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Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs

Even environmentalists tell Trudeau his ethanol plan is terrible – by Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post – May 11, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to replace fossil fuels with ethanol and other low-carbon fuels through a “clean fuel standard” — expected to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 30 million tonnes a year by 2030 — faces mounting opposition, especially from a powerful lobby south of the border.

No, not from U.S. President Donald Trump or the Republicans. At least, not yet — officially they’re pretty much in sync with Trudeau on this one, largely because the U.S. is a big exporter of ethanol to Canada.

The fierce opposition comes chiefly from the U.S. environmental lobby, which has awakened to one of the most colossal environmental mistakes in its history: the ethanol mandate, part of America’s Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), which effectively mandates that 10 per cent of gasoline at the pump consists of ethanol.

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What do the Liberals know about carbon tax that they won’t tell us? – by John Robson (National Post – May 9, 2018)

http://nationalpost.com/

The federal government seems to be saying even less than they know about carbon taxes. Which can’t be easy.

It’s a signature policy they insist will work. But they are exploiting a hard-won reputation for cluelessness on key promises from electoral reform to marijuana legalization to convince us they have no idea how this one would function either.

For instance, on April 30, Finance Minister Bill Morneau flatly refused to tell the Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women whether the government had even done a gender-based analysis on the carbon tax. Or, more precisely, he flatly refused to acknowledge that Conservative MP Michelle Rempel kept asking him that question.

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The U of A isn’t ‘brave’ for honouring Suzuki. Just the opposite – by Rex Murphy (National Post – May 5, 2018)

http://nationalpost.com/

At the deep centre of conventional wisdom no concept is more hallowed, more warmly cradled in the blanket-robes of political correctness than the Green dogma of global warming. For millions upon millions it is grant-subsidized Holy Writ.

Governments fatten its evangelists with unheralded largesse. Its advocate-missionaries are legion, gathering in ritual conclave every year in rich, well-lit capitals to renew their fervour and refresh their zeal.

Rio, Geneva, Copenhagen, Rome are their jet-set Stations of the Cross, the United Nations their cathedral home, its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change a new curia stuffed with failed weathermen, cranky researchers, the blazing-eyed mystics of Gaia, all duly attended by a docile, uninquisitive, co-opted press corps. Honours drop on its prophet-priests as do “the gentle rains from heaven.”

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The War on Coal Is Making the World’s Top Mine Owners a Lot Richer – by Thomas Biesheuvel and Thomas Wilson (Bloomberg News – May 2, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The world’s war on coal is making its biggest producers a lot richer, at least for now. Anglo American Plc, Glencore Plc and BHP Billiton Ltd. are generating the highest profits in years from their coal mines. Income for the 37 coal producers tracked in a Bloomberg Intelligence index was the highest in six years.

It all comes down to the simplest equation in business: supply and demand. With governments from Asia to Europe setting stricter pollution limits as the climate change debate intensifies, output of the planet’s dirtiest fuel is dropping.

Some of the more significant declines are occurring in China, the top mine operator, and financing for new supplies is drying up. That’s creating a windfall for the producers who remain.

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Is David Suzuki a science denier? – by Margaret Wente (Globe and Mail – May 1, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Folks in the oil patch are mad as hornets over the University of Alberta’s decision to give an honorary degree to David Suzuki in June. Big donors are threatening to cancel cheques and pull the plug on future contributions.

A petition calling for the university to change its mind has garnered 14,000 signatures. Even the deans of business and engineering have issued anguished letters of apology to distance themselves from the decision.

Are they being too thin-skinned? I don’t think so. The U of A has just given them the middle finger. Mr. Suzuki has compared making a living in the oil sands to profiting off the slave trade.

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How Oman’s Rocks Could Help Save the Planet – by Henry Fountain (New York Times – April 26, 2018)

https://www.nytimes.com/

IBRA, Oman — In the arid vastness of this corner of the Arabian Peninsula, out where goats and the occasional camel roam, rocks form the backdrop practically every way you look.

But the stark outcrops and craggy ridges are more than just scenery. Some of these rocks are hard at work, naturally reacting with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it into stone. Veins of white carbonate minerals run through slabs of dark rock like fat marbling a steak. Carbonate surrounds pebbles and cobbles, turning ordinary gravel into natural mosaics.

Even pooled spring water that has bubbled up through the rocks reacts with CO2 to produce an ice-like crust of carbonate that, if broken, re-forms within days.

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Are solar and wind finally cheaper than fossil fuels? Not a chance – by Lawrence Solomon (Financial Post – April 27, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

“’Spectacular’ drop in renewable energy costs leads to record global boost,” The Guardian headline reported last year. “Clean Energy Is About to Become Cheaper Than Coal,” pronounced MIT’s Technology Review. “The cost of installing solar energy is going to plummet again,” echoed Grist, the environmental journal.

Other sources declare that renewables are not only getting cheaper, they have already become cheaper than conventional power. The climate-crusading DeSmogBlog reports that “Falling Costs of Renewable Power Make (B.C.’s) Site C Dam Obsolete” and that “Coal Just Became Uneconomic in Canada.”

It implores us to discover “What Canada Can Learn From Germany’s Renewable Revolution,” as does Energy Post, an authoritative European journal, which described “The spectacular success of the German Energiewende (energy transition).”

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Carbon taxes come with a price — who knew?! – by Anthony Furey (Toronto Sun – April 23, 2018)

http://torontosun.com/

The average Canadian would be forgiven for thinking “carbon pricing” is some sort of intellectual notion that has nothing to do with the lives of regular people.

It’s not like we’re led to believe it’s at all connected to life at home. The feds are in their element discussing their climate action measures overseas at international gatherings and alongside people like French President Emmanuel Macron.

You don’t see Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna touring Tim Hortons to tout the merits of this endeavour to swing riding constituents. Instead, it’s all done in the far-and-away and the abstract.

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Radical environmentalism has containment problems of its own – by Rex Murphy (National Post – April 21, 2018)

http://nationalpost.com/

Eco extremists are threatening the economy and even Confederation with their opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline project

For now your straws and swizzle sticks are safe. Prime Minister Trudeau is not (yet) going along with Britain’s Theresa May in her fierce campaign to ban the drinking straw.

It is a tribute to the wily manoeuvres and insidious influence of the international straw lobby that our PM “refused to be pinned down” and remained “noncommittal” on the menace of the common drinking straw to the planet’s ecosystems. On so grand a question he felt it better to defer till at least a full convocation of the world’s great economies, the G7. Wise man.

It was a severe disappointment to those hoping for Trudeau leadership on the straw cartel. After all, straws are, as one environmentalist noted, just small pipelines for CO2-saturated, atmosphere-degrading soft drinks. “Anyone can stand up to the oil lobby, but the gnomes of the international straw trade … ?” Well, that’s a different set of emissions.

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Alberta’s now copying Ontario’s disastrous electricity policies. What could go wrong? – by Kevin Libin (Financial Post – April 20, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Not every province gets the chance to live through the kind of white-knuckle excitement in its electricity sector that Ontario has enjoyed over the last decade: soaring power bills, fleeing industries and endless boondoggles in provincial contracts for solar and wind energy.

The dramatic climax arrived last week as David Livingston, the one-time chief of staff to Dalton McGuinty, the premier who imposed on Ontario the entire electricity fiasco, was sentenced to prison over a scheme to destroy evidence of the Liberal government’s political mischief in the power market.

But get ready, Alberta, because all the thrills and spills that inevitably follow when politicians start meddling in a boring but perfectly well-functioning electricity market in the name of pointless political symbolism are coming your way, next.

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Michael Bloomberg Takes on the Coal Industry – by Carolyn Kormann (The New Yorker – April 12, 2018)

https://www.newyorker.com/

On Monday afternoon, Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire businessman and former three-term mayor of New York City, escaped to a deserted ballroom at the Grand Hyatt, in midtown Manhattan, to talk about climate change.

Moments earlier, he had announced to attendees of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance summit that his philanthropic organization was partnering with the Canadian and British governments to expedite the global eradication of coal mining.

His two new partners—Catherine McKenna, Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, and Claire Perry, the United Kingdom’s minister of state for energy and clean growth—came along for the discussion.

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Trudeau still gives green fanatics cover as they strangle Trans Mountain – by Rex Murphy (National Post – April 11, 2018)

http://nationalpost.com/

If the Trans Mountain pipeline had received a mere fraction of the support the PM has given to fighting climate change, it would not be in danger

The question is: Who has authority to decide Canadian energy policy?

Governments or Green-machine protesters?

That is the question: Which bunch will it be, Canada’s parliaments, or those who self-appoint as the green guardians of whatever place on Earth — usually in Canada — they choose to exercise their very particular kind of media-and-protest-pressure politics?

Will it be government? Or Green end-of-days monomaniacs? We had an answer on Sunday when Kinder Morgan announced that the relentless harassment of its proposed pipeline has moved to the company to the very edge of outright cancellation. And it wasn’t government.

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Trans Mountain becomes another project sacrificed to Trudeau’s false green gods – by Joe Oliver (Financial Post – April 10, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

This is a national disgrace. The Liberals have effectively landlocked our vast oil reserves and condemned the country to a poorer, more divisive and less secure future

Kinder Morgan finally succumbed to lawsuits, delays, escalating costs, threats of civil disobedience and one-sided regulatory policy. It has announced it is suspending all non-essential activities on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, Canada’s last chance to get our oil to tidewater.

Anti-resource-development activists here and in the United States will be triumphant. The rest of us should be disconsolate that Canada’s ability to export oil to offshore markets may be blocked for a very long time, perhaps forever.

The Alberta government’s offer of provincial funds for Kinder Morgan, fully backed by the opposition conservatives, might at least provide a last chance for life support.

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Colombia’s top court orders government to protect Amazon forest in landmark case – by Anastasia Moloney (Reuters U.S. – April 6, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Colombia’s highest court has told the government it must take urgent action to protect its Amazon rainforest and stem rising deforestation, in what campaigners said was an historic moment that should help conserve forests and counter climate change.

In their ruling on Thursday, the judges said that Colombia – which is home to a swathe of rainforest roughly the size of Germany and England combined – saw deforestation rates in its Amazon region increase by 44 percent from 2015 to 2016.

“It is clear, despite numerous international commitments, regulations … that the Colombian state has not efficiently addressed the problem of deforestation in the Amazon,” the supreme court said.

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Regulatory ‘poisons’ are ‘suffocating’ oil industry by driving investors away – by Claudia Cattaneo (Financial Post – April 5, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Industry’s warning that toxic regulations mean no more major pipelines will be built in this country is not hyperbole

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is planning another tour to Toronto and New York to talk up the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to business leaders.

It’s certainly good exposure for her re-election campaign. It probably won’t change investors’ pessimistic views of Canada’s oil and gas sector.

Here’s the problem. Aside from Canada’s dysfunctional handling of the Trans Mountain project, governments (including Alberta’s) have burdened energy companies with so much new regulation, so many new costs, and are on a path to make regulatory reviews of big energy projects so much more political, investors have tuned out and moved to jurisdictions where governments aren’t kneecapping their companies to meet commitments on climate change.

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