WILSON: Net Zero is sinking Europe’s economy... is Canada next?

European countries have led the drive to adopt green energy policies. Their collective experiences provide a sobering message for the rest of the world on the costs and ineffectiveness of green energy policies.When energy costs rise, it affects almost all other costs in a society. It leads to more regulation, rising costs, rising taxes, rising subsidies, rising indebtedness and rising inflation. It is also leading to deindustrialization as European manufactured goods become increasingly uncompetitive. Citizens at the lower end of the economic scale are bearing the brunt of these measures. Those at the top, members of the European Commission, members of governing political parties and members of most economic and media elites are focussed, not on the plight of their own citizens, but on saving our planet from a perceived imminent global warming apocalypse due to the emission of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. This belief has generated an extraordinary degree of groupthink that has permeated Western societies, capturing minds ranging from those of Greta Thunberg to the Secretary General of the UN. The save-the-planet syndrome has also become deeply embedded in Canadian society, capturing the minds of the Leaders of all major political parties, most senators, all provincial premiers, our Supreme Court, and almost all members of our major media and business elites. It is an extraordinary phenomenon, especially since it has such a flimsy scientific basis to support all the alarm and angst that it is generating.We are in a moderate warming period. We emerged from the Little Ice Age about 1850. Temperatures are indeed rising. Glaciers are melting. But this is happening in an orderly way, not a cataclysmic way. It is similar in character to what happened in the Medieval Warm Period about 1,000 years ago, the Roman Warm Period about 2,100 years ago, and the Minoan Warm Period about 3,200 years ago.These warming periods coincided with the sun being in a warming phase due to the strengthening of its magnetosphere, which partially blocks incoming cosmic rays, leading to less cloud cover of the planet and to a warmer earth. These warm periods were noted for their good crop yields and the flourishing of their societies. Whenever the sun’s warm phase ended, cooler temperatures returned, leading in the most recent case to the Little Ice Age with its advancing glaciers and with the great suffering and starvation that it caused about 1,700 A.D.The Little Ice Age low will likely be retested on the next weakening of the sun’s magnetosphere as the longer-term drivers of climate change, the Milankovitch Cycles, have peaked, and their net effect is now downward, and will remain downward for about the next 14,000 years before there is a minor uptick.CO2 levels today at 420 ppm are higher than they have been for several million years, but they are still far below their average value of 2,600 ppm over the past 600 million years. Also, over this period, there has been no consistent correlation between temperatures and CO2 levels. Sometimes one is high when the other is low, and vice versa.CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it is a greenhouse gas that is nearly saturated which means that it has little ability to absorb further heat in the future or raise the planet’s temperature even with multiple future doublings of CO2. The minor greenhouse gases, CO2, methane, and nitrous oxide play only a very minor role in global warming.What is driving the current hysteria over rising CO2 emissions are the flawed projections from IPCC funded computer modeling studies, and by the flawed statements that are being issued by the IPCC Executive Panel in their Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) reports issued every 5 or 6 years. The computer models are running too hot. They are not producing reliable data for countries to use in developing rational policies to deal with climate changes, either up or down, that we may face in the future.What is not widely recognized is that the IPCC Executive Panel is a political panel, not a scientific panel, and that ENGOs are invited to participate as non-voting members in the deliberations of the Executive Panel. This enables the ENGOs to have a major influence on the IPCC’s SPM reports as they are being vetted by representatives of the funding governments and before the SPM reports are released.The claim that the science is settled is a political slogan. It is certainly not a scientific fact. The whole IPCC process is quite a deceptive and misleading one. Western governments, in part, use the process to try to influence ENGOs’ recommendations to their environmental followers, since this can make the difference in who wins closely fought elections. The constant drumbeat of climate alarmism generated by ENGOs today is having a significant effect on the behaviour of Western Governments and on public attitudes. The Liberal Party is engaged in choosing a new leader. The major contenders have agreed to cancel the carbon tax, but they all remain committed to the net zero 2050 goal, which will only produce the same disastrous economic results that are already occurring in Europe.The Conservatives should pivot to seeking a mandate to prevent the Liberals from pursuing their deeply damaging green energy policies. If Carney is the new Leader, Poilievre should be challenging him to explain why his green energy policies won’t create the same destructive costs, taxes, subsidies, inflation, indebtedness, and deindustrialization pressures that we can observe in Europe.The role of the Opposition Party in our Parliamentary system is to propose sound economic, scientific, and social policies as alternatives to a Government that has lost its way.It is not clear today whether the Conservative Party is willing to take on that challenge, or whether we continue to blunder, needlessly, into an ever-deepening debt hole, blighting the prospects for future generations of Canadians.

WILSON: Net Zero is sinking Europe’s economy... is Canada next?

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