Climate Alarmism Lurks Behind Wuhan Virus Pandemic

Global warming alarmists have a problem.

Canadians are too preoccupied with COVID-19 contagion and economic devastation to worry much about an existential threat to humanity posed by man-made climate change sometime down the road.

How then to penetrate public consciousness about future peril when present dangers are so grave?

Not to worry. Militants have a tried and true tactic – double down on moralizing, fearmongering and hyperbole.

It is also helpful to have friends in high places. Ottawa’s decision to raise the carbon tax just when infections were peaking demonstrates its willingness to sacrifice the energy industry on the altar of green optics, absent any environmental gain.

According to an article in The Hill, “the coronavirus crisis is perhaps the biggest wakeup call…. that failing to take nature into account puts our own health in danger.”

David Suzuki claimed, “The COVID-19 crisis is a crisis for human beings, but the climate crisis is a crisis for life on the planet.”

Animal rights activists would certainly agree. A Rabble.ca blog asked whether COVID-19 is the latest effort by Gaia, the primal Earth goddess, to rid herself of the virus of humankind. Makes you think.

In a moment of candor, Al Gore justified “an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is”, which sure sounds like fabricating the facts. Paul Watson, a founder of Greenpeace went farther. “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University environmentalist counseled supporters to “make little mention of any doubts we might have.”

Perhaps that is why predictions about global warming have been spectacularly wrong, including oft-repeated claims we had only 12 years to save humanity, Pacific islands would disappear and North polar ice caps would be gone by now.

Climate models significantly over-estimated global temperature increases, but the incessantly repeated mantra was “We are running out of time.”

Scientists frequently differ and they can change their minds.

Yet we are asked to do irreparable harm to the economy, based on forecasts years away about an extremely complex ecosystem that scientists do not claim to fully understand, even as they convey certainty about their doomsday prophesying.

Canada is too small to make an appreciable difference to global emissions. Meanwhile, other countries are prioritizing reopening their collapsed economies.

The creative prize goes to European Union authorities whose draft sustainable disclosure requirements excluded oil and gas from the definition of fossil fuels!

Canadians cannot afford to indulge in hugely expensive gestures when our overarching challenge is to climb out of an immense fiscal hole. So choices must be made in the national interest.

What is more important, healthcare, including fighting current and future pandemics, or bragging rights to improve our slim chance for a useless seat on the U.N. Security Council?

Should we favor thousands of jobs, including for First Nations eager to participate in pipeline projects, or a futile effort to achieve voluntary Paris Accord emissions goals?

Do we care more about healing national unity and providing relief for the energy industry or green votes for the Liberals?

Will we put economic growth and a return to fiscal sustainability ahead of uncompetitive taxes, confiscatory regulations, and subsidies for uneconomic renewables?

Will poverty reduction and enhanced prosperity trump self-righteous moral preening?

Even though the questions answer themselves, never underestimate the power of scare tactics, ideological conviction, and green rent-seekers to manipulate the public into accepting a dismal fate.

Still, if the current crisis does not move us in a rational direction, I despair of what will.

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