Category: Climate realism

Governments embraced climate policy with enthusiasm—now they reel back in horror as costs and subsidies soar

Wall Street Journal, Sept. 9, 2022

New British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Sept. 7 rolled out an energy-price subsidy plan that could cost £150 billion. Throw that on the pile with the tens upon tens of billions of dollars’ worth of subsidies other European governments are offering to take the sting out of energy prices this winter. It adds up to a stunning cost for Europe’s climate-change ambitions.

The contours of Europe’s crisis are well-known by now. Governments across the Continent for decades concocted increasingly aggressive plans to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the name of arresting climate change.… Read more

Continent’s natural-gas crisis is morphing into a genuine power emergency. Canada could help, but won’t

By Henry Geraedts, National Post, Sept. 8, 2022

As the collapse of Europe’s energy structure begins to unfold it’s important to understand that its impact across the socio-economic landscape isn’t yet anywhere near full force. The bankruptcy of utilities and energy providers continues. France recently re-nationalized core utility EDF, operator of its nuclear plants, while Germany opted for a €9 billion bailout to save linchpin utility Uniper.

The true and overarching danger to Europe, however, is the accelerating threat to its industrial base and small businesses.… Read more

For political and ideological reasons his government cannot admit to the terribly damaging consequences of its green policies and the urgent need to fundamentally change course

BY JOE OLIVER, National Post, Sept. 1, 2o22

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should be feeling isolated in his campaign against fossil fuels, especially liquefied natural gas (LNG), as leaders around the world reduce their countries’ reliance on inadequate renewable energy and tone down their own rhetoric about lowering GHG emissions. But for political and ideological reasons his government cannot admit to the terribly damaging consequences of its green policies and the urgent need to fundamentally change course.… Read more

In the west, Gorbachev’s main legacy, apart from the liberation of eastern Europe, should be his rejection of the command-bureaucratic system as ‘suffocating.’ And yet we’re in an age in the west where command-bureaucratic is all the rage

By William Watson, National Post, Sept. 1, 2022

If believing in communist reform was his great strategic error, Mikhail Gorbachev’s great strategic insight was that the “command-bureaucratic system” did not work. It could win a world war. It could put a sputnik into space. If you devoted a big enough share of society’s resources to a given task, command-and-control could get it done.… Read more

Political leaders must admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free

Wall Street Journal Editorial, July 18, 2022

Soaring oil and natural gas prices. Electricity grids on the brink of failure. Energy shortages in Europe, with worse to come. The free world’s growing strategic vulnerability to Vladimir Putin and other dictators. These are some of the unfolding results in the last year caused by the West’s utopian dream to punish fossil fuels and sprint to a world driven solely by renewable energy.

It’s time for political leaders to recognize this manifest debacle and admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of carbon fuel for decades to remain prosperous and free.… Read more

Generating electricity and operating buildings are responsible for half of global energy demand and CO2 emissions. Nuclear power can be the cheapest, fastest way to provide reliable heat and power and to halve emissions

By Robert Har­graves, July 14, 2022, Wall Street Journal

The rising cost of energy makes winter expensive. The price of heating oil in New England rose from $3 a gallon to $5 last winter, with $6 possible this year in some areas as the war in Ukraine disrupts energy markets. Natural-gas prices may more than double heating costs this winter. Nuclear power offers a solution.

Nuclear plants heat water, producing steam that spins turbine generators.… Read more

Canadians must understand that ‘net-zero’ policies mean decay and decline, not deliverance

By Kenneth P. Green, Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

A new (and profoundly bad) policy idea has gripped the world’s climate-obsessed leaders to address scenarios mostly generated by their own imaginative (and often wrong) predictive climate models. Basically, economic development must stop in 2050, and then decline as rapidly as possible afterward. This is the big “net-zero” crusade of the World Economic Forum, and naturally the Trudeau government is onboard.

Of course, the stated goal is to get to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, preparatory to a hard phase-down to zero total emissions as quickly as humanly possible.… Read more

Despite the current hysteria, we have arguably never been less vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the climate

By Derek Burney, August 20, 2022

Record heat waves in North America, Europe and elsewhere gave new life to climate change crusaders who get headlines predicting apocalypse tomorrow. Global temperatures might be rising but that is not creating a dangerous, more cataclysmic world because, thanks to economic growth and material development, human societies are more resilient and more adaptable. Moreover, politicians who focus singularly on climate change ignore the fact that people today are more concerned about inflation, especially rising food and energy prices.… Read more

Corporations and utopians are offering authoritarian solutions to crises only democracy and free markets can solve

By Jordan Peterson, August 15, 2022, The Telegraph

Deloitte is the largest “professional services network” in the world. Headquartered in London, it is also one of the big four global accounting companies, offering audit, consulting, risk advisory, tax and legal services to corporate clients.

With a third of a million professionals operating on those fronts worldwide, and as the third-largest privately owned company in the US, Deloitte is a behemoth with numerous and far-reaching tentacles.

In short: it is an entity we should all know about, not least because such enterprises no longer limit themselves to their proper bailiwick (profit-centred business strategising, say), but – consciously or not – have assumed the role as councillors to believers in unchecked globalisation whose policies have sparked considerable unrest around the world.… Read more