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A conservative climate plan

23 Oct 2024 | OP ED Watch

A significant Canadian publication called The Hub is hyping a long dreary series in which a quasi-conservative advocacy group pays for essays promoting a “conservative” approach to climate which boils down to explaining how conservatives can jettison their principles for no apparent political advantage, a genre in which “become climate alarmists with an economics degree” has been dominant of late. Since they weren’t interested in an actual conservative point of view in their series we decided to write one anyway, which relies on such genuinely conservative notions as be sensible about science and economics and don’t get hustled along by hype. Or, to quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again, “Don’t Panic”.

An email from Clean Prosperity touted the new series with a string of boldly stale clichés:

“‘Low-carbon economic growth offers enormous opportunities for Canada, and for enhancing Canadians’ standard of living,’ wrote Clean Prosperity’s Benjamin Dachis, vice president of research and outreach, and Adam Sweet, director for Western Canada, in The Hub. Making the case for conservative leadership on climate policy in Canada, they wrote that Canada can diversify its energy development, still providing the oil and gas the world needs, while also becoming a ‘world leader in the low-carbon energy of the future.’ A conservative climate plan for Canada should be Canadian-built and Canadian-owned, Dachis and Sweet said.”

After which you hardly need be told that their background is in political backrooms. What would “Canadian-owned” even mean here? If someone else has good ideas why not adopt them? Who thinks what works in Canada doesn’t work elsewhere and vice versa? But it does well in focus groups. As does having your cake and eating it too, as a hydrocarbon superpower that shuns carbon. But what actual evidence is there that it “offers enormous opportunities for Canada” or anyone else? Who has taken this route and seen anything but a massive flow of government cash into failed ventures, and faltering prosperity?

Thus the series burbles on that:

“Canada has a major economic opportunity in the global low-carbon economy, if it gets its climate and energy policies right. Those policies should be informed by principles like leveraging the ingenuity of markets and free enterprise, limited government, and respect for provincial jurisdiction.”

How is this not the opposite of the climate policy agenda? What practical examples can they point to? Any fool can say we’ll do well if we get all our policies right. The hard part is doing it. Whereas proposing a massive intervention to revolutionize how our economy and society work in the name of limited government is just word salad.

It reads like a party platform not a real plan. And perhaps they hope it will become one. We beg to differ.

The timing of this latest push is odd, since even socialists in Canada are now bailing on carbon taxes on the grounds that they hurt regular people without doing anything anyone can point to with respect to emissions from this country let alone the weather around the world. But then again, when people are giving bad advice, it’s amazing how comprehensively bad it often is. (It’s also the case that a surprising number of Canadian energy firms, rather than running secret denialist plots that pull the strings of the state as the executive committee of the bourgeoisie, embraced climate orthodoxy early and enthusiastically and are now having trouble climbing down.) So here’s some good advice instead.

Regular readers and viewers of CDN material will have a good idea what we mean about being sensible about science. It is, and for centuries has been, a highly productive activity because it proceeds by advancing hypotheses, testing them against evidence and refining or even rejecting them based on their performance in that regard. It does not proceed by inventing a consensus then cancelling anyone who dissents. And so real conservatives would be very wary of anyone who engages in the latter activity.

Real science is also humble. Which cannot always be said of scientists, and we’re not being altogether snide there. It takes a fair bit of self-confidence even to tackle a science degree, let alone uphold one’s own hypothesis against the stern criticism of one’s colleagues including, in some cases, the gatekeepers of the dominant view. But when it comes to climate, a crucial aspect of humility is realizing that the zealots aren’t just wrong in their specific claims, they’re deluded about the degree of certainty that exists about almost anything in the field.

If you were to read, say, Javier Vinós’s book Solving the Climate Puzzle: The Sun's Surprising Role you would not have to agree with everything he says, let alone his main hypotheses, to recognize what a complex thing the planet’s climate and its drivers are and how little of it anyone really understands. Those computer models, with their spurious precision, are especially noteworthy for the way they just sweep uncertainties under the digital rug. And again, a proper conservative vision of the world is very wary of people who either do not realize or will not admit that they know far less than they loudly proclaim that they know.

On the economic side, it is true that some of these supposedly conservative advocates for rallying round the white flag on climate do at least try to insist that we should use economically rational methods to reduce carbon emissions. Including that if we are going to have a carbon tax, it needs to replace a hoorah’s nest of regulations and mandates not just add to the mess. (Though a real conservative is also aware that the processes of government are sufficiently opaque and responsive to perverse incentives that actually making it happen is highly problematic.) But there’s a crucial point they overlook.

Any rational measure of the probable damage from a small increase in temperature in the coming three-quarters of a century, even if you believe humans are causing it in ways we understand and can quantify with confidence, indicates that the massive cost of any efforts to prevent it is a highly irrational trade-off.

As University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick noted indignantly in the Financial Post, with respect to the so-called science:

“unlike other areas of policy – such as trade, defence or central banking – where diplomats aim for realistic solutions to identifiable problems, in the global climate policy world one’s bona fides are established, not by actions, but by willingness to recite an increasingly absurd catechism.”

Which matters because in order to win the applause of the cool climate kids, conservative leaders will have to say such crazy stuff about climate that there’s no way to defend sensible policy on the basis of it. So his version of “Don’t panic” is:

“Climate zealots will not credit the Conservatives for anything they achieve on the climate file unless they are first willing to repeat untrue alarmist nonsense, and probably not even then. Even so, Conservatives should speak sensibly, use mainstream science and economic analysis, and reject climate-crisis rhetoric and costly ‘net zero’ aspirations.”

Moving on to economics, he notes pointedly that the second major problem with such proposals as The Hub is peddling is that:

“though climate advocates love to talk about ‘solutions’ their track record is 40 years of costly failure and massive waste. Here again ‘leadership’ is tied to a willingness to dump ever-larger amounts of taxpayer money into impractical schemes larded with all the fashionable buzzwords. The story is always the same. We need to hurry and embrace this exciting new economic opportunity, which for some reason the private sector won’t touch.”

And then, like the economist he is, he moves on to the third problem: “opportunity cost.” Under which heading he notes that all the failed policies and administrative structures use up resources that are needed to solve the more pressing national problems that actually could be solved, before making the snide but entirely appropriate recommendation that his proposed new Ministry of Energy, Resources and Climate:

“should work with the provinces to find one region or municipality willing to be a demonstration project on the feasibility of relying only on renewables for electricity. We keep hearing from enthusiasts that wind and solar are the cheapest and best options, while critics point to their intermittency and hidden costs. Surely there must be one town in Canada where the councillors, fresh from declaring a climate crisis and buying electric buses, would welcome the chance to ‘show leadership.’ We could fit them out with all the windmills and solar panels they wanted, then disconnect them from the grid and see how it went. If no one is willing to volunteer, that would be useful information on its own.”

Exactly. Because the simple if in some way necessarily conservative truth here is that enhancing prosperity so that we are more adaptable is the runaway winner in terms of desirable policies and, of all things, it coincides with what ought to be the broad, deep conservative preference for free-market solutions. Whereas all those magical solutions for which we’re urged to ditch energy that works can’t even power a city let alone a country or the world.

Now, if you want us to tackle the issue of what conservatives who say they believe in free markets really ought to do about the massive, tangled, counterproductive mess of state interventionist programs in every area of our lives, well, we’d be here all night.

P.S. We should also add that the conservative climate whisperers with their expensive consulting services, which can guarantee defeat in the next election without winning you the respect of liberals, are liable to say the key thing here is to please the public, not make sound policy, and the public demands climate action. But the public does no such thing. They may tell pollsters they support it, provided it doesn’t cost much. But when they actually encounter it and its costs, they balk. They do so even though the extraordinary lack of political spine in most countries means nobody within the political establishment is actually challenging orthodoxy, and if anyone had the guts to do so, they’d find a huge surge of relieved voters turning to them saying they always knew there was something bogus about the whole scare and they’re delighted finally to hear someone who aspires to leadership do some actual leading here. Indeed more Canadians now apparently think Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is able to address climate change and grow our “clean economy”, whatever that thing might be, than the incumbent climate-frenzied Prime Minister, our socialist party’s leader or even that of the Green Party. And while Poilievre generally does the dance of the seven vagues on climate like the lifetime politician he is, his one clear, loudly and constantly repeated pledge on the issue is to “Axe the Tax” on carbon.

6 comments on “A conservative climate plan”

  1. Canada is never going to be a low carbon version of South Korea or Singapore. We need to play to our strengths, mainly responsible development of natural resources and export of technologies for others to do the same.

  2. In our degraded culture, I wonder if an honest politician is electable. We should test that by having the conservatives say no to state action on climate salvation.

  3. I don’t know what Poilievre will actually do on this file, my only sure bet is that he could not possibly be worse than Trudeau and his clown circus.
    I agree there is no future in going along to get along with the climate/insane, mouthing their nonsense in hope of “social license”, ask Horgan how much social license he got for LNG development for his obstruction of TMX, hint nothing.

    It’s not hard to have a sane climate and energy policy that gives conservatives cover from the climate/insane and make us crazy rich instead of the current trajectory, poor.
    I think they should bring in Pielkie to testify before Parliament as to what the IPCC WG1 data says (no climate emergency today) and as a result we are ditching all net zero nonsense and the carbon tax immediately.
    On the small possibility that emissions will be an issue in the future we will instead refocus on natural gas, LNG exports and nuclear for domestic and export (something we need to do anyway eventually so why not start today).
    This will quantify and make an actual difference in worldwide emissions for those that think it important for whatever reason.
    We could even keep a $10 carbon tax, everyone pays, no rebates except the poorest of the poor and every penny goes to research on the next gen nuclear and small modular reactors.
    The Alberta oilsands are essentially a big kettle, using gas to boil water to separate oil and generate electricity. Boiling water is what a nuke does. This should have been the path 50 years ago but it’s never too late to start. We will be mining oil sands for at least a century, I prefer to preserve that gas for my stove.

    The first step is to ignore the insane, doing so guarantees support

  4. Far as the Conservatives go,the plan to axe the carbon tax needs to be merely a starting point in a climate-alarmism withdrawal plan.The wretched Lie-beral forced mandate of only new EV's for sale in the future,needs to be scrapped at once.This was not a law passed,this was a Trudeau cabinet decision,much like the unconstitutional Emergency Act powers used against truckers.The emissions cap aimed squarely at Alberta and the oil and gas sector also needs to go.Virtually all Liberal so-called environmental policies need to be halted,and Canada needs to quietly abandon "Net Zero" and the Paris Accord.The Harper Conservatives quietly withdrew from the Kyoto Accord about 15 years ago.And with Trump almost certain to be the US President again next year,Canada pursuing this Nut Zero Nonsense will surely be economic suicide.

  5. I have read that there are somewhere around 140 climate initiatives (policies, projects, programs, etc) that the Liberals plan to spend $200 Billion on over the next several years. That would be a good place to start cutting. All you have to do is look at the mess created by the STDC program to get an idea of the chaos that lies ahead if all this craziness is not reined in..

  6. In BC there is one brave politician, John Rustad, who, two years ago got kicked out of the BC Liberal caucus for quoting Dr. Patrick Moore, “Carbon Dioxide is not the thermostat of the world.” Then a year and a half ago he became leader of the Conservative Party of BC, which had received 1.9% of the popular vote in the last provincial election in 2020. In the recent BC election, with mail in ballot still to be counted, the Conservative Party garnered approximately 44% of the popular vote, and the NDP party approximately 45%. One of his policies was to abandon the NDP’s CleanBC initiative, which laid out the NDP Government’s plan to meet the Net Zero by 2050 goal, pointing out, using the government’s own forecast numbers, that would save the NDP‘s planned hit to the provincial GDP of $28.1 billion in fiscal year 2030, and increasing thereafter to 2050. So, straight talk on global warming, climate change if you insist, is a winner for a conservative if it is explained, rather than say me too, but not as much. Wishy-washy doesn’t work, as much as some conservative advisors, who know how to read opinion polls, but not a scientific text, or a leadership manual, would advise.

    Take a look at the electoral map as it stands today in BC, and those blue conservative ridings correlate to the areas of the province that produce wealth, with a large working population that know how to put food on the table, build houses, harvest our abundant resources, and pay taxes, so that the orange areas of the electoral map can consume wealth and can ignore what puts food on the table, and what pays for their standard of living.

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