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U.S. court’s green energy ruling matters for Canada
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A decision this week by the U.S. Supreme Court should have served as a giant rubber stamp to mark “FAIL” on last December’s UN climate accord. Indeed, the decision has probably ended the Paris agreement for nations such as China (the world’s largest emitter), India and other rapidly industrializing economies.
But in Canada, global warming alarmism is no longer a scientific theory. It is a secular religion. Nothing can stop it.
In the run-up to last year’s UN climate-fest, talks were stalled. No country wanted emission controls that would beggar its national economy.
Certain he would never get his emission plans through the U.S. Congress (even many Democrats were opposed), President Barack Obama instead signed an executive order effectively phasing out coal mining and coal-fired power generation by 2030.
His action had the effect of jumpstarting UN negotiations and getting most of the world’s nations to sign on.
Like most UN agreements, though, the Paris accord isn’t worth the forest of trees cut down to print it on.
The emission targets in it are said to be “legally binding.” But the target for each country was not set by an impartial, third-party scientific board based on how much carbon dioxide must be cut to “save” the planet. Rather, they were set by the countries themselves.
In the case of developing economic superpowers such as China and India, their national governments set their targets to allow unlimited economic growth through to 2030. Developing countries claimed to be onboard, but then permitted themselves almost unlimited emissions for about the next 15 years.
For example, there are about 2,000 coal-fired electrical generating plants being planned around the world between now and 2030. Except for a couple dozen on the drawing boards in Western countries, not one will be stopped by the Paris deal.
Still, Obama’s royal degree against coal — his Clean Power Plan — had the effect of at least symbolically forging a new international climate treaty to replace the old Kyoto accords.
That was until this week when the U.S. Supreme Court, quite correctly, ruled that Obama lacks the constitutional authority to impose “green” goals on his own in the absence of Congressional approval.
Within days — hours even — China had signalled that if the U.S. was no longer going to impose ruinous emission targets on itself, the People’s Republic was out, too. China’s Communist government would not abide even by the meaningless emissions limits it had set for itself in Paris.
Many developing nations sent similar signals, but not Canada.
Indeed, here, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down. He greeted UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Ottawa on Thursday and repeated Canada’s pledge of $2.65 billion for the UN to dole out to “green” energy or building projects in poorer countries.
Never mind that this is about three times the amount the Trudeau governments have promised for initiatives in Canada to bolster our slumping economy. The money for the UN climate fund will be wasted because there are few things the UN does better than incompetence and corruption.
The Chinese, the Indians, Brazilians, Indonesians and others were never going to cripple their economies to further phoney UN climate goals. Yet so long as the Americans were on board, they were prepared to pay lip service to UN efforts.
Now, even that false pretence has been deflated.
But don’t tell that to the Twintellectuals in the PMO.
Next month, our new Liberal government is expected to announce plans for a national carbon tax. Added on top of their new income and corporate taxes, the Trudeau government initiatives will suppress economic growth.
The carbon tax will have no impact on climate change, but it will make the Liberals feel good about their commitment to the gods of “green”.