STIRLING: A new world of counting carbon molecules — and rationing them

Consumers have been feeling like a deer in the headlights on climate policies for some time now. The recent carbon tax controversy over the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s apparent slip-up in calculating the impact of the carbon tax and the government gag on their report, which may confirm his analysis, has made headlines for days.But that’s nothing compared to what’s coming down the line.There’s an organization you’ve probably never heard of unless you are a Chartered Professional Accountant or one of the big international accounting firms that get juicy non-compete federal contracts, and that organization will lead us into carbon molecule counting. It’s called the Canadian Sustainability Standards Board (CSSB) and they are under the umbrella of the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) established a few years ago by the United Nations. The theory is that if every molecule of carbon dioxide and other important input to every business operation can be successfully counted, somehow, we will save the world. This is madness.It also sets the stage for intrusive controls down to the consumer level. Technology is available to support carbon rationing. Are you ready for that? Friends of Science Society took the ISSB to task on their climate hysteria back in 2022, to no avail. So you need to help. Now. Comments are open on the CSSB until June 10th, 2024.In 2022, Friends of Science also told the Canadian Securities Administrators that climate risk reporting is the ultimate exercise in greenwashing.Tom Harris, Executive Director of the Ottawa-based International Climate Science Coalition and policy advisor to The Heartland Institute, has written two excellent sort-of ‘plain language’ articles on this molecular level of climate risk reporting for America Out Loud. See here, part one and part two. I say ‘sort of’ because this is such arcane thinking and so convoluted it is difficult to make sense of it. Likewise, Dr. Tammy Nemeth warns in the National Post of the risk of legal liabilities and lawfare as an outcome of such reporting; and even that this presents a corporate and national security risk. After all, if people know what you need to operate your business, they then know how to disrupt what you do or economically crunch your country. This has certainly been the experience of the Alberta oil sands operators who did good faith reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), only to be slammed in this 2014 report as laggards. That was a nail in the coffin of investment, already distorted by the foreign-funded Tar Sands Campaign.In general, the CSSB idea is to count all the carbon molecules associated with your business operation, and they claim that participation will be voluntary. Until it becomes mandatory — of course.This monitoring comes in three priorities, called 'Scopes' by the Canadian Sustainability people.Scope 1 concerns your business’s direct operations. So, your heating, electricity, energy use for manufacturing; something that many businesses already report in their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) or Net Zero/sustainability statements or Carbon Disclosure Project reports (a Rockefeller project.)Scope 2 is a bit trickier. It’s about how your product or service gets to, and interacts with, the wider market. As a business, you can’t have tentacles everywhere to know if your distributor companies are using gas, diesel, propane or hydrogen to get your product to market, but you may be expected to know that and report it. What happens if you get that wrong? Can you be sued?Scope 3 comes right down to the end user, who could be you. Here the potato farmer analogy is simple and useful to understand. Will the purchaser of your potatoes boil them on a gas, electric or induction stove, or fry them — and in what kind of oil sourced from where — and disposed of, how? Will you bake them? What will you do with the peels? Were the potatoes in paper, plastic net or plastic bags when you received them and how do you dispose of those? … etc.You get my drift. Though the Scope 1, 2, 3, is intended for big corporations that can foot the bill for endless accounting and consultations with contract-hungry ENGOs, small and medium-sized suppliers to any major corporation will ultimately, by extension, be forced into voluntary — then mandatory reporting. The burden of this nonsensical carbon molecule reporting may simply put them out of business. If you thought the food prices crisis was bad now, it will get much worse if CSSB regulations are implemented.This is a mass obsession with carbon molecule tyranny and since Scope 3 will be so difficult to accomplish, the next step will necessarily be a personal carbon ration — made possible by vaxport technology and using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to track and calculate if you are ‘over’ your ration. If so, you will have to buy carbon credits from someone else to continue with your daily life.Imagine all the energy wasted on the huge server requirements for AI, just to count carbon molecules. Imagine the huge waste of human capital, solely focused on counting the 4 molecules of 10,000 of our atmosphere, and how much of that is related to your steak and potatoes or your air travel to see Granny, or your 10-day summer vacation by car which Mark Holland claims causes the planet to burn up.The same Mark Holland who is advocating for Digital health care and AI diagnosis for 43 million Canadians. Imagine the planet burning carbon footprint of THAT!There’s not enough power generation in existence to run AI — well, unless your access to energy is rationed, and then the AI can be used to count your personal carbon use as well as for a Central Bank Digital Currency to track every activity and molecule of carbon dioxide you employ to stay alive.Great idea. You read it here first.