- If only words had meanings. Canadians were promised an “austerity and investment” budget. But now word reaches us via David Clinton that among its pseudo-achievements at COP30, Canada will give $392 million to the International Fund for Agricultural Development. And those are good words. Agricultural is good. Development is good. Who’s against Fund? And in those circles, “International” is also a positive. But evidently this money will be spent only with the approval of the “Instituto de Proteção Ambiental do Amazonas (IPAAM)” which again has good words in its name but, alas, “has been under Brazilian Federal Police investigation for the past year” because it “is (allegedly) as crooked as a corkscrew.” But of course our climate warriors checked first, right? Um guys? You did check, didn’t you?
- With the climate craze fading out fast, now comes plastic. Right on cue Bloomberg Green has a new crusade: “Despite clear evidence that plastic is clogging oceans and beaches and breaking down into microplastics that enter our bodies, humans are continuing to produce the material at accelerating rates. The result: Global plastic pollution will hit 280 million metric tons per year by 2040, or a dump truck’s worth every second. That is one of the alarming statistics from Breaking the Plastic Wave 2025, a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts with ICF International. It offers a comprehensive assessment of plastic pollution and its effect on human health and the environment.” So never mind Net Zero for carbon. “If the world continues on the current trajectory, the outlook for 2040 is bleak, the report warns.” Cool. Whole new crisis; same old remedy. “At the root of the problem is the fact that plastics are mostly derived from fossil fuels.” Boo fossil fuels.
- In the National Post on Dec. 2 Niels Veldhuis, president of Canada’s free-market Fraser Institute, writes of the infamous Memorandum of Whatever that “Given this seemingly great news, I eagerly read the six-page Memorandum of Understanding. Then, I read it several more times. Each time, my enthusiasm and understanding diminished rapidly. By the fourth reading, the only objective conclusion I could reach was not that a pipeline would finally be built, but rather that only governments could write an MOU that no Canadian could understand.” And his comment raises a disquieting possibility, namely that the pundits punditing about it had not, in fact, read it and certainly could not pass a quiz on its contents. Including, Veldhuis observes, that it insists that “the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline is a prerequisite to the Pathways [Carbon Capture] project” but also that the Pathways Project is “a prerequisite to the approval, commencement and continued construction of the bitumen pipeline”. Alas, he adds, “Two things, of course, cannot logically be prerequisites for each other.” But fortunately there will be a committee that is not merely interdepartmental but interjurisdictional to ensure that, uh, uh whatever man. (P.S. The memorandum contains 19 instances of “indigenous” versus just 12 of “bitumen”.)
- Et tu Boston? The Guardian misinforms us that “New England warming faster than most places on Earth, study finds/ Pace of area’s temperature rise, outpaced in US only by Alaskan Arctic, apparently increased in past five years”. It adds that “The US region called New England is widely known for its colonial history, maple syrup and frigid, snow-bound winters. Many of these norms are in the process of being upended, however, by a rapidly altering climate, with new research finding the area is heating up faster than almost anywhere else on Earth.” Without apparently realizing that New England was colder centuries ago because of the Little Ice Age, and then warmed naturally long before CO2 was pollution. But in any case we do want to let New Englanders know that if their region is warming faster than most of the planet they shouldn’t worry because they have lots of company, with everywhere else doing it too.
- Scientific American reports that “New findings increase the known length of the Roman Empire’s road network by more than 60,000 miles”. Which we mention not because of climate but for two related reasons. First, note the excitement when established findings are challenged or overturned, but only outside the core areas of orthodoxy. And second, it quotes a scholar not part of the study who “cautions that only a few percent of this length is known with certainty, whereas almost 90 percent is ‘conjectured’ based on good evidence.” Or not even that since “about 7 percent of the more than 185,000 miles of roads is ‘hypothetical’ – that is, it represents where roads are expected to have existed but where there isn’t good evidence of their exact locations.” Now, when’s the last time you read a piece on climate, including in SA, that mentioned how much of the data was “conjectured”? Oh, a third thing: those Romans were amazing engineers.
- Meanwhile Climate Home News tries to excite us with “Of course, we’ll be back for COP31 in Türkiye next year, and at the Bonn Climate Change Conference in June…” without drawing the obvious conclusion that of course you will, and at COP32, and COP33, and COP314, and the intercalary pre-futility-futile gatherings, because nothing has been achieved at the previous 30 COPs and all the intervening conferences where the same people say the same stuff to one another. Then they pile on the fun with “but there’s so much to look forward to before that” without drawing the obvious conclusion that COP31 in Tŷkruei was not something anyone would look forward to except for possible comedy.
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10 Dec 2025 | News Roundup
The quickest and cleanest way to deal with plastic waste is to burn it. High temperature incinerators will leave almost no solid waste, which won't, or shouldn't, end up in the oceans. Now that the climate frenzy is fading away perhaps we can start doing this.