You can give up smoking. But you can’t give up oil. At least, not in the lifetime of anybody reading these words. Not that this stops the wishful thinkers at the Toronto Star from pushing out yet one more hit-piece on the petroleum industry, arguing that you can and should. But here's what's deeply offensive. With Bill C-59, the Trudeau Liberals are attempting to prevent the energy industry from arguing its case because by definition, it must be misinformation. (And the UN is saying the same thing.)But instead of slamming the Trudeau Liberals for yet another attack on free speech and a fresh attempt to control information, this prominent Canadian newspaper makes the case for government intervention to 'define' truth and suppress 'error.'Seriously.The details. In a column published Monday 3rd June, Calgary-based Star writer Gillian Steward makes the ‘progressive’ claim that the people who produce the oil and gas that powers our cars and heats our homes, occupy the same moral backwater as those who continue to produce tobacco.She is wrong, although no doubt splendidly aligned with the morally exceptional Star, where the air in the elevators is too ethical to breathe.But by way of comparison, she writes of the tobacco industry’s advertising of 50 years ago: “When medical science publicly fought back with evidence that proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, the tobacco industry claimed it wasn’t sound science. Only their science was ‘sound’ science. It’s this kind of dangerous propaganda that the federal government is no doubt hoping to curtail… [with Section 236 of Bill C-59] by policing claims made by businesses that stretch the truth or downright lie about their ‘green’ credentials. Not surprisingly, the Alberta government is outraged because it sees the legislation as an attack on the oil and gas industry.”So it is of course, as my friend and colleague Shaun Polczer explained over the weekend that rightly therefore does Premier Smith raise her voice: Too much of the kind of "progress" Steward is advocating and we’ll find ourselves "regressing" instead to the 18th century.The thing is that what Steward is offering us is a classic of false equivalency, like those Communist stooges who used to argue that the US and the USSR were the same thing, really. No, they weren't. And to the point of Steward's column, 'Big Tobacco' and 'Big Oil' are not the same thing, either.If the tobacco crop failed worldwide, life goes on. If the oil industry fails, the lights go out.That is, our whole way of life, from the moment of turning on the light, to the making of the coffee, to heading for work on the bus (or car) and so on through the day — all of this depends upon fossil fuels. I'm sure this point is not lost on Ms. Steward. Before Lord Black bought the Calgary Herald more than 25 years ago, she firmly established her progressivism on the editorial pages of a newspaper one would have expected to understand and to some degree stand with the-then conservative community it served. Certainly, she should therefore know the ins and outs of the energy industry, if not by careful study, at least by osmosis.Point lost or not however, she gives our dependence upon oil and gas no weight. Instead, she applauds federal legislation that would prevent energy companies telling their story of how they are cooperating with government goals to reduce emissions. Bad science by definition you see, and that shouldn't see the light of day. Remember, they once said 'more doctors smoke Camels than any other brand.' (Check it out. It's a fun ad.)Pity. Not everybody accepts the theory of anthropogenic climate change. But even those who do, and advocate the total replacement of fossil fuels by just about anything else — even nuclear energy — accept that the replacements come with their own problems. Solar and wind power have obvious limitations, and there are only so many arable valleys available for flooding to produce electricity. Batteries depend upon mining lithium, another endeavour for the ethical investor to avoid. And what exactly is the green plan for disposing of radioactive waste?What is truly amazing however, is that a Canadian journalist would ever congratulate a government for trying to suppress a point of view. Outside China, when did any journalist ever applaud any government's attempt to 'police' anybody's opinion? Or inside Canada, enthusiastically endorse the suppression of something the government thinks is propaganda?But as the Trudeau Liberals extend their grip on what people can and cannot say on the Internet with no noticable MSM pushback, you have to ask: Whatever happened to free speech in Canada and to Canadian newspapers as its first line of defence? And people in the mainstream media wonder why they need government money to stay afloat...'Big Tobacco' had and continues to have a moral right to tell their story, their way.So does the oil and gas industry. Shame on the Toronto Star.
You can give up smoking. But you can’t give up oil. At least, not in the lifetime of anybody reading these words. Not that this stops the wishful thinkers at the Toronto Star from pushing out yet one more hit-piece on the petroleum industry, arguing that you can and should. But here's what's deeply offensive. With Bill C-59, the Trudeau Liberals are attempting to prevent the energy industry from arguing its case because by definition, it must be misinformation. (And the UN is saying the same thing.)But instead of slamming the Trudeau Liberals for yet another attack on free speech and a fresh attempt to control information, this prominent Canadian newspaper makes the case for government intervention to 'define' truth and suppress 'error.'Seriously.The details. In a column published Monday 3rd June, Calgary-based Star writer Gillian Steward makes the ‘progressive’ claim that the people who produce the oil and gas that powers our cars and heats our homes, occupy the same moral backwater as those who continue to produce tobacco.She is wrong, although no doubt splendidly aligned with the morally exceptional Star, where the air in the elevators is too ethical to breathe.But by way of comparison, she writes of the tobacco industry’s advertising of 50 years ago: “When medical science publicly fought back with evidence that proved the link between smoking and lung cancer, the tobacco industry claimed it wasn’t sound science. Only their science was ‘sound’ science. It’s this kind of dangerous propaganda that the federal government is no doubt hoping to curtail… [with Section 236 of Bill C-59] by policing claims made by businesses that stretch the truth or downright lie about their ‘green’ credentials. Not surprisingly, the Alberta government is outraged because it sees the legislation as an attack on the oil and gas industry.”So it is of course, as my friend and colleague Shaun Polczer explained over the weekend that rightly therefore does Premier Smith raise her voice: Too much of the kind of "progress" Steward is advocating and we’ll find ourselves "regressing" instead to the 18th century.The thing is that what Steward is offering us is a classic of false equivalency, like those Communist stooges who used to argue that the US and the USSR were the same thing, really. No, they weren't. And to the point of Steward's column, 'Big Tobacco' and 'Big Oil' are not the same thing, either.If the tobacco crop failed worldwide, life goes on. If the oil industry fails, the lights go out.That is, our whole way of life, from the moment of turning on the light, to the making of the coffee, to heading for work on the bus (or car) and so on through the day — all of this depends upon fossil fuels. I'm sure this point is not lost on Ms. Steward. Before Lord Black bought the Calgary Herald more than 25 years ago, she firmly established her progressivism on the editorial pages of a newspaper one would have expected to understand and to some degree stand with the-then conservative community it served. Certainly, she should therefore know the ins and outs of the energy industry, if not by careful study, at least by osmosis.Point lost or not however, she gives our dependence upon oil and gas no weight. Instead, she applauds federal legislation that would prevent energy companies telling their story of how they are cooperating with government goals to reduce emissions. Bad science by definition you see, and that shouldn't see the light of day. Remember, they once said 'more doctors smoke Camels than any other brand.' (Check it out. It's a fun ad.)Pity. Not everybody accepts the theory of anthropogenic climate change. But even those who do, and advocate the total replacement of fossil fuels by just about anything else — even nuclear energy — accept that the replacements come with their own problems. Solar and wind power have obvious limitations, and there are only so many arable valleys available for flooding to produce electricity. Batteries depend upon mining lithium, another endeavour for the ethical investor to avoid. And what exactly is the green plan for disposing of radioactive waste?What is truly amazing however, is that a Canadian journalist would ever congratulate a government for trying to suppress a point of view. Outside China, when did any journalist ever applaud any government's attempt to 'police' anybody's opinion? Or inside Canada, enthusiastically endorse the suppression of something the government thinks is propaganda?But as the Trudeau Liberals extend their grip on what people can and cannot say on the Internet with no noticable MSM pushback, you have to ask: Whatever happened to free speech in Canada and to Canadian newspapers as its first line of defence? And people in the mainstream media wonder why they need government money to stay afloat...'Big Tobacco' had and continues to have a moral right to tell their story, their way.So does the oil and gas industry. Shame on the Toronto Star.
