Can anyone be Environment minister?

A post at Macleans.ca by Aaron Wherry today entitled The Commons: Anyone can be environment minister described a verbal exchange during Question Period on the latest report from the environmental commissioner. Mr Wherry seems a bit dissatisfied with the answers from Conservative MPs Mark Warawa and Chuck Strahl, who is quoted:

“We welcome the commissioner’s report,” he explained. “We of course are working to address those concerns that were raised. We welcome his suggestions. In fact we are already taking action on preventing and preparing for environmental emergencies, something that he highlighted, strengthening our water monitoring program and investing in climate change adaptation. Those recommendations are welcome and they are consistent with what the government is already doing. [...]

“We are dealing with the Copenhagen accord right now in Cancun to make sure that all major emitters sign on the dotted line,” Mr. Strahl later explained for the benefit of the NDP’s Thomas Mulcair. “There is no use having an accord when the major emitters of the world are not signed on and doing their part. We want all world economies to be part of this program.””

I have included only the above quote from MP Strahl. But if you read the whole article, it becomes apparent that the writer is dissatisfied with the responses. Mr. Wherry is obviously a "believer" and his article seems filled with contempt for not only the responses but the responders.

However, I think that Mr. Strahl's response deserves some study. He says, "In fact we are already taking action on... investing in climate change adaptation". Many would argue that adaptation is a far better response to climate change than an expensive and futile exercise in prevention. Even the UN has admitted that full implementation of the carbon reduction targets in Kyoto would have almost a negligible effect on their climate predictions. So wouldn't the money be better spent on adaptation. Perhaps not an answer that the enviro-marxist crowd wants to hear, but certainly one that's worth persuing.

Mr. Strahl makes another valid point, "There is no use having an accord when the major emitters of the world are not signed on and doing their part." Again, the enviro crowd want Canada to take drastic measures which would surely disadvantage our economy while countries like China, India and the United States who all dwarf us on the emissions scale are bound by no carbon reductions targets. Unfortunately Canada is a very small fish in this big pond and while some think it might be nice to "lead the way" and "set an example", such action would have absolutely no impact on the climate.

The whole anthropogenic global warming scheme is a scam. Always has been. Canada got sucked into Kyoto by the Lliberals under Jean Chretien who then proceeded to do absolutely nothing to reduce emissions. Recent events like climategate have helped to expose the fraud of man-made global warming. The lack of warming over the past decade and a half has helped too. So now that the wheels are falling off the whole climate change thing, why should Canada consider doing anything other than adaptation?

To get back to the question that Mr. Wherry didn't ask but inferred, not just anyone can be Environment minister. The job requires someone who can look at the issue of climate change rationally, see it for what it is and develop a response that is appropriate to the "threat" - while at the same time protecting the country's economy and the jobs that depend on it.

Adaptation seems like a pretty good approach to me.

The Green Collapse

Lawrence Solomon:

The Ontario government paints itself in extreme green. It has outlawed coal — the only jurisdiction on the continent to have done so. It boasts the world’s biggest solar plant. It boasts the western world’s biggest subsidies to the renewables industry. And now, it also boasts the western world’s fastest-growing renewables industry.

But Ontario’s new-found status didn’t arise because Ontario newly increased its level of its subsidies. It arose because the world’s other extreme green jurisdictions — to avert the economic and political ruin that comes of unaffordable green power — recently swallowed their pride, slashed their subsidies and backstabbed their renewables industries. Like its extreme green counterparts elsewhere, Ontario will follow suit soon enough.

Want more?

On Friday, Spain slashed payouts for wind projects by 35% while denying support for solar thermal projects in their first year of operation. Spain’s renewables industry also faces a cap on the number of megawatt-hours eligible for subsidized rates.

More?

Also Friday, France announced a four-month freeze on solar projects and a cap on the amount of solar that can be built, to nip a “veritable speculative bubble” by its rapacious renewables industry. These measures and others continue a retrenchment that saw industry payouts cut twice earlier this year, and that will likely continue as opposition grows to France’s rapidly rising power tax on electricity.

Enough yet? There's more.

Earlier this week, the German government announced it may discontinue the solar industry’s sweetheart tariffs in 2012. This latest announcement follows a surprise reduction in 2009 and another reduction to start in 2011.

You guessed it, there's more...

Also in October, New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, slashed by two-thirds the revenue that homeowners who had installed solar panels would receive, from 60¢ per kilowatt-hour to 20¢.

One last point.

Also in October, the U.K. government announced that withering spending cuts were coming to renewable projects, many of which have already been withering, and not just due to government austerity measures, or to the consumer backlash against rising power rates. Because of fierce grassroots opposition from the U.K.’s 230-odd anti-wind organizations, local governments have shelved or rejected two out of three wind-farm applications that have come before them.

While the rest of the world is retreating from the green energy scam, Dalton McQuinty continues to waste Ontario tax dollars on this pipe dream and endanger our energy future at the same time. Take a look, Mr. McGuinty at the failures of green energy in Europe and you will see our future.

Canada joins in to reject extension of Kyoto

With climate negotiations wasting away in Margaritaville, er Cancun, the AP is reporting that Canada has taken a stand against extending the disastrous carbon emissions targets of the Kyoto Accord.

CANCUN, Mexico - Canada has reportedly aligned itself with Russia and Japan to block the extension of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres says Canada is one of three countries among the 36 signatories that's opposed to extending their emission targets under the pact.

Bravo, Mr. Harper. Bravo.

Update: More from Le Devoir via Norman Spector:

“Yesterday, Canada stirred a veritable commotion [in Cancun] by aligning itself with Japan to block the extension of the Kyoto protocol beyond 2012 – an extension that would see a new period of obligatory reductions in greenhouse gases agreed to by the 36 parties to the treaty.

It was the chair of the conference herself, Christiana Figueres, who confirmed the identity of the three countries opposed to extending Kyoto beyond 2012. She spelled out that Russia, the final country to have ratified Kyoto – thereby giving it international binding legal effect – had joined with Japan and Canada to form what from now will be known as the ‘Group of Three.’”

It sounds like Canada has (finally) decided to do the right thing about Kyoto. I'll be watching for more on this in upcoming days. I'm sure that PM Stephen Harper is going to get a roasting in the liberal news media here. But I'm just as sure that he has calculated the backlash and is ready for it.

Climategate Round II

Could Wikileaks bring us the next round of Climategate? Some iinteresting posts from the Guardian:

Close reading of the cables released by WikiLeaks reveals in excruciating detail the US tactics deployed to achieve its aim of overwhelming the opposition to the Copenhagen accord.

Well, we know that the Copenhagen thing didn't work out so well for the warmists, but it is interesting to learn of all the behind the scenes manipulation and intimidation that went into the effort.

Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord [...]

Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.

The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial "Copenhagen accord", the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.

Looks like they have lowered their expectations for Cancun.

Cancún climate talks doomed to fail, says EU president. Herman van Rompuy dismisses Copenhagen climate summit as 'incredible disaster' and expects Cancún to be no better. [...]

Van Rompuy said the Copenhagen climate change talks had been "an incredible disaster". Looking forward to the current negotiations in Cancún in Mexico, the European leader predicted that these would be a disaster too.

Wasting away in Margaritaville

To say that Rex Murphy has a way with words is to say that Michelangelo was pretty good with a paint brush. Rex offers his thoughts on the big climate party in Cancun.

Perhaps they know that this show of theirs is on its last legs, the jig is up, the great game is over. After the unsuccessful 2009 Copenhagen conference, they had to have realized that even Al Gore and all Al Gores’ grim little men would never be able to put the whole rickety, tendentious machine back together again. After Copenhagen, and especially after Climategate, even the true believers must have lost heart. Witness this year’s confabulation. Notice who’s not there?

Right. The world's leaders are conspicuously absent from this latest warmist gathering. The shine is off the apple. And this group of self-serving elites is becoming more and more irrelevant.

With my apologies to Jimmy Buffett:

Wasting away again in Margaritaville
Searching for a transfer of wealth
Some people claim that there's a carbon to blame
But I know... it's nobody's fault

Senator Jim Inhofe

on Copenhagen, Cancun and the death of Cap & Trade.


h/t: Captain Ed

As if we needed proof...

UN moonbattery confirmed.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving. May she inspire you -- because today, you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change, using both reason and creativity as your tools."

While these UN elites cavort in sunny Cancun, a couple feet of global warming gets dumped on Buffalo, NY.


Oh wait! It appears that we're freezing because of global warming!

Burying the Kyoto Accord once and for all

The Kyoto Accord has been on life support for a while now. Warmists who were hoping for some form of resuscitation at the big climate conflab in Mexico this week must surely be disappointed by this news:

Talks threatened with breakdown after forthright Japanese refusal to extend Kyoto emissions commitments.

The delicately balanced global climate talks in Cancún suffered a serious setback last night when Japan categorically stated its opposition to extending the Kyoto protocol – the binding international treaty that commits most of the world's richest countries to making emission cuts.

Given that Japan was the birthplace of this disaster, it seems only fitting that the Japanese should be the ones to drive the silver stake through it's heart.

h/t: WUWT

Putting the brakes on the EPA

From the Politico, Jerry Lewis pledges to strip funds for climate rules.

Specifically, Lewis said he wants to target EPA’s “ongoing arbitrary interpretation of the Clean Air Act” to begin regulating greenhouse gases in January. He said he will refuse to support federal funding to regulate greenhouse gases in the 112th Congress “unless Congress passes bipartisan energy legislation specifically providing the authority to do so.”

Lewis is hoping to be chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee come January and as such, would have his hands on the purse-strings.

h/t: Captain Ed

Dalton's green follies will cost us all

Lawrence Solomon says that with it's newly announced energy plan, Ontario is digging itself an $87-billion grave:

All told, the province plans to spend $87-billion on a 20-year plan that will bring Ontario a system highly dependent on nuclear, wind and solar, all of which have a track record of being unreliable and all of which, by the government’s own reckoning, will contribute to much higher power rates in future.

Ontario's Long Term Energy Plan.

"we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy"

Prof. Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer is an economist and Co-Chair of Working Group III of the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He was interviewed recently by Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore...

Emphasis added. English language version above is from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Foster: Canada dodges carbon suicide

Peter Foster in the Financial Post:

Mr. Harper has always clearly grasped-- apparently unlike the majority of his international counterparts--that the greatest threat facing humanity is not climate change, but climate-change policy.

Good for Canada's unelected, conservative Senate.