How Green Was My Policy

This was all supposed to save the planet:

Canadians are facing a cost-of-living crisis due to soaring prices for everything from transportation to housing, clothing, and food. Nearly three in four Canadians report that rising prices are affecting their ability to meet day-to-day expenses.

Now life is about to get even more expensive for Canadians with the federal government’s plan to regulate vehicle sales.

Sales regulations restrict the gas-powered vehicles available to Canadians, no matter how fuel efficient or for what purpose they are needed. Given the price gap between gas-powered vehicles and zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs), that means low- and middle-income, rural, remote and Northern Canadians will bear the brunt of this misguided policy.

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While we should absolutely help our European allies where feasible, they are ultimately in a crisis of their own making; the result of decades of misguided “green” energy policies and, in some cases, shady business dealings with such Russian energy giants as Gazprom (ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder took a job with Gazprom just weeks after stepping down from the chancellorship in 2005). Europe cast its lot with Russian natural gas and now must live with the consequences of this calamitous decision.

There is, in fact, a much stronger moral case for exporting Canadian LNG across the Pacific to markets in East Asia, a fact that came to light during Alberta’s recent energy-focused trade mission to South Korea, led by Premier Jason Kenney.

The “Miracle on the Han River” — South Korea’s rapid ascent from obscure East Asian backwater to world-class economy — is the single most dramatic economic success story of our time. Over the past half-century, South Korea has single-handedly proven that Malthusianism is a false hypothesis. Korea is a top-10 global economy built almost entirely on human endeavour. It is home to one of the world’s most skilled workforces and a global R&D powerhouse, currently leading the way in the development of hydrogen-powered transportation. ...

So what explains why thousands of Koreans each year — many of them children — still die prematurely from respiratory ailments linked to coal dust? The number of coal dust related fatalities across the Asia-Pacific region is close to one million per year.

Korea’s political and business leaders are clear-eyed about the public health consequences of the country’s continued reliance on coal and are eager to bring global LNG players to the table. Rookie president Yoon Suk-yeol has already signalled a strong commitment to this course of action, promising to cut coal dust emissions by over 30 per cent in his first term.

Canada has been slow to answer the call.

 

Don't Korean children matter, Justin?

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A company that has received billions of pounds in green energy subsidies from UK taxpayers is cutting down environmentally-important forests, a BBC Panorama investigation has found.

Drax runs Britain's biggest power station, which burns millions of tonnes of imported wood pellets - which is classed as renewable energy.

The BBC has discovered some of the wood comes from primary forests in Canada.

The company says it only uses sawdust and waste wood.

Panorama analysed satellite images, traced logging licences and used drone filming to prove its findings. Reporter Joe Crowley also followed a truck from a Drax mill to verify it was picking up whole logs from an area of precious forest.

Ecologist Michelle Connolly told Panorama the company was destroying forests that had taken thousands of years to develop.

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It is fortunate that as of the current moment, electric vehicles constitute only about 100,000, out of nearly 8 million vehicles registered to drive on Florida’s roads. What if they all were electric, the (impractical) dream dream of greenies?

Depending on how heavily loaded they were, even assuming everyone had a full battery charge, cars from southern Florida would start running out of juice after 100 – 250 miles. They would then have to spend hours at recharging stations, which would rapidly be clogged with other cars and trucks waiting their turn, since an electricity “fill up” can easily take an hour or more, as compared to a couple of minutes for gasoline.  Cars waiting to be charged would spill onto the highways, potentially blocking traffic.

Those cars that ran out of juice on the highway would block traffic. Even assuming that emergency service vehicles could get to them (unlikely if the entire fleet were electric cars), towing a portable generator (powered by fossil fuels, of course) and recharging the stalled vehicles would take plenty of time, as well, further blocking traffic.  The stranded cars would, of course, have no air conditioning, no wipers, no GPS.

In all likelihood, the highways would become vast parking lots, trapping their passengers wherever they happened to be stalled, waiting for the storm and flood waters to reach them, unable to get to safety.

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Hurricanes in 2021 were unprecedented — as in 𝘂𝗻𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗲𝘄

Globally, 2021 had the fewest hurricanes 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 in the satellite era (1980-2021)

Did you see that reported anywhere?https://t.co/ewJID2I4rh pic.twitter.com/VRF532DsGg

— Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) January 15, 2022

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Over the last week, the mainstream news media claimed that hurricanes are becoming more frequent & intense, but they’re not, as the data clearly show. What’s more, it’s clear that the media are engaging in *deliberate* misinformation. These aren’t innocent mistakes. pic.twitter.com/sAG1Dq4YEF

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) October 2, 2022