissions-free electricity in the world has not increased in 20 years. It’s stuck at 36 per cent, according to a recent IEA report.

Trudeau has failed. Voters should toss him out – by Conrad Black (National Post – October 18, 2019)

October 18, 2019

https://nationalpost.com/

If Stephen Harper had retired five years ago, as many advised, he would be regarded as one of the country’s outstanding prime ministers and would have been spared the ultimate defeat that has needlessly ended the careers of many other leaders, including such distinguished statesmen as Laurier, St. Laurent, Adenauer, de Gaulle, Thatcher and Helmut Kohl.

But he went for a fourth straight election without some of his best ministers, including the late Jim Flaherty, John Baird and Peter MacKay, was more dictatorial than ever, conducted a completely incompetent campaign based on women’s headgear in public places and a conjured threat of mass migration from the Middle East, and was sent to the showers.

As I wrote here in the past two weeks, for four years we have had image government from his successor; pandering to voting sub-groups in a politically atomized country.

A Fortune Lies in Canada’s Oil Sands. Many Voters Want to Leave It There – by Kevin Orland and Natalie Obiko Pearson (Bloomberg News – October 16, 2019)

October 16, 2019

“These lands contain the world’s third-largest crude reserves, but
the sticky bitumen extracted needs to be transported to market,
and that means building hugely contentious pipelines. At present,
there just aren’t enough of them for an energy sector that accounts
for a tenth of Canada’s economy and a fifth of its exports.”

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/

(Bloomberg) — At the Fish Place diner in Fort McMurray, booths are filled with oil workers in baseball caps and the parking lot is lined with pickup trucks sporting six-foot (1.8 meter) neon safety flags, a hallmark of the mining industry.

Fort McMurray is the regional hub for the oil sands that produce two-thirds of Canada’s crude, a status that puts the city carved out of Alberta’s wilderness at the heart of the Oct. 21 federal election.

Robbie Picard, who heads an oil-sands advocacy group, calls it “the most important election we’ve ever had.” Over a breakfast of eggs and cheese in the diner, Picard said that a second term for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau would cause “anxiety, depression and despair” in the city. “I’m terrified for our future,” he said.

Top-five BHP investor Aberdeen Standard piles on climate pressure ahead of AGM – by Barbara Lewis and Simon Jessop (Reuters U.S. – October 9, 2019)

October 9, 2019

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON (Reuters) – One of BHP’s biggest shareholders Aberdeen Standard Investments on Wednesday added to pressure for the world’s leading miner to cut ties with lobby groups it says are at odds with the company’s pledges on climate leadership.

Earlier, the Church of England Pensions Board urged shareholder advisers to review their opposition to a resolution calling on BHP to withdraw from groups that lobby for policies inconsistent with global climate change limitation goals.

Aberdeen Standard Investments, which holds around 3.2% of BHP’s stock, said it was taking the rare step of speaking out ahead of a vote at BHP’s annual shareholder meeting in London on Oct. 17 because of the urgency of tackling climate change, and after its research found the lobby groups were the biggest single obstacle to progress.

When will we finally admit that electric vehicles aren’t the solution? – by Martin Horicka (Stuff.co.nz – October 9, 2019)

October 9, 2019

https://www.stuff.co.nz/

OPINION: Our civilisation is facing a major challenge. We have to choose the right path to an environmentally more sustainable society. At the same time, we should be sure the measures chosen are indeed the best possible.

Replacing fossil fuel cars with electric vehicles seems to be a logical, correct, and even necessary solution to our climate problem. But the issue is far more complex than our intuition tells us.

The banning of further production of internal combustion engines by 2050, 2040 or as soon as 2030 is talked about, even though it could take us into dangerous uncharted territory we know almost nothing about.

OPINION: Climate change is the defining issue for Canada, if not yet this federal election – by Adam Radwanski (Globe and Mail – October 10, 2019)

October 7, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Heading into a pair of leaders’ debates within two weeks of election day, the federal campaign still seems in need of a defining issue. But look past all the candidate controversies, personal attacks and vote-buying “affordability” promises, and that issue is right there in plain sight.

It’s so consequential, with genuine and pronounced differences between parties’ approaches, that it renders wrong-headed and reckless the growing body of weary punditry about this being a low-stakes campaign in which all concerned have failed to distinguish themselves from each other.

On climate-change policy, the world is entering a narrow window in which it may or may not undertake the degree of economic and social upheaval needed to stave off irreversible disaster. When Canadians cast their ballots, they’ll go a long way toward determining what this country’s role in that will be.

The Liberals’ 2050 net-zero carbon vow is pure delusion – by Rex Murphy (National Post – September 28, 2019)

September 30, 2019

https://nationalpost.com/

When leaders and adults willingly give subservience to the frenzy of children, the points of the rational compass are scrambled

It’s good to see the Prime Minstrel, as some wit on Twitter termed him, back on familiar waters. In their desperate fervour to chase away the images of Justin Trudeau in blackface, this week the Liberal campaign brought him out in a more familiar guise, paddling about on some sweet lake, and returning to the one element of his ferociously “woke” brand, P.M. Climate Superman, not in tatters.

The image could not have been more bucolic — the lone Voyager for Global Warming. Add a hooting owl or two on the soundtrack and another loon skipping along on the water and we’d be back to those classic Hinterland’s Who’s Who vignettes of the ’60s and ’70s.

He may have sworn off costumes and cosmetics, but it was clear from this little parable on film that campaigning by photo-op is still very much in the Liberal arsenal. It was the Liberal campaign’s way of signalling that there was still some gas (so to speak) in Mr. Trudeau’s global warming credentials.

Greta Thunberg joins thousands of Canadians in climate strike today – by Mia Rabson (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2019)

September 27, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

CANADIAN PRESS: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg says it’s moving to see so many people united “for one common cause.” Thunberg spoke at a rally in Montreal and is expected to take part in a march there at noon.

Thousands of Canadians are hitting the streets Friday demanding “widespread, systemic change” to halt the scary impact of a warming planet.

The massive national protest will see students and climate activists and everyday Canadians who want a swifter government response to climate change marching on legislatures and municipal buildings, schools and parks, from St. John’s to Tofino, B.C., and as far north as Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.

OPINION: On climate change, humanity is not ‘evil’ – by Bjorn Lomborg (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2019)

September 27, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School.

Speaking at the United Nations, 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg said that if humanity really understands the science of climate change and still fails to act, we’re “evil.”

This is because climate change means “people are dying.” Helpfully, she also told us what we must do to act correctly: In a bit more than eight years, we will have exhausted our remaining allowance for carbon emissions, so we must shut down everything running on fossil fuels by 2028.

While this claim is not uncommon, it is fundamentally misguided. Yes, global warming is real and human-caused, but her vision of climate change as the end of the world is unsupported. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that by the 2070s, the total effects of climate change, including on ecosystems, will be equivalent to a reduction in average income of 0.2 to 2 per cent.

From innocents to anxious activists — what are we doing to our kids? – by Terence Corcoran (National Post – September 24, 2019)

September 25, 2019

https://nationalpost.com/

At a time when the world is safer than any in history, children are being taught that they live on the brink of a variety of existential threats

Fifty years ago, American TV personality Art Linkletter hosted Kids Says the Darndest Things segments on his House Party show, a CBS radio and television feature that ran for 25 years between 1945 and 1969. During the segments, Linkletter interviewed precocious children under the age of 12, mostly about their family lives and the foibles of their parents.

There were no child climate experts to interview, no nine-year-old boys in drag to document as they participated in pageants wearing heavy eye makeup and lipstick, no F-word spewing and dildo-waving pre-teens in movies like Good Boys to muse about.

Even as late as 1998, when comedian Bill Cosby briefly revived Kids Say the Darndest Things, the result was another stream of often hilarious malapropisms, neologisms, downright silly childish observations along with cloying and sometimes boring repartee on how the world works in the minds of seemingly articulate children.

‘You have stolen my dreams’: Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders for failing to take action on climate change – by Valerie Volcovici and Matthew Green (Globe and Mail – September 24, 2019)

September 24, 2019

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Teenage activist Greta Thunberg angrily denounced world leaders on Monday for failing to tackle climate change, unleashing the outrage felt by millions of her peers in the heart of the United Nations by demanding: “How dare you?”

The Swedish campaigner’s brief address electrified the start of a summit aimed at mobilizing governments and businesses to break international paralysis over carbon emissions, which hit record highs last year despite decades of warnings from scientists.

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you?” said Ms. Thunberg, 16, her voice quavering with emotion. “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,” she said.

‘We can’t be ignored any longer.’ Young climate activists fighting to have their voices heard ahead of election – by Megan Ogilvie (Toronto Star – September 23, 2019)

September 23, 2019

https://www.thestar.com/

It began with one teenage girl skipping school on a Friday to push her government to do something about climate change. Thirteen months after Greta Thunberg sat outside the Swedish Parliament, that small act of protest has erupted into the biggest climate demonstration in history and inspired a generation of young people to fight for a healthy planet.

Friday’s global climate strike saw more than a million people flood the streets in more than 150 countries around the world, including 250,000 in New York City, where Thunberg addressed cheering crowds and demanded global leaders act on the climate crisis.

“It felt like history in the making; it we felt like we were setting the tone for what the future holds,” said Caroline Merner, a 24-year-old climate activist from Vancouver who was among those marching in Manhattan. “The momentum young people have is incredible.”

Salgado’s Amazonia photos beamed on Assisi basilica to warn of threat – Antonio Denti (Reuters U.K. – September 23, 2019)

September 23, 2019

https://uk.reuters.com/

ASSISI, Italy (Reuters) – Hundreds of people braved driving rain on Sunday night to see pictures of Amazonia by famed Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado beamed onto the Basilica of St. Francis and to hear him talk of the danger facing the area.

The black-and-white photographs showed native peoples of the Amazon as sombre classical music by 20th century Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos played in what almost seemed like a requiem for the parts of the Amazon that have already been lost to deforestation and mining.

Salgado, addressing the crowd, said it was “the predatory economic model that is everywhere in the world. Our agricultural system, our industrial system, our consumption system that has caused the destruction of the Amazon”.

Inquiry into foreign funding of anti-Alberta energy campaigns could shake up enviro charities – by Terence Corcoran (Financial Post – September 18, 2019)

September 18, 2019

https://business.financialpost.com/

In a drive-by take-down editorial this past weekend, the Globe and Mail blasted Alberta’s public inquiry into foreign funding of anti-Alberta energy campaigns. The editorial had few facts on hand to support its claims, but it let loose with a series of cheap shots, glib commentary and a conclusion that fell back on an ancient tribal chant: “For Alberta to create a public inquiry to go after critics is a McCarthyesque misuse of power.”

Ah, McCarthyism, the old ideological cushion of the lazy lefty — although most Canadians under the age of 50 would have to Google it.

Alberta’s inquiry into the foreign funding of Canada’s green anti-oil activist groups is headed by Steve Allan, by all accounts a solid and objective forensic accountant who is as far from being Joe McCarthy as Mr. Rogers is from being Donald Trump.