PrairieView
We hear a lot lately from the environmental climate change community that we are experiencing catastrophic climate change due to man made C02 emissions. When the NDP formed government in Alberta in May 2015 they said they had to act aggressively to reduce those emissions. It was important that Alberta make a difference.
What surprised me was that a number of the oil sands executives stood in support of Rachel Notley when she announced her carbon tax policy and said that the energy industry could do better. Well yes, with the technical innovation that is possible today, they would be able to do better but that misses the point. I fail to understand what kind of a difference can Alberta actually make.
As I stated in a previous column, Canada is now responsible for about 1.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions, Alberta perhaps ½ per cent and the oil sands .01 per cent.
This difference they refer to defies logic. When China produces perhaps 25 per cent of greenhouse emissions, just what difference could Alberta possibly make?
Unless somebody can get this move by progressive politicians and the climate change nuts to apply some common sense to the climate issue I think it will be the cause of a worldwide economic disaster.
So far Canada has promised about 4.5 billion dollars to Third World countries to help with greenhouse gas reductions. That investment will create no new Canadian jobs other than perhaps for a couple of bureaucrats to disperse those funds.
The Alberta NDP are going to implement a carbon tax that will cost the people of Alberta about three billion dollars a year. Both the federal and provincial governments are projecting huge deficits for years to come. Both of these governments talk about investing money to create jobs. All I can see from these investments are more jobs for bureaucrats. To fix the economy we need jobs that create new wealth. Both governments give lip service to the building of pipelines but neither of them are doing much to make sure those pipelines get built. Those are projects that would create new wealth.
I think the concern we have in Canada and much of the rest of the world is not catastrophic climate change but the catastrophic government policy being developed in response to the perception of catastrophic climate change.
Ontario has destroyed much of its manufacturing industry with the implementation of the Green Energy Act that has resulted in the loss of over 4,000 jobs as a result of the huge increase in the price of electricity. It won’t be long before Alberta follows Ontario’s lead with their proposed carbon tax and an increase in the corporate tax.
It would appear that the environmental community have convinced the political class that the god of climate change is much more important than sound economic policy.
Harper resisted drastic climate change policy as best he could. He was criticized the world over for it, but he was right.
I have yet to see any real proof that CO2 has had any real effect on the weather.
I have personally talked to two meteorological scientists, Dr. Tim Ball from Victoria, BC and Art Douglas from the northeastern US. Both of them told me that the effect of CO2 on mean world temperature is minuscule.
Climate change is caused by solar cycle activity. The heat radiated from the sun is never constant. Eventually the world will experience another cooling cycle regardless of how much money is spent to reduce Greenhouse Gas. It will then become apparent that the billions and billions of dollars spent on climate change was wasted.
