Even As The Science Goes South, Canada Blunders Into The Carbon Tax Trap

"The NOAA temperature dataset for the U.S. reveals that for the last 22 years and 3 months, the U.S. continental temperature change has been cooling at a minus -0.02°F per decade” 

It is incumbent upon progressive virtue signalliers that their schemes have as many working parts as possible. That these fever dreams must contain a bulging roster of purported experts to tell you why resistance is futile. And a palace guard of heavies to intimidate anyone not impressed by the first two conditions.

Hence, the current Russia/ Trump collusion conspiracy has been as opaque as a slough, featuring a cast of hundreds of "experts", and it's protected against scrutiny by what sociologist Peter Berger called “mob psychology, the mystique of the street, rage against all institutions of liberal democracy, and, last but not least, the militant anti-reason impervious to argument.”

The Russia bugs employed this handy template when they went looking to find a reason why Hillary Clinton was not crowned president of the U.S. in November of 2016. They only had to follow the instructions of the devoted global warming… oops, climate-change gang.

The “science is settled” crowd got in fast with their big concept, courtesy of Al Gore’s apocalyptic Inconvenient Truth in 2006. Having seduced the trend-spotting media and infiltrated the education system with their “we’re all going to die” narrative, these prophets of environmental doom bludgeoned the opposition using the courts and the culture.

It has been worth your life to question the IPCC methodology with luminaries such as Prince Charles, Darryl Hannah and Neil Young. Fealty to the fever swamp is so entrenched that all the candidates in oil-rich Alberta’s election of 2015 pronounced climate change an unquestioned verity.

Major newspapers and electronic outlets declared skeptics such as Canadians Ross McKitrick and Steve McIntyre to be heretics, refusing to print their letters or brook their opposition. Instead they bombarded the feeble minded with stories about hottest summers on record and tragic floods or hurricanes spawned by global warming. 

Even when a predicted spike in temperatures spurred by rampant CO2 failed to appear (see above) they took no backward step. We must accept the orthodoxy of carbon taxes and climate agreements among the fevered technocrats of the state apparatus.

Which brings us to the current energy showdown between Alberta and B.C.— arbitrated by a very reluctant federal government under Justin Trudeau. Kinder Morgan’s pullback from the project has forced the issue. Yet no one is talking about the details about the NOAA’s cooling statistics. The forces of liberal chumminess are too invested to slip the plot at this point. We must have carbon pricing and uncompetitive alternative fuels if we’re to hold our heads high at the U.N.

The NDP government of BC (goosed by their Green Party partners) has tolerated Professor Suzuki’s recipe for civil disobedience and photo ops as the natural order of things. They are all-in with the narrative and the tactics.

Alberta’s NDP government (goosed by its Conservative rivals) is trying to suck and blow at the same time: defending Alberta’s right to ship oil to the Pacific while also offering Hosannas to the Malthusian elements in the green movement. Albertans point out how Montreal’s mayor called an eastern pipeline a grave environmental threat to its city— even as Montreal dumped raw sewage into the St. Lawrence.

Both parties are relying on the favour of Trudeau— whose own energy minister has compared climate research skeptics to Holocaust deniers. The PM has vowed to finish the much-delayed project without offering any details on how he will thread that needle. 

He only knows it is an unworkable equation is an increasingly unworkable federation. Trudeau has no support in Alberta. He has much support in the lower mainland of B.C. You do the math.

He also has a big mouth that has promised both sides will be happy with the outcome. Fat chance for the man who thought giving Alberta a pipeline if it submitted to carbon taxing was a workable strategy.

There is always, of course, the Trump option. Faced with protesters trying to stop a lawful North Dakota pipeline, Trump pushed through with the project, leaving the agitprop opposition flailing helplessly as their tents were crushed by 18-wheelers before a mortified media. (Presumably the zealots have decamped  to BC to lock arms with Green Party leader Elizabeth May and her pals in opposition.)

Expecting that sort of intestinal fortitude of Trudeau is risible. His waffling has convinced May and the anti-pipeline forces (who are supported in polls by less than 35 recent of the province’s citizens) that Mr. Photo Op will eventually fold like a bad pita pocket. He values his bonafides at Davos more than his cred at the Calgary Stampede. So the political theatre at work sites will continue.

But procrastination also has its limits. Trudeau and the green lobby face a federal election against hardline Conservative Andrew Scheer next year even as the Liberals' polls tank. Alberta is poised to elect another hardline Conservative, Jason Kenney, as premier. Worse still, Doug Ford seems inevitable as the next premier of Ontario. All promise to abandon Trudeau’s beloved carbon tax system. 

Can this trio restore the federal government’s authority? It would be refreshing if, before testing the nation's unity, we might look to see if the raison d’être for all this chaos is real or worth tearing the nation apart. Is the Green science still valid? It’s a hard pass in a nation where the media has already declared its devotion to the climate change narrative.

But the alternative— a war amongst regions of the country— should compel a re-assessment of whether a climate policy hinged on results half a century i the future are worth the price about to be paid in Canada?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy.is the host of the podcast The Full Count with Bruce Dowbiggin on his website is Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). He’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he is also the best-selling author whose new book Cap In Hand will be available this fall.