February 9, 2025
Scheer and Trudeau both continue their tiresome climate charades
Scheer, just like Justin Trudeau, had to show that he, too, has a plan to meet those sacred Paris commitments.
Scheer, just like Justin Trudeau, had to show that he, too, has a plan to meet those sacred Paris commitments.

“Daddy, what did you do in the Climate War?”

“Son, I carpooled twice a week, and (his voice breaks, a tear bleeds down his cheek) gave up stir sticks and plastic coffee lids.”

Quoted from It was Hard: Tales from the Climate War (Patmos Publications, 2077).

It is a fiction and a delusion that Canada is in any way now or ever will be a significant influence, for good or ill, in the dreary, endless, pup-chasing-its-own-tail “fight against climate change.”

Canada’s leverage over the future climate of the entire planet is incidental and trivial. We are as a toothpick among redwoods. This is acknowledged. Were we to halt this country’s entire energy output, the race to eco-apocalypse that the doom-mongers say we’re on would not be slowed by a week. The coal mines of India and China would see to that.

We are, of course, not contemplating anything like that. Instead the Liberal government has instituted a pot-holed energy tax which by the very most optimistic projections will hardly dent the nation’s overall energy use. This it calls “fighting climate change.” Canada as a whole contributes the most meagre fraction to the (putative) problem; the Liberal “plan” aims to decrease that meagre fraction by an even more meagre fraction. In the climate wars, Canadian politicians are spectators pretending to be contenders.

And what was the key element of the approval? That any profits from the just-re-approved Trans Mountain pipeline — should it ever get built — will be thrown to Liberal-picked “green projects.” Projects with one aim: to end the oil industry which supplied the money for them. This week’s announcement has the Liberal government promising to phase out the oil industry with the industry’s own money. Economics meets assisted dying.

As for Andrew Scheer’s cloud of blather (“Canada, yes us, is going to ‘invent’ the world out of climate doom”), it was another tepid spasm of “I’m the reasonable one here.” Instead of going to Fort McMurray, which is where energy policy should be announced if he wanted to show where his heart is, Scheer was in front of a picture-postcard calm lake under a beautiful blue sky — the kind of PR background you might find in a Greenpeace fundraising ad. It lacked only a swan with blue feathers and someone reciting Wordsworth.

[…]

See Also:

(1) The Liberals, out of options, do the right thing on Trans Mountain

(2) Canada will shell out almost $70 billion for its new warships, PBO report says

(3) Indigenous people level a crushing blow to U.S. funded anti-oil sands campaign

(4) Senate passes environmental assessment bill

(5) Risks unheeded, journey without end: The seeds of the tortured Phoenix pay project were planted three decades ago