GUNTER: Trudeau Liberals among the world’s most radically environmentalist governments

GUNTER: Trudeau Liberals among the world’s most radically environmentalist governments

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Published Oct 05, 2023  •  Last updated 1 hour ago  •  3 minute read

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau congratulates Steven Guilbeault
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault are stubbornly hanging on the the Liberal government’s unrealistic climate goals. Getty Images

Canada under Justin Trudeau and the Liberals is being a climate Boy Scout. Or Puritan. Or cultish fundamentalist. Take your pick.

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And this is the second time.

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Under the former Kyoto accord, which Canada withdrew from more than a decade ago, we were also the only country to self-impose stringent binding emissions targets until, thankfully, former prime minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government backed out.

For the past week, the British government — one of the developed world’s other environmentalist True Believers, along with our Liberal regime — has been backing away from its net-zero targets.

For instance, back in 2015, most of the developed world set 2050 as a goal for converting passenger cars, vans and pickups to all electric. Then in 2019, the Trudeau Liberals tried to outbid the rest of the Western world by self-imposing a 2035 end date for the internal combustion engine.

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However, in 2021, as it was about to host that year’s U.N. climatefest, the U.K. under then-prime minister Boris Johnson outbid the whole world by setting 2030 as the deadline.

However, this week, current U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak backed away from that horrendously unrealistic 2030 target.

Sunak also announced approval of an enormous offshore oil and gas field that his predecessor had vowed never to permit. And Sunak promised to adopt no new “green” polices that would foist “unacceptable costs” on Britain’s working families, which likely means nearly all new eco-targets.

In Europe, the continent’s chief energy officer also finally admitted that renewable energy sources would not be able to fully replace fossil fuels for a number of decades, meaning oil and gas — even coal — would not be phased out any time soon.

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In other words, while much of the developed world has come to realize the emissions regulations loosely lumped under the banner of the Paris accords are unattainable in the short timelines set eight years ago, Canada’s governing Liberals still stubbornly refuse to admit its own carbon tax, clean fuels tax, net-zero electricity targets and a boatload of other eco-initiatives just aren’t feasible, even though they aren’t.

Indeed, Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault doubled down recently, insisting there would be no special deals for Alberta or Saskatchewan in federal environmental plans. If the regs ruin those provinces’ economies and cause mass unemployment, so be it.

This is a repeat of the Kyoto show between 1997 and 2007. That U.N. agreement had stringent emissions targets, too.

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Even though more than 160 countries signed onto the Kyoto accord, only 38 accepted any sort of emission controls.

The Americans and Australians backed out early. The Japanese passed the accord into law but neglected to make it legally binding on government, corporations or consumers. (Oops!)

Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and other eastern bloc countries used the accord to declare themselves “economies in transition” and thus exempt themselves from meetable targets.

Germany and Britain had 1990 set as the base year for calculating emission reductions because they had closed their coal-fired power plants between 1991 and 1994, meaning they could meet their targets without really trying.

So in the end, Canada was the only country left with crippling emission-reduction goals of its own making.

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As recent changes in British and European emissions policies are demonstrating, Canada may well soon find itself alone, again, in trying to live up to short-term fossil-fuel elimination plans under the Paris accords.

Government revenues, economic growth and job creation will all suffer if the Liberals continue on their current headstrong, extremist path.

For instance, the Canadian Energy Centre this week calculated that the oilsands alone will contribute $420 billion to government revenues between now and 2050. It could be half or less that under Liberal policy.

That’s a lot of hospitals, shelters, social programs, schools and highways that won’t get built because of the Trudeau Liberals’ blind obsession with radical environmentalism.

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