Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has clarified for the world, except those wilfully blind, that green policies weakened Europe and emboldened the ruthless dictator to reclaim territory of the former Soviet Empire. [bold, links added]
Here at home, the Liberal government’s obsession with a climate emergency has become so divorced from common sense and deleterious to Canada’s national interests that it urgently needs a fundamental reset that prioritizes adaptation over unachievable and increasingly unaffordable mitigation.
The first law of holes is that when you are digging to nowhere, stop digging. Instead, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is doubling down on his ideological dogmatism — he’s about to bring back the ‘Just(in) Transition” strategy — with enduring harm to national unity.
His virtue-signaling policies run counter to employment, funding for social programs, economic growth, energy security, our role as a reliable ally, and ironically preclude an opportunity to reduce net global emissions by selling to Asia oil and gas that could be substituted for higher emitting coal.
Furthermore, they disproportionately harm Indigenous peoples, racialized communities, and the economically disadvantaged.
While Canada’s government remains oblivious to reality, an energy crisis awakened Europe to the self-destructive consequences of its environmental policies before Russia’s aggression.
Germany’s colossal strategic blunder is illustrative of the consequences of wishful thinking about renewables. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel decided to get off both nuclear power, after the Fukushima accident, and coal.
Now Germany is desperate to maintain the two-thirds of its gas coming from the Russian Federation and to import coal and may restart domestic coal plants to increase production from 26 to 34 gigawatts, a difference coincidentally equivalent to the elimination of coal usage in Ontario.
The result is compromised energy security, dramatically higher energy bills, and increased GHG emissions.
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing public outrage from prohibitively high-cost green initiatives, like banning new gas boilers, leading to a painful “heat or eat” choice for poor Brits and deindustrialization due to uncompetitive energy prices.
He is now set to remove a two-year-old moratorium on fracking, while former Brexit leader Nigel Farage is campaigning for a referendum on net zero.
U.S. President Joe Biden is under pressure to revisit his decision to block Keystone XL, originally taken to appease his left-wing base.
Recently, he urged producers to unleash shale production, begged OPEC to pump more oil, and is reduced to scrounging for fossil fuel from the hostile autocracies of Iran and Venezuela.
Justin Trudeau is missing in action but not for photoshoots. His hollow vow to help Europe with its energy crisis is transparent theatre without LNG export terminals or pipelines to tidewater, which he persistently blocked.
An example is last month’s rejection of GNL Quebec Energie Saguenay’s liquified natural gas export facility that could have exported 11 million tons of LNG annually.
To Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping, Canada is a useful idiot for buying into green ideology and believing that China someday will promise to do something about its emissions.
It is hard to think of a more effective way to deliberately damage Canada, especially when combined with fiscal profligacy.
High inflation, driven by massive stimulus spending and ballooning energy costs, is hurting the middle class and making life unaffordable for many lower-income Canadians.
The loss in income, employment, and equity partnerships has especially penalized Indigenous peoples, most of whom support energy projects near them.
China poses a far greater intermediate and long-term challenge to the world’s democracies than Russia, but it also benefits from its uncompetitive approach to energy security and economic growth.
Our allies are starting to take heed. When will Canada?
Read more at Toronto Sun
Precisely! And not only that but left-wing politicians will squirm when they finally understand that solar panels and windmills don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. Making them not green but rust belt red. The ONLY green energy is fossil fuels. Because using them recycles life’s basic ingredients of CO2 and H2O back to an atmosphere starving for more CO2. The most important ingredient in life on earth.
Of course Canada (as well as northern Europe get little in the way of sunlight to generate electricity from solar panels. So what “green energy” sources are going to generate enough electricity during those dark times?