- When Al Gore tells you in 2006 the snow on Kilimanjaro will be gone by 2016, and a travel agency invites you to come and revel in the snow in 2025, don’t be surprised when people connect the dots.
- There’s a saying that life, like golf, is never so bad that it can’t get worse. And the same is plainly true of public policy. For instance (h/t Net Zero Watch) in Britain, reeling from the disastrous trans-partisan lunge for Net Zero, the hapless Labour administration of Two-Tier Kier Starmer is about to realign the UK with European Union rules, brush aside the whole Brexit issue as a vulgar voter error not binding on the political elite, and submerge its sovereignty in the European Court of Justice in order to be unable to change course before actually hitting the rock.
- Meanwhile in Australia it’s steady-as-she-sinks: facing a difficult election Prime Minister Antony Albanese has somehow managed to jettison both the promise of power price cuts that helped him win the 2022 election and the implausible promise of simultaneous dramatic progress toward Net Zero, namely a 43% emission reduction. So once again all pain for no gain. Worse, if such a thing were possible, he laid the blame squarely on the computer modeling he previously called “the most comprehensive modelling ever done for any policy by any opposition in Australia’s history since Federation”. So the models don’t work, the policy doesn’t work, and you should be reelected because um uh see… incredibly, it’s that he says his main opponent “can’t explain anything about his policies, how it will work, how it will make a difference”. Whereas you already admitted yours won’t, at least not a good one, because everything you explained was rubbish.
- Nothing better to do? Between bouts of trying to wheedle subsidies from the provincial and federal governments Canada’s national capital, whose massive load of bureaucrats with six-figure salaries and defined-benefit pensions surely gives it a tax base that should cover costs better than those elsewhere that it’s trying to plunder, the City of Ottawa is going full green ahead with a crazy climate plan that includes “All fossil fuels will have to be phased out”. They think nobody is paying attention… and if it weren’t for a few eccentrics like Stella Ambler of Municipal Watch and CDN maybe nobody would be because municipal politics is excruciatingly tedious and apparently trivial. But as so often, and for the same reason, it’s also an easy target for capture by radicals whose very wrong ideas bring very real costs even if the rest of their schemes go nowhere.
- More from the watermelon bin: Reuters “Sustainable Switch” emails that “Today’s focus is on fights over women’s reproductive rights in the United States, where the Supreme Court is set to consider South Carolina’s bid to strip Planned Parenthood of funding under the Medicaid program, and… Watercoolers – or perhaps, Teams chats – have been swarmed with people talking about a gripping British television drama, ‘Adolescence’, which focuses on a boy charged over the killing of a female classmate. The series has sparked a national conversation about the dangers of misogynist social media influencers on boys.” Leaving aside the predictable way in which that series altered a real horrifying incident to fit woke tropes, we question what any of it has to do with the environment.
- From the quit-while-you’re-behind file, the Canadian government’s embarrassing inability to plant two billion trees in a country awash in the things has not led it to admit that it’s flubbing the task let alone that its competence is in question on many files. As Blacklock’s Reporter reveals, “Cabinet to date has spent more than a quarter billion dollars on its Two Billion Trees Program with no deadline yet for completion, says a briefing note by Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson’s department. It will take several more years to ensure “the right conditions,” wrote staff.” Naturally they praise themselves for their ineptitude: “‘Tree planting at this scale takes time and careful planning,’ said the note Two Billion Trees Program. ‘We aim to ensure that planting is done under the right conditions and with the goals of the program in mind including enhancement of biodiversity.’” But what would those “right conditions” be? The second-largest country in the world, with an estimated 300 billion trees in place in what appears to be fertile terrain for them, and of a bewildering variety of biodiverse species already in place to show the way? Or different people in charge?
- From the shameful clickbait file: “10 Regions Most at Risk from Climate Change by 2050“. Which regions? Well, figure it out for yourself. Hint: they cover pretty much the entire planet (except where rich white people live), everywhere is worse than the average (except where rich white people live), and women and minorities are hardest hit (except maybe rich white women).
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Tidbits
09 Apr 2025 | News Roundup
Soooo...we spent a quarter billion dollars so far to plant two billion trees?How many have actually been planted?!This program was announced years ago,and you're waiting for the "right conditions"?12 cents a tree sounds somewhat reasonable if they met their stated goal.Again,how many trees have actually been planted after spending a quarter billion of taxpayers money?Inquiring(and skeptical) minds want to know!
Two billion trees were promised by a PM who likely never even consulted with anyone who knows anything about what is involved, much like everything else he accomplished while in his first real job.
Hiring companies who already do this for good business reasons would probably be a good start. How many trees do they already plant? Of course, they're evil logging companies who - gasp - cut down trees, thereby sequestering that carbon, and plant more to absorb more carbon dioxide. They could just pay them for the trees they plant, then talk about how green they are.
The "two billion" thing sounds good to people from the big cities that have never been off the sidewalk, never hiked through any forest, never flown over it looking for a missing airplane.
Canada had an estimated 318 billion trees. Increasing that number by two billion seedlings will do nothing for any measurable carbon reductions. Two billion is 0.65% of 318 billion, with most of the 318 being mature, big trees.
It's just virtue signalling. Expensive virtue signalling. The tree replanting companies that annually plant new trees in logging cuts much more effectively, in huge numbers, and with excellent survival rates, know what they're doing. They're paid to get it right.