The youth climate lawsuit against the federal government (La Rose v. Canada) has begun in Vancouver, where about 15 young people, represented by several law firms and backed by Our Children’s Trust and environmental NGOs, are seeking stricter climate action to achieve net-zero. CBC appears eager to cover the case with widespread advocacy reporting. The story is now headline news in the New York Times. Plaintiff “Calgarian Greta” — Sadie Vipond — and other litigants may be headed toward global attention. A broad activist network surrounds these youth-led trials, as I described in 2022 in a four-part series for Friends of Science Society (where I serve as Communications Manager) regarding a comparable Ecojustice case against Ontario. Returning to La Rose v. Canada: the young plaintiffs argue that the government’s climate measures under the Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act, detailed on Senator Rosa Galvez’s site, lack sufficient rigour. They contend that their Charter right to a healthy and liveable environment is being violated (Section 7). This case originally began in 2019, coincidentally when Greta Thunberg rose to fame with her heartbreaking and angry “How dare you” speech at the UN. That was the year after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a Special Report known as SR 1.5. That report asked the IPCC scientists to project the impact on the Earth and society of a 1.5-degree Celsius rise in temperature over that of pre-industrial time (which was the limit set at the COP21 Paris Conference). The report inspired countless apocalyptic headlines like The Guardian’s infamous, "We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN," claiming “Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC.”Fortunately, within the Net Zero Emissions Accountability Act there is a clause “to require the setting of national targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions based on the best scientific information available,” and that’s where I come in!.Things change in seven years; in climate science, numerous things have radically changed in the past year. So, the federal court case should be based on the best scientific information available today, not the information or perceptions from 2019.On October 5, through a quirk of fate, I ended up testifying to Meeting No. 46 RNNR — Standing Committee on Natural Resources Canada’s Electrification, Energy Self-Sufficiency, and Domestic Energy Security. Just like the Vaclav Havel story about how Communism was defeated by the shopkeeper taking down the Communism sign in the window, I took down the climate emergency sign at the committee to stop climate communism and dead-end energy policies from destroying Canada. I told the truth to the parliamentary committee.There’s no climate emergency. The climate scenario (known as RCP 8.5, which was heavily referenced in the 2018 IPCC SR 1.5 report) was officially retired as implausible on April 7, 2026, by the climate science community. Two other scenarios known as SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0 were also retired, but Environment Canada still uses them prolifically in their recent Canada’s Changing Climate Report 2026 (CCCR2026), released without fanfare on September 3, 2026. Environment Canada is misleading the public and policymakers.You can see the committee meetings, read my remarks, and see numerous references on the Friends of Science Society’s blog, and additional insights in our video here. I also explained to the committee that Canada cannot meet net-zero targets in the time frames allotted with the present technology. Electrification of heating, transportation, and industry with only wind, solar, storage/batteries, and transmission lines would be prohibitively expensive, and would drive industry to less restrictive jurisdictions and consumers to heat or eat energy poverty.My fellow panellists, two women from Environmental Defence, were adamant that “fossil gas” (natural gas) should not be part of Canada’s electricity or future energy strategy; they claimed that subsidised heat pumps and EVs would make life more affordable for Canadians.In fact, if we were to abandon natural gas heating in Alberta and electrify residential heating alone, that would require us to double the power generation capacity (not to mention additional power lines). Watch “Net Zero and the Future Power Grid” with professional engineer Randy Stubbings.And, in the event of a Polar Vortex grid alert like that of January 2024, there would not be enough electricity to run heat pumps..As a colleague who is a professional engineer explained to me, in Calgary, he can purchase natural gas for home heating for one-sixth the cost of electricity on a Joule-to-Joule basis. So, a heat pump costs 50% more to operate than a natural gas-fired furnace. And that's only when it operates at peak efficiency. We still would not have heat when temperatures drop below −25 °C because the heat pump working fluid will be unable to extract heat from the air, as the working fluid will be close to or warmer than the outside air (i.e., heat flows from warm to cold).Heat pump efficiency declines when the outside air temperature is less than 4°C.So, a standby heating system is required.Outside of temperate climate regions like Los Angeles, heat pumps in Canada are a bad deal for consumers, subsidised by all of us, and the winner is the heat pump investor.Roger Pielke, Jr., long-time climate policy analyst, says in this recent presentation for Clintel that while human impacts on climate change are real and serious, it is not an emergency. Clintel is today an international network of more than 2,000 scientists and scholars who say there is no climate emergency; they were denied the right to present to the UN in 2019, but Greta, then a child, was given priority.The youth-led climate and Charter Rights trial in Vancouver seems intended to put climate fear back in the minds of young people, when according to the best available science of today, there’s no climate emergency. There never was, according to Nobel Laureate physicist John Clauser, and renowned Canadian physicist Prof. William van Wijngaarden.While undoubtedly the young people and their supporters are feeling strong and virtuous about their noble efforts to save the planet, it is important to examine all the current evidence when calling for sweeping measures and stringent laws. Professor van Wijngaarden concludes his online presentation, "Net zero efforts to outlaw fossil fuels, reduce cattle numbers and fertilizer use, endanger the food supply and make it impossible to preserve standard of living and, most significantly, are not supported by scientific evidence!"I took down the climate emergency sign at committee. Who will take it down for us all in federal court?
