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Tidbits

17 May 2023 | News Roundup
  • No Mow May“ might appeal to people for the wrong reasons. (For instance the “No Ironing June” crowd and the “No Vacuuming Ever” set.) But we are for once in agreement that a more natural garden is good for the environment, especially the urban environment… and if the greens could spend more time on this stuff and less on fighting an imaginary global heating breakdown we’d all be better off.
  • From the “debate we never had is now over” file, and “you’ll have nothing, and be unhappy”, and “the people in charge haven’t got a clue,” Chris Varcoe writes of a new Public Policy Forum report saying Canada isn’t on track to hit Net Zero by 2050 and if it tries by shutting down oil and gas production, it will cost $100 billion and the province of Alberta alone will pay $60 billion. So of course Forum CEO Edward Greenspon, a Laurentian former Globe & Mail editor and Toronto Star VP, says “Nobody’s debating net zero. We are long past that. It’s what is the better way and what is the worst way to get to net zero in a democracy?” Seems not producing CO2 is the worst way, and ignoring reality is the best one. (For instance his old paper tweets “Net-zero is one of the most complex missions facing business leaders today.” Yeah. “Complex” as in “impossible”.) Of course we could always try an open-minded debate. But no. We’ve moved on from rational thought to hysterical panic.
  • We told you the more wind and solar got produced the more prohibitively expensive the components would become. And now Canary Media concedes that “wind turbines – and the grid power they generate – are getting more expensive. Despite the almost terawatt of wind power installed worldwide, commodity costs and supply-chain perturbations are proving a more powerful force than the price-reducing magic of learning curves and economies of scale.” It nevertheless chirps that “wind power remains one of the cheapest – and cleanest – forms of electricity generation around.” Yeah? Without subsidies? As costs mount? Stay tuned.
  • Here come the climate refugees… again. “The number of internally displaced people (IDPs) reached a record 71.1 million worldwide last year due to conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and climate calamities like the monsoon floods in Pakistan” which, of course, were unknown until 1988 or so. Never mind that the world now has way more people than it did even 35 years ago so wars and floods displace more of us. No, it’s all climate all the time.

2 comments on “Tidbits”

  1. "Nobody's debating net zero." Oh yeah? I am for one. Net zero is what you get when a bunch of otherwise sensible people get caught up in a belief system that has more in common with medieval crusades than with rational thought. But fear not. The closer you get to net zero, the less resources you will command as a result of the inevitable collapse of your industrial society, so the less able you will be to move any closer to your goal. Net zero is an inherently unreachable goal, for which we offer our heartfelt thanks.

  2. Politics is the game of competitive story telling. That's why the English Lit. majors are wiping the floor with the astrochemical engineer policy wonks. Real thinkers don't know how to spin a compelling enough yarn to win elections.

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