- Bad news for the omnicause: Inside Climate News whimpers that the rush to mine lithium in the United States to fuel the transition of the entire economy to explodable batteries is causing aboriginal “hallowed ground” and “sacred streams” to drain dismally away into the dirt from South Dakota to Arizona, compounding the white man’s colonialist sins. It’s nothing to sneeze at… or it is because the same newsletter announces, for who knows the how-manyth time, that “Climate change is contributing to longer and more severe pollen seasons across the Northern Hemisphere. Compounded with other climate health hazards, allergies can cause serious harm.” Not with a bang but a sniffle… and a trickle. Also, mining lithium at home would strengthen the US against China and there are vast reserves. But we already knew these people found it hard to be patriotic.
- Bad news for the “climate change causes bad weather” crowd: this year’s hurricane season is predicted to be fairly quiet. Not that the predictions are exactly ironclad. But when an active season is predicted the ghouls are out in force blaming climate change. So when it’s not do they say oh never mind? Or just, um, not say anything. Well, if they’re the Canadian government they say “Government of Canada prepares Canadians for upcoming hurricane season” although we do not recall their digging us a storm cellar.
- From the war on plastics, Bloomberg reported last month that “Heat-Trapping Microplastics Found to Play Role in Climate Change/ The ubiquitous tiny particles absorb sunlight when airborne, contributing to the warming of the planet, according to new research.” And it’s easy to dismiss as the sort of thing they would say, what with everything bad being connected and so forth. And without noticing that if “airborne plastic pollution has 16.2% of the heat-trapping impact of black carbon, the second biggest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide”, then it leaves less “heat-trapping” to blame on CO2. But as a friend of ours likes to say, “When you’re arguing with a fool, make sure he isn’t too.” And honestly if we are filling the air with tiny bits of plastic it is almost certainly a bad idea, even if not for this reason.
- And another thing. On her Substack historian Tammy Nemeth notes that people who sell items to Europe on, say, eBay must now comply with Germany’s Draconian anti-packaging rules or be banned. As Nemeth writes of someone who sells various delicate collectibles: “The law promotes ‘minimalist eco-packaging’…. Try telling a buyer that their crushed model train car, a unique vintage piece from the 1970s, is a small sacrifice for being sustainable. From a seller’s perspective, one bad review, one return, and your eBay reputation and margins evaporate. For second-hand goods that have ‘spared’ the planet from new manufacturing, proper protection is common sense and a necessity not a ‘waste’.” But then, the EU doesn’t like business: “If this is an example of how the ‘new international order will be built out of the EU’, as Mark Carney stated recently, that new international order doesn’t look very promising.” So the indirect war on oil via plastics will be just as bad as the direct war on oil, and just as arrogant.
- Back in May (yes, cleaning up the files a bit this week) Blacklock’s Reporter said “Federal agencies are late in completing a keyword-searchable database allowing homebuyers to check flood risks on property, the Commissioner of Environment said yesterday. The Department of Public Safety had promised to launch the free service by December 31.” Some might wonder, if they can’t even manage a database, how good they are at estimating flood risks, climate change and so on. (Especially since their promised 40% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 2030 is only at 10% so far.) But not our Green Party. And not governing agencies which, in Canada as elsewhere, seem remarkably resistant to self-doubt or humility of any kind.
- Speaking of which, the Canadian government fresh from its pathetic failure to manage to plant two billion trees has uncorked a “Strategy to Protect Nature.” Oh. Just that? Well, no. It never is with the omnicause. Hence “Nature is foundational to Canadian identity. Canada’s forests, lakes, rivers, prairies, mountains, tundra, and oceans are part of who we are, strengthen sovereignty, support the economy, and sustain life. Nature underpins food systems, clean air and water, energy, climate and disaster resilience, and Canada’s identity – yet it faces mounting threats from climate change, urbanization, and biodiversity loss.” Nature faces mounting threats from climate change. Nature itself. Not just our identity, even if tundra is part of who we are. (A cold part.) Who writes this stuff, a bot?
- Also from Blacklock’s in May, “Cabinet granted Chinese state-backed automakers unprecedented access to the Canadian market because ‘they are very popular across the country,’ Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said yesterday. Joly would not answer directly when asked if they used slave labour.” Say, didn’t her boss write a pretentious book Values, modestly subtitled Building a Better World for All? Who knew that world included indifference to slavery? Maybe read Tom Holland’s Dominion instead. Or at least Dan McTeague’s commentary “We’re going to regret embracing Chinese ‘green’ tech”. Because “we” here aren’t politicians liable to be welcomed onto the Beijing gravy train when they leave office for having played the CCP’s game while in office. It’s the rest of us. P.S. Joly really is a ditz. In dodging on this matter she not only prattled “My point of view is we will always follow what the UN is saying” but also that slave labour in China is “a question that you should ask the minister of foreign affairs.” Which in this country, for over three years ending in May 2025, was… Mélanie Joly. Did nobody tell her?
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17 Jun 2026 | News Roundup
