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Climate Change, Carbon Taxes, Decarbonization and ENGOs

OPINION: Coal: The black, unbeatable monster at the Egyptian climate summit – and every other one – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – November 17, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

If you had to distill the theme of almost every UN climate summit into one word, it would be “coal.” Coal is the perennial bogeyman of the Conference of the Parties, as it is at the event’s latest edition, COP27, now under way in Egypt.

By now there is essentially zero debate among governments, climate scientists and even the coal industry itself that holding global average temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is impossible as long as coal remains the single-biggest source of power generation.

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EU levels playing field as Chinese, Asian exporters are required to provide emissions data ahead of carbon tax – by Eric Ng (South China Morning Post – November 16, 2022)

https://www.scmp.com/

Manufacturers in China and elsewhere in Asia will have to furnish carbon emissions data to EU customers from next year ahead of the launch of the world’s first carbon tariff, according to a European Parliament member.

Regulations to level the playing field for imports and domestic products in terms of greenhouse gas emissions kick in next year, when disclosure of emissions of imported goods will be required. From 2026, a carbon tax will be charged in the EU based on the goods’ emissions.

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WGC calls miners to plan for further climate change risks – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – November 9, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

The World Gold Council (WGC) is urging bullion miners to implement more consistent, systematic planning and wider collaboration, including closer engagement on risks with local communities, to deal with climate-related challenges.

In its Gold and climate change: Adaptation and resilience report, the gold industry’s leading trade body identifies key physical climate-related vulnerabilities of the sector. It also outlines a range of adaptation strategies to support the industry in managing the associated risks.

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The Mining Gap: Critical Minerals and Geopolitical Competition – by Gregory Brew and Morgan Bazilian (Just Security – November 7, 2022)

https://www.justsecurity.org/

This week, world leaders are gathering in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt for COP27, the 27th annual United Nations conference on climate change. This year’s conference carries with it the weight of the climate challenge, an enormous threat facing humanity, but also comes at a time of growing volatility in global energy markets, rising energy prices, a food security crisis, and war.

As a result, countries both rich and poor will be focused on immediate security and economic threats. While Russia’s war in Ukraine has convinced policymakers of the necessity of divesting from volatile oil markets, the lack of readily available raw materials and supply chain issues continue to impede rapid transitions toward clean energy.

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Energy crisis the inconvenient consequence of demonizing the oil and gas industry – by Rex Murphy (National Post – November 3, 2022)

https://nationalpost.com/

What did Joe Biden and others like him — including in Canada — expect to happen?

Joe Biden, the Wise, as history must record him, has recently brought his fabled wit’s lacerating whip to “big oil.” Thank you, Joseph.

Naturally the sage of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is enraged beyond simple anger that the price of oil and gas has risen staggeringly, that half of Europe is in a dictator’s energy hammerlock, and that his so-called Middle East allies are rebuking his teary-eyed pleas to increase oil production. He is, as the paradoxical idiom has it, “beside himself.”

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OPINION: The climate hypocrisy of rich countries – by Bjorn Lomborg (Globe and Mail – October 31, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Every year, global climate summits feature a parade of hypocrisy, as the world’s elite arrive on private jets to lecture humanity on cutting carbon emissions.

But this November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt will offer even more breathtaking hypocrisy than usual, because the world’s rich will zealously lecture poor countries about the dangers of fossil fuels – after themselves devouring massive amounts of new gas, coal and oil.

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The changing democratic tide – by Conrad Black (MSM.com/National Post – October 1, 2022)

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/

“But countries such as Germany, which shut down much of its nuclear and coal generating capacity to clamp its national lips around the gas pipe from Russia, is now, as former U.S. President Donald Trump and many others warned, paying for its energy vassalage to the Kremlin.”

There is now a clearly discernible international movement away from the fiscal indulgence of the faddish left and the collective self-blame of the majority across much of the democratic world.

Following the overwhelming and almost bloodless victory of democratic free enterprise over international Marxism in the Cold War, there was a commendable absence of gloating in the West, but rather a gradually more absurd and complacent experimentation with an idealized political fantasy land.

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Generation Greta is growing up — and they’re angry – by Marco Chown Oved (Toronto Star – September 24, 2022)

https://www.thestar.com/

They gathered at Queen’s Park, and in more than 600 locations worldwide Friday — a little older, a little wiser and a little angrier.

It’s hard to believe it was only four years ago when a Swedish teenager skipped school for the environment and inspired millions around the world to do the same. But for many of the kids who followed in Greta Thunberg’s footsteps, the past four years have not flown by.

Instead, they’ve been punctuated by disappointment and failure. As the Fridays for Future movement grew bigger and more ambitious — drawing more than six million people into the streets worldwide at its peak in 2019 — the same cannot be said for the actions of world leaders on the climate file.

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Is there a ‘business case’ for defending Canada? – by Kelly McParland (National Post – August 29, 2022)

https://nationalpost.com/

I generally try to avoid arguments about climate change, given that most people already know what they believe. It’s like views on abortion or Donald Trump: this late in the game you’re unlikely to be swayed by anything someone else has to say.

Yet it’s also hard to ignore when certain things happen, like, for instance, a raging fire burning down your house, or a heating bill that’s suddenly 10 times higher than it used to be. As far as the climate crusade goes, if you Google “China coal power generation,” what you get is this:

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OPINION:Net zero by 2050? No way. Finding and burning hydrocarbons have become national obsessions since the war started – by Eric Reguly (Globe and Mail – August 31, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Russia killed off any doubt that it was using energy as a weapon by shutting down the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, Gazprom’s main conduit for natural gas deliveries to Germany, on Wednesday.

While the shutdown, ostensibly for “maintenance,” is scheduled to last only three days – we will see about that – it comes after the Kremlin-controlled gas exporter reduced Nord Stream’s flows by 80 per cent.

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This Australian billionaire wants to be the world’s green hydrogen baron. He’s pushing Canada to join him – by Adam Radwanski (Globe and Mail – August 19, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Mining mogul Andrew Forrest made billions by building an iron ore empire. Now he wants to help to save the planet by transforming his company into a global leader in a carbon-free future

Australia’s second-richest person does not wait long to begin proselytizing, after taking his seat for an interview on a New York patio. “We’re commercializing the beginning of the end of global warming,” he proclaims.

Andrew Forrest, mining baron turned green prophet, is talking about his push to become the world’s dominant producer of emissions-free hydrogen – a nascent energy source that he believes will unlock a revolutionary shift away from fossil fuels to power heavy industry planet-wide.

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The Big Green Lie Almost Everyone Claims to Believe – by Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon (The Epoch Times – August 3, 2022)

https://www.theepochtimes.com/

Almost every member of Congress, Democrat or Republican, pays homage to the Big Green Lie. So do all the past and remaining Conservative candidates vying to be prime minister of the UK and every candidate currently vying for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada.

So does virtually all of the mainstream press. The Big Green Lie—that carbon dioxide is a pollutant—is so pervasive that even those considered skeptics—including right-wing NGOs and pundits—generally adhere to the orthodoxy, differing not in their stated belief that CO2 is a pollutant but only in how calamitous a pollutant it is.

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OPINION: Why we need to change the narrative on Canada’s energy transition – by Simon A. Fish and Dr. Laurence B. Mussio (Globe and Mail – August 4, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Simon A. Fish is Chair of the BMO Climate Institute. Dr. Laurence B. Mussio is the chair of the Long Run Institute. They were co-chairs at the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario’s Calibrating the Climate Transition Symposium in May.

In the past month, The Globe and Mail produced more than 160 articles on climate change, featuring everything from heat waves, to class-action lawsuits, to plans for sweeping total emissions reductions in the oil and gas and agricultural sectors.

A major theme has focused on the challenge of matching our climate aspirations and emissions targets to stubborn realities. In other words, the effects and trade-offs are both coming into sharper view.

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The rich world’s message to the poor: Fossil fuels for me but not for thee – by Bjorn Lomborg (Financial Post – July 27, 2022)

https://financialpost.com/

The rich are choking off funding for any new fossil fuels in the developing world

The rich world’s fossil fuel hypocrisy is on full display in its response to the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the wealthy G7 countries admonish the world’s poor to use only renewables because of climate concerns, Europe and the United States are going begging to Arab nations to expand oil production, Germany is reopening coal power plants and Spain and Italy are ramping up African gas production.

So many European countries have asked Botswana to mine more coal it will have to triple its exports.

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Return to coal or reinvent itself? The simmering feud over an Alberta mining town’s future – by Kyler Zeleny (Globe and Mail – July 24, 2022)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Crowsnest Pass has not had an operational coal mine for 40 years. Now the struggling community is divided over whether to embrace the resource to save itself

For decades, John Kinnear and his family proudly mined coal from the towering mountains that form the border between Alberta and British Columbia. As a local historian in the nearby community of Crowsnest Pass, he has seen the bounty that coal brought for generations of families.

But he also knows how the country – and world – has soured on the dusty black commodity buried deep within the Rockies, and he has come to understand that point of view. Recently, when he visited Line Creek, a Teck Resources coal mine to the community’s west, he was struck by the desolation left in its wake.

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