Professors promote Canada's net-zero pickle
The University of Toronto’s magazine “The VarsiTea” is celebrating that, “On September 26, 73 Canadian organizations and 106 academics, including seven U of T professors, issued a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling on his government to stop all public financing of the fossil fuel sector.”
These groups are also calling for an immediate cap on oil and gas production, claiming this is the only way Canada can meet Paris Agreement targets.
The Paris Agreement is entirely voluntary, however. All countries have to do is to report on their emissions reduction plans and progress every five years. That’s it. No one is meeting targets — except perhaps Germany and the UK, which are in economic decline. Nothing to cheer about there, friends.
But Canada just had to be a climate leader, didn’t it?
So, in in the fall of 2020, the Liberal government made meeting the ‘voluntary’ Paris Agreement targets mandatory through Bill C-12 — that Canada must meet the staged greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets for net zero by 2050.
Robert Lyman, former federal public servant of 27 years and 10 years a diplomat, is a retired energy economist. He pointed out at the time that there was no need for such legislation. He explained the possible rationale this way:
“The environmental non-governmental advocacy organizations that developed the criteria for Bill C-12 probably wanted to enable themselves to sue the government for failure to do more to achieve the legislated target. Political defendants in lawsuits are not always unhappy to be sued; they may even be delighted. Bill C-12 is a potential source of such lawsuits, enabling the government to justify its target as moderate compared to the claims in the lawsuits.
The central purpose of C-12 is to bake the net-zero 2050 goal into the public consciousness and into the Canadian political agenda. Lawsuits won’t do the baking, just raise the temperature.”
Canada has created its own Net Zero pickle with Bill C-12.
Which raises the question. How do these professors think their pensions will be paid if Canada is no longer earning billions in revenues from oil and gas production?
Lyman's report, “A Dire Assessment,” states: “If production is curtailed as Deloitte projects, GDP in Alberta’s oil and gas sector would be $16.2 billion (20%) lower compared to the baseline in 2040. In the rest of Canada, GDP in the sector is projected to be $2.7 billion lower by 2040 compared to the baseline.”
There's more. Parker Gallant is a retired international banker and blogger who tracks the climate ideologues of academia and the ENGO set. As per a video I did about his thoughts in Dec. 2020, he asserts these professors are not grasping the reality of where the money comes from — but they don’t care.
That's because due to the curious pension arrangements that these lucky pundits have, taxpayers guarantee their golden parachutes, while taxpayers themselves could end up living in tents. If you have cellphone power in your tent, you can look up what these folks get paid on the Ontario Sunshine List.
Climate activists have continuously made the claim that Export Canada is subsidizing oil and gas, when they provide bridging loans, available to any similar commercial export operation, which are paid back with interest, as explained in the Friends of Science Society’s 2016 report “Keep Canada in the Black”. Robert Lyman’s 2022 report “Deception vs Reality” rebuts the misinformed claims of these professor activists about fossil fuel subsidies.
The U of T professors signed on to a letter fronted by Environmental Defence, a so-called ‘charity’ that has been an active participant in the foreign and domestic funded green trade war known as the Tar Sands Campaign, to shut down Canada’s economic engine, the oil sands and related oil and gas and pipeline industries.
Will we soon face Germany’s fate of irreversible economic decline? WELT reports on this shocking phenomenon in an interview with Joachim Weimann, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Magdeburg, upon his retirement who says: “The energy transition is a cultural phenomenon, supported by the supposedly critical minds of cultural creators and cabaret artists.” (auto-translation from German)
Fossil fuels continue to supply 81.5% of global primary energy demand and wind, solar and hydro energy together supply only 12% of global primary energy demand. The rest is mostly met by nuclear and biomass. There’s no energy transition to Net Zero in progress, despite the wild claims and demands of these ENGOs and professors, as shown in the Statistical Review of World Energy report.
Despite the efforts of many governments to dampen investment in fossil fuels, in 2024 it is estimated to total USD 1,116 billion, slightly below what it was in 2016 (2023 USD 1,145 billion); USD 2,003 billion on clean energy (i.e. wind, solar, biomass, nuclear, grid, storage, energy efficiency) was meaningless to CO2 reduction.
Obviously, Royal Bank, which the U of T profs and activists revile in their screed, is making prudent investments in energy companies which power our society and well-being.
There’s no climate emergency, as explained by CLINTEL’s cadre of more than 1900 scientists and scholars.
Why do such groups want to disempower and disembowel Canada’s energy security, financial revenues and all the social supports it pays for? Why are they spreading this disinformation? Why should we keep subsidizing them to destabilize our fragile economy?
Why doesn’t the government repeal Bill C-12 and get us out of this Net Zero pickle, before ever encroaching poverty due to poor climate policy destroys us?
"The energy transition is a cultural phenomenon, supported by the supposedly critical minds of cultural creators and cabaret artists." ... just have a look at many postings of Germany's industrial decline... shocking, self-inflicted wounds. Just a reminder that Germany relied on a 'social thinker' for its climate and energy plans.
Here's one plan: https://www.amazon.ca/Hydrogen-Economy-Jeremy-Rifkin/dp/1585422541 And he proudly proclaims he helped plan Germany's future. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-architect-of-germanys_b_5979468
His books have been translated into more than thirty-five languages. Rifkin is an advisor to the European Union and to heads of state around the world.
Ian Cameron, P. Eng., a director with Friends of Science Society, analyzed the Canadian Energy Regulator reports and the report by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on “Getting to Net Zero.” The upshot is that degrowth, deindustrialization and energy deprivation will be the outcome for all but the handful of lucky green cronies.
Rather than being subsidized, in fact, oil and gas companies pay more than their fair share, as outlined in this Friends of Science Society post of 2016 which describes just the bonus payments. Though market conditions have changed since then, clearly oil and gas pay the bills for Canada.
While Beijing-backed hackers infiltrated Canadian telecoms, federal and B.C. leaders quietly financed a billion-dollar shipbuilding deal with a Chinese state firm—then tried to pass the buck.
https://theoppositionnewsnetwork.substack.com/p/ottawa-funded-the-china-ferry-dealthen
Some of these things I still miss
I grew up without safe spaces.
I grew up without trigger warnings.
I drank water from the hose.
I ate peanuts in class.
None of us wore a helmet.
Kids got hurt. We fell down. And we signed a lot of casts.
We couldn’t pause TV. We’d call out “It’s on!” as soon as the commercials started to end (for those who had left the room). And we watched our favourite shows as a family.
There was no next day delivery.
There was no bundle this with that.
There was no internet. Skip the Dishes didn’t exist.
Fast food was not the norm. It was easier to eat healthy. There were home phones. There was VH.........