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Why stop at saving the planet?

29 Mar 2023 | News Roundup

In a bid to foul up traffic in Canada’s capital with a vast motorcade of gasoline-powered vehicles watched over by countless idling police cars and vans, United States President Joe Biden visited Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to save us all from everything “based on a mutual commitment to shared security, shared prosperity, and shared democratic values, including the importance of fighting climate change and an abiding respect for human rights and the rule of law. As the closest of friends and allies, we remain committed to making life better for people on both sides of our shared border and to building a more free, equitable, secure, and prosperous world.” And if you think that sounds grandiose to the point of delusional, behold video game Tetris creator Henk Rogers, who after a brush with premature death set himself “four missions”, namely “End the use of carbon-based fuel, end war, take humans to other planets, and find out how the universe ends and do something about it.”

In his interview on his quadruple cosmic mission Henk Rogers told Canary Media that when it comes to ending the end of the universe, “I don’t pretend to know anything about this mission. It could have been some alien from the future that transmitted this mission into my brain.” So what somebody needs is a major tin foil hat retrofit. Instead, they quote him as though he were thoroughly sober-minded and credible rather than following Plan 10 from Inner Space that:

“we will end the use of carbon-based fuel one way or another in the next I-don’t-know-how-many decades. I prefer it to be 2045 because that’s the 100th anniversary of the United Nations. We can totally do this. We have the technology. The only thing is inertia from the fossil-fuel industry, and our own resistance to change. That’s what’s in the way.”

Yeah, that’s all. Not the fact that fossil fuels are the only viable and affordable way to do so many things like, to pick one example of many, launching rockets into space for the purpose of taking humans to other planets.

Neither Trudeau nor Biden seems ready to repeal the law of entropy. But they seem otherwise mercifully free of the pangs of humility. For instance:

“Canada and the United States will work together to address the climate impact of goods, promote North American trade of low-emissions goods, including the promotion of common approaches for trade in low emissions goods, including green steel and aluminum.

Address the climate impact of goods? Just that? Not a problem for Trudeau and Biden, who are agents of change rather than resistors of it whatever they may have failed to do so far in their long public careers. They preen that:

“Canada and the United States launched a one-year Energy Transformation Task Force chaired by the U.S. Special Presidential Coordinator for Global Infrastructure and Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister to work across the spectrum of the clean economy. The task force will accelerate cooperation on critical clean energy opportunities and supply chains, including but not limited to, securing and strengthening renewable energy and electric vehicle supply chains, critical minerals and rare earths, grid integration and resilience, advanced and conventional nuclear energy and other areas that advance our collective energy security, and to avoid and reduce disruptions to our integrated and mutually supportive supply chains.”

We again want to quote Roy O’Bannon wondering what in our past history would make anyone think they can do such a thing. But it’s not how they roll. Instead, Canary Media promises “Video: Gender diversity in the climatetech workforce” as yet another piece of cosmic justice within easy reach, while the summiteers go with:

“Canada is moving forward with an enhanced plan to support a clean economy future, including with a new investment tax credit for clean technology manufacturing in addition to tax measures that support clean hydrogen and clean technology adoption. As the implementation of these plans proceed, the United States and Canada will work together toward an integrated North American approach that benefits U.S. and Canadian workers, suppliers, and products.”

The decision to lunge for gender equity, or diversity, or both at once while saving Earth with the other hand is characteristic of a mindset that does not recognize practical difficulties when they arise and decide to deal resolutely with one thing at a time. Just as Greenpeace insists that “The threat of violence increases as the climate crisis makes extreme weather events more intense and frequent. The impacts on women, public health and gender equity can’t be ignored.”

The same mentality led former nominally conservative French President Jacques Chirac to say in 2000 that the Kyoto Accord was “the first component of an authentic global governance” when in fact it wasn’t even the first component of an authentic reduction in GHGs. And the Canadian authorities, while bungling every emissions target they ever set, to double down:

“The Government of Canada is committed to advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a 15-year action plan adopted by all United Nations member countries. At the heart of this agenda are 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aimed at addressing the world’s most pressing challenges by 2030, including poverty, inequality and climate change.”

Seventeen things at a time. And after lunch world peace. No, really. Remember, they’re “building a more free, equitable, secure, and prosperous world” as well as fixing the weather and preventing the end of the universe.

6 comments on “Why stop at saving the planet?”

  1. The ACE index, Accumulated Cyclone Energy, the measurement of the intensity, expanse and duration of tropical storm activity across the globe has been, if anything, somewhat below the century+ record recently. And tornadoes ("what could be a better example of an extreme event", have said so many) have been particularly subdued, there having been none of Fujita Scale F-5 in nearly ten years, by far the record.

  2. If copies of the Bible are still available in Canada, either in English or French, Hank Rogers needs to find one and read the book of Revelations. Might be the answer to his question about the “End”. Imagine that puny little mankind who cowers at the sound of high winds and rain actually thinks that he can affect the workings of the entire planet which he had nothing to do with its creation and its everyday operation. Delusional.

  3. You can add several military jets orbiting over Ottawa all day to the long list of fossil fuel burners associated with the Bidden visit. As I listened to them overhead I wondered what the carbon footprint was for the whole show.

  4. These guys all suffer from a Narcissistic personality disorder... A narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive craving for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathize with others' feelings.
    Such as...
    A grandiose sense of self-importance
    Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
    Believing that they are "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
    Requiring excessive admiration
    A sense of entitlement (unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations)
    Being interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends)
    Lacking empathy (unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others)
    Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them
    Showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
    Within the DSM-5, NPD is a cluster B personality disorder. Individuals with cluster B personality disorders often appear dramatic, emotional, or erratic.

  5. All a distraction from the reality that they couldn't balance a budget and survive politically. End-stage democracy choosing the form of its destroyer.

  6. They are giving the people what they voted for - good and hard.
    If only women voted in Canada, we would have a Liberal majority government and an NDP opposition. Still. Let that sink in.
    Might be time for some "mansplaining." Just sayin'.

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