The Narwhal, an anti-establishment left-wing outfit naturally subsidized by the Canadian state in this era of the revolt of the elites, complains that “Alberta’s crown jewel of carbon capture quietly reduces its targets – by 77%”. Yup. That key technology alarmists have been hyperventilating over, that lets us have our hydrocarbon fuels and burn them too, doesn’t work. Yet just five short years ago the companies in what is now called the Oilsands Alliance but which formerly rejoiced in the name Pathways Alliance promised it did, indeed so effectively they embraced the green rhetoric, surrendered on “climate science” and promised to reach Net Zero by 2050. Did they not check the technology beforehand? Or did they just think that playing cute with the radicals who want them dead would end well?

Now The Narwhal is not only unimpressed by industry’s record on climate but Canada’s too, which the naïve might regard as biting the hand that feeds it. For instance, in April they ran a piece on “The worst flaring in the world?” billed as:

“We’ve got a big scoop that raises serious questions about Canada’s claims of having the world’s cleanest LNG.”

But of course the reason the Canadian government subsidizes so many left-wing publications, advocacy groups and litigators is precisely that it wants to move further left even than the public will tolerate in a country where the worse big government performs the more popular it inexplicably becomes. But what of the fellow travellers?

Groups like Clean Prosperity, who say of themselves that “Clean Prosperity is a Canadian climate policy organization that advocates for pragmatic solutions to build the low-carbon economy”, are still gushing about this carbon-capture technology.

In praising the lukewarm deal between the Canadian federal and Alberta provincial governments to increase the industrial carbon tax now in return for no pipeline ever, though not to increase it as much as they wanted, their president and CEO Michael Bernstein wrote in the Globe & Mail that:

“There’s also an underappreciated but powerful decarbonization signal being sent to the oil sector, where carbon credit revenue can now be combined with new incentives for carbon capture through Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations.”

Great. Free money to distort markets. Just no real carbon capture.

Of course Clean Prosperity, which to its credit does not get government money, is still selling the Epcot vision of a shiny green world where houses recycle water, everyone bicycles to work through parks and forests:

“Canadians need to agree on the basic policies that will drive investment in the low-carbon economy, to create growth, jobs, and prosperity.”

Which of course include market-friendly massive central planning:

“We believe robust carbon markets, underpinned by carbon pricing, are the most efficient way to drive low-carbon investment.”

But what if they’re not? But what if there aren’t any “pragmatic” methods? What if it all doesn’t work?

It bears repeating that if climate change is the existential crisis the Al Gore’s and pre-jihadi Greta Thunbergs of this world tell us, we probably have to expect massive harm to our well-being from abandoning fossil fuels. If. But what’s the evidence that it is?

People prefer not to talk about this potential tradeoff, especially smooth lobbying types.

To their credit, The Narwhal isn’t in that category. Instead they fume that:

“The federal and provincial governments have now both unveiled tax credits for carbon capture, rolled back environmental regulations aimed at tackling emissions, pledged to fast-track projects and signed an agreement to aggressively push a new pipeline through British Columbia, even without a company willing to build it. Patrick McCurdy, a professor of communications at the University of Ottawa who has studied environmental claims by the alliance of oilsands companies, said the walkback fits into a larger pattern of greenwashing — a method in which companies mislead the public through those claims. He said the companies will ‘say whatever is politically convenient and what they can get away with’ to build the social licence needed to keep producing oil. ‘They have that now with [Prime Minister Mark] Carney,’ he said.”

Boo Mark Carney. Trump of the North! Not that left-wing thought has a persistent, ugly tendency toward paranoia and conspiracies. But the truth is that the various companies in the group formerly known as the “Pathways Alliance” to invoke an oil-rich pathway to Net Zero, have realized they cannot do what they foolishly let their chirpy PR departments convince them to promise:

“Five years ago, the five largest oilsands producers promised their operations would be net-zero by 2050. The claims were huge: a massive carbon capture and storage project would store 68 million tonnes of carbon emissions deep underground each year. Now, with a memorandum signed between Alberta and Ottawa to facilitate a new oilsands pipeline to the West Coast and promises of billions in tax credits to support the project, those promises have plummeted. In the agreement, finalized in May, it’s anticipated those same producers will capture 16 million tonnes annually by 2045, a decline of 77 per cent from the original claim.”

Seriously, folks. If they could do it they would. They have no stomach for a fight, with the zealots or the government (but we repeat ourselves). The problem is, they can’t. It’s not greenwashing. It’s the laws of physics.

And it matters.