The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) is a climate activist group of doctors and medical people. Albertans will perhaps remember the influential presence of former CAPE president, Dr. Joe Vipond, during the Pembina Institute’s accelerated coal-phase out campaign. Have we saved the promised $3 billion in health care costs yet? We certainly know it cost Albertans many billions more than $3 billion to pay compensation to coal-fired power plant operators for early closure of their plants, some of which were quite new and slated for operation to the end of their useful life in 2050.Recently, CAPE issued two reports. One is called “Polluting Education.” In it, they denounce the fact that the oil and gas industry is engaged in funding or providing education in energy literacy in schools. CAPE’s main complaint is that in their view, the impact of climate change from the fossil fuel industry is downplayed..Ironically, they go on to quote Anne Keary, a co-author of the report of the organization “For our Kids” who says, “In the face of the accelerating climate crisis, young people are understandably anxious about their futures.”Actually, kids are anxious because the education system floods them with almost non-stop climate indoctrination and fear-mongering. It has done so for years. (Take, for example, this 2019 National Post story which relates how after watching a Greta Thunberg event, one child cried out, “I don’t want to die!”)You would think doctors and medical people would want to temper the conversation about climate change and explain the beneficial use of oil, natural gas and coal in modern society. After all, there is no modern medicine without oil, natural gas and coal. Pharmaceuticals could not be made. There would be no sterile bandages or modern hi-tech implants for hip and knee replacements. We’d be back to boiling strips of sheets for bandages, rather than having sterile, plastic sealed compression pads and bandages. Operating theatres would not exist. In fact, we’d all be back on the kitchen table for surgery.These are facts. Shouldn’t children be taught them? Are the CAPE doctors blind to them?.A second CAPE report is called “Healthy, Wealthy & Wise – How environmental policies lower health costs.” In it, the activist doctors try to argue the long-term benefits of Canadian coal-phase-out must be measured over decades. But, they do not reference China’s use of coal. Until recently, that was in older coal plants not fitted with modern scrubber technology. Nonetheless, China’s coal consumption was 4,361,427 tons in 2023, far outstripping the rest of the world combined. Just a glance at the Index Mundi chart leaves a staggering impression.So, Alberta did not save the planet by phasing out coal. In fact, life expectancy has dropped or stagnated and power prices skyrocketed with the addition of renewables and additional transmission lines, meaning medical costs rose, too. Health care is a large energy user — and emitter.Sadly, classrooms are filled with climate activism by the dozens of environmental non-governmental organizations, many of which provide free classroom materials or talks. Most of these groups, like the “3% Project,” denounce Alberta’s energy sector (and thus many parents) as ‘not climate friendly,’ creating more anxiety for children and more division within families. They also make unsubstantiated claims that Canada can be powered 70% by wind..We need our children to grow up energy-literate. If they don't, we will end up as Spain and Portugal recently did — literally in the dark — with total national blackouts for over a day. The culprit? Far too much renewable energy on their grid. The power grid is very sensitive to minute fluctuations in frequency: more conventional power would likely have saved the day in Spain and Portugal. See Joseph Fournier below, for more on this..FOURNIER: Sudden, catastrophic power loss... if it happened in Spain, can it happen here?.Instead, Spain and Portugal reached net zero sooner than expected. Ironically, it was the same day that Canadians elected Mr. Net Zero himself, Mark Carney, as prime minister.Do the doctors of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment want to be in the dark, suddenly, during surgery? Sure, there is short-term uninterruptible power supply. Short-term. Do they want to be running the hospital on diesel back-up power for hours or days…until you run out of fuel?We know that since the 2021 Glasgow Conference of the Parties (COP26,) many doctors have jumped on the Net Zero bandwagon. The paper by Sherman et al (2021) was co-authored by two CAPE doctors, who plan to reach net zero by cutting health care emissions in half by 2030. This is beyond ambitious. They think it should be easy!.As of 2022, the O’Brien Institute for Public Health at the University of Calgary has advocated for ‘climate resilient’ health care, taking tips from the UK’s National Health Service 2020 report on delivering net zero health.This is alarming ideology infiltrating a discipline that should be focussed on people first, not planet. Is it a reason why complex medical needs are being waitlisted, because, you know, medical treatment uses energy? Should we have influential activist groups promoting climate ideology on renewables, instead of energy experts providing energy literacy to kids? Should doctors be choosing net zero — bunkum over properly treating patients in a timely way?Climate change is not an area of expertise for doctors, but it is for Professors Richard Lindzen and William Happer who show that there is no climate emergency and no need for net zero hysteria at all.Will the Lindzen/Happer document be the cure for the CAPE doctors’ climate sickness? Or will they choose to remain climate ideologues and energy illiterate — thus putting our health care system at risk?
