Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs

https://business.financialpost.com/

“Last year, global greenhouse gas emissions grew by an estimated
2.7 per cent. So if Canada’s economy had simply ceased to exist,
our 1.6 per cent of global emissions would have been replaced in
just seven months. These are irrefutable facts.”

In choosing to mislead Canadians on climate change, the Liberals are basing their election campaign on a known lie

As the federal election approaches, the Trudeau Liberal government’s record has become increasingly more difficult to defend. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise in the last election that he would run only “modest” deficits has burgeoned into a national debt increase that is bigger per person than that racked up by any government in Canadian history, outside of a major war or a recession.

Trudeau promised to reduce taxes for “middle-class” families, but a Fraser Institute analysis calculated that 80 per cent of middle-class families are paying taxes at least $840 higher per year.

Then there’s Indigenous reconciliation. After a bungled inquiry into missing and murdered women left Aboriginal families angry and disappointed, what was left of the Trudeau government’s reconciliation agenda was then demolished by their sanctimonious attacks on and the firing of Jody Wilson-Raybould, a widely respected and Indigenous former attorney general.

Read more

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Watch out. There’s another apocalypse looming. This time it’s the plants and animals. Our destructive habits, along with global warming, are laying waste to the Earth. According to the experts, we are on the brink of a mass extinction – one that could wipe out a million species.

Is there any silver lining to this story? Maybe. Human beings might be wiped out‚ too, and that, in many people’s view, would be a good thing. One of the top-rated comments for The New York Times’ mass-extinction story was: “… [T]he earth is shaking off the parasite that is man.”

The extinction story was one of the top news stories of the week. That’s because predictions about species in decline and the fragility of nature are extremely popular these days. In fact, a lot of people think we are in the midst of the Sixth Great Extinction. Only this one won’t be caused by an asteroid, but by man.

Read more

https://business.financialpost.com/

It’s Big Oil and the miracle of hydrocarbons versus Big Finance and the great carbon scare

Two Solitudes: That’s how Hugh McLennan’s 1945 novel portrayed Canada — a nation of clashing English and French Canadians living in the same country under different languages, worldviews, experiences. In other words, a nation divided.

Welcome to the new Canadian solitudes, a nation divided over carbon and climate. Two recent events highlight the great carbon divide, one held in Alberta in early April, another in Montreal last week. The gap is wide and multifaceted, but in this case it’s Big Oil versus Big Insurance.

We begin in Alberta, where Conservative leader Andrew Scheer was reported by The Globe and Mail last week to have attended a “secret” and “private” meeting on April 11th with oil executives “to map out a strategy to oust the federal Liberals.”

Read more

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Thanks to politicians, carbon taxes are now a moral cause. If you want to save the planet you’ll sign on. Otherwise, catastrophe will ensue, warns our radiant Environment Minister, Catherine McKenna.

Ridiculous, argues Ontario’s portly, populist Premier, Doug Ford. Carbon taxes will create a “carbon tax recession” inflicted on us by our evil central government. Both are blasting their message at the electorate to persuade us that their side is right.

Neither statement is remotely true, of course. At 4.4 cents more per litre of gas, the new federal carbon tax is big enough to notice, but much too small to pry people from their cars. Even so, a lot of people like it. It shows that Canada is serious about climate policy. They figure that even if a carbon tax doesn’t buy us the solution to climate change, it seems like a good first step.

Read more

https://business.financialpost.com/

Opinion: Netflix and the WWF are misleading the public in the name of climate change — just as National Geographic did with the emaciated polar bear

Now that polar bears have failed to die off in response to a sea-ice decline as promised, climate alarmists are looking hard for a new icon. They think they’ve found it in the walrus. And for their purpose, walruses are more useful dead than alive, and best of all splattered against sharp rocks from a great height.

For instance, a now-famous episode of Netflix’s “Our Planet” documentary series, released this month and narrated by veteran BBC broadcaster David Attenborough, features walruses falling from atop a high cliff and bouncing helplessly over rocks to their deaths.

The incident occurs after what’s called a “land haulout,” which is when large herds of walrus females and calves emerge from the water to gather and rest on a beach. The show blames the land haulouts — and the deaths caused by falling from cliffs — squarely on lack of sea ice due to human-caused climate change.

Read more