The time has come to tackle climate change. That’s what Canada’s Green Party has concluded. Never mind that everyone else is ditching the idea, Elizabeth May, apparently president-for-life of our feebly flickering greens, hollers “Kowtowing to the billionaire class and transnational corporations has never built a strong nation or healthy communities.” It’s 1968 out there, man! (Or, in these woke times, person!) Of course the actual Prime Minister was just in Beijing kowtowing to a very different class. But Ms. May has it all worked out: “We know how to fight climate change. So let’s actually do it. Governments need to take the hard decisions.” Amazing.
Especially as the hard decisions do not appear, in her mind, to be hard ones. Instead it’s simple. You see:
“Norway and Denmark have it figured out with excess Danish wind energy sold to Norway, and when not needed in Norway’s grid, it pumps water to higher elevations, in elegant ‘pumped storage.’ When the wind is not blowing in Denmark, Norway opens the sluices and generates electricity from the water power, only to pump it back to storage until needed again.”
Say, would that be the same Norway that just granted 57 offshore oil and gas exploration licenses to 19 different firms, and expects to grant even more next year? The same one that provides the UK with half of its natural gas via underseas pipelines while the uniparty, under Keir Starmer as under Boris Johnson, pursues absurdly expensive and fiscally horrifying Net Zero dreams? Or some sublime Norway of the mind where all is glittery and renewable?
Well, a lot is going on in the minds of people like Ms. May. For instance:
“Nation-building projects that reduce the costs of living for every Canadian while cutting pollution are possible. We need affordable public transit, electric trains and buses including in rural and remote Canada.”
Not for her grubby details like public transit is a money pit of delays in construction and travel even in urban and densely-populated Canada, especially if it also fell for electric buses. Or for tradeoffs at all. She is above all such matters, along with details of which nation-building projects would save money and cut pollution and how she knows.
Why exactly she is still taken seriously by the legacy media and political commentators is unclear to us. (And if you retort then why are you taking her seriously we reply that it’s because they do.) Her piece actually starts:
“An environmental activist since Grade 10, I have lived through numerous waves of urgent environmental threats.”
Which some might regard as proof that people have panicked over absurdly exaggerated ecological scare stories so often that we should be more cautious now that we’re older and, in partial theoretical compensation, wiser. And to be fair, she does suggest that the fact that we did not all die when we were meant to shows that it’s possible to take action. But she’s not going for that wiser sound. Instead:
“By 1987, Canada led the world in negotiating the Montreal Protocol that literally saved all life on Earth by protecting the ozone layer.”
Literally saved all life on Earth. Bosh. But on she raves:
“Increasingly, what we call ‘environmental issues’ are really fundamental threats to our security. The climate crisis threatens millions of lives globally, as well as ecosystems from the Arctic to coral reefs. It is no longer a ‘future threat’ as it was when Canada hosted the first international conference on global warming back in June 1988…. In the 21st century, we live in a world in climate crisis. Last year, Canada experienced $8.5-billion in insurable losses from climate-induced events. Now, one-in-four Canadians say a climate event has personally affected them. From extreme weather events like heat domes, to hurricanes, wildfires, drought, and windstorms, the climate crisis is devastating communities and families.”
No effort is made to substantiate these claims of worsening weather, of course. She’s above all that as well.
The Green Party also insists that “Young people across this country are facing crises of affordability, climate disruption, and barriers to meaningful participation in democratic life”, a statement from a press release “Green Party of Canada Welcomes Devon Christoffel as New Shadow Cabinet Youth Critic” but which predictably comes not from Citizen Christoffel but from Comrade May. Who does not believe the crisis of affordability is from too much government, too much progressivism or both but from the stinking plutocrats. Including that running dog Prime Minister Mark Carney:
“Our new prime minister, by his actions if not his words, has made it abundantly clear that reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and living up to our international commitments is not his priority.”
In that other world where Norway produces oil and gas, a lot of scientists are publicly dissenting from this kind of drivel, citizens are tuning it out, politicians are noticing that the parade has gone in a different direction, and even many alarmist outfits are, like “Sustainable Switch”, painfully aware that their movement is encountering strong headwinds even if they don’t really understand why.
But there do remain a fair number who think all you need is a triumph of the will with some shrill class warfare thrown in. Like May, whose deep thoughts end:
“We can keep our elbows up, expand trade with those with whom we share common values, and get through this challenging time together.”
It’s not yoga, madam, we don’t share values with China and we need economic, environmental and scientific realism, not boilerplate clichés that make “Putting people first” feel bold and original by contrast.
