Rex Murphy: Scott Moe’s not buying any net-zero nonsense
Two and a half cheers for Scott Moe, premier of Saskatchewan.
In this current mad moment in Canadian politics, when the nation’s global warming synod (the high priest being the most frequent flyer in the country, Justin Trudeau) is handing out billions of dollars from an exhausted treasury to carmakers if they locate in Ontario, Moe has most sensibly held up a “hold on!” sign. Very daring, Mr. Premier.
The Ontario government will pay more to ensure that an electric vehicle battery plant is built in Windsor, Ont., Premier Doug Ford said on May 19.
The project was thrown in doubt earlier this week when European automaker Stellantis NV halted construction of the facility, saying the federal government had failed to provide it with the money that it had promised.
New fuel regulations set to take full effect in 2030 are expected to increase the price of fuel and shrink the size of Canada’s economy, according to a new report from Canada’s budget watchdog.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) released a distributional analysis of the federal government’s Clean Fuel Regulations Thursday.
After its release, the report became a lightning rod for federal politicians, with the Conservatives calling the policy a financial burden on families.
The other political parties criticized the PBO because they said the analysis ignores the cost of inaction on climate change.
So the Libs and NDP are upset that the report failed to take into account whatever made up numbers were necessary to make the tax grab look good.
TOKYO (Reuters) – A lack of resources means battery electric vehicles (BEV) cannot be the auto sector’s only answer to climate change, Toyota Motor Corp’s top scientist said Thursday, warning that focusing on BEVs could lead some drivers to hold onto polluting vehicles.
Some investors and environmental groups have long criticised Toyota for being slow to embrace BEVs, saying it has lagged Tesla Inc and others amid growing global demand.
The world’s top automaker by sales has countered that BEVs are just one option and that gasoline-electric hybrids, such as its pioneering Prius, are a more realistic choice for some markets and drivers.
Not the first time Toyota has pointed out EV’s are not the Wunderwaffe they are portrayed to be.
Toyota is working on their own ‘solid state’ battery powered EV’s.
The contrast couldn’t be greater. In Britain a wealthy cabinet minister goes on television to boast of how he is installing a heat pump in his home – something his government is proposing to force on millions of British homeowners over the next few years in spite of them costing many thousands of pounds more than a gas or oil boiler. Meanwhile, in France, the President makes a speech calling for a ‘regulatory pause’ on green issues in order to push for the ‘re-industrialisation’ of his country.
Justin Trudeau’s second carbon tax, set to take effect July 1, will soon be costing Canadian families more than $1,000 per year.
That shock figure comes from an analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) looking at costs across the country and by province between now and 2030.
In Australia, great reliance is being placed on electricity generation from solar panels, both roof-mounted and solar farms. The aim is to replace generation from coal and gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Researchers recognise that, for this to succeed, the electricity generated and used must be greater than the electricity expended in making and installing the panels (embodied energy). The number of years it takes for this energy recovery is called Energy Pay-Back Time (EPBT). It is clear that pay-back times should be short because, until the embodied energy is replaced, there cannot be any positive output.
Jeep maker Stellantis has threatened to shift a planned battery plant from Canada to the US unless it receives billions more in state subsidies offered to a rival, in the latest manoeuvre by a big manufacturer in the international battle over green incentives.
It comes as the world’s fourth biggest carmaker, which also produces Vauxhall/Opel, Fiat, Citroën, Peugeot, DS, Alfa Romeo, Maserati and Abarth vehicles, leads a campaign in Europe for the UK and EU to renegotiate tariff rules in the Brexit deal.
A pox on both their houses.
OTTAWA — It would be against the law for Saskatchewan to run its coal-fired power plants after 2030 unless the greenhouse-gas emissions from those plants are captured, federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Wednesday.
His comment comes as electricity generation becomes the latest jurisdictional battle over climate policy between federal and provincial governments.
OTTAWA – Queen’s Park and Ottawa are at a standoff over funding for a multi-billion battery plant in Windsor, Ont., with the 2,500 jobs hanging in the balance as the company threatens to walk away if a deal can’t be reached.
Stellantis and its partner LG announced the battery plant in January 2022, pledging to create 2,500 new jobs in the community with the $5-billion plant. Details were kept secret at the time, but the company appears to have received $1 billion, split between the federal and provincial governments, to build the plant.
Ottawa and Queen’s Park are getting played by Stellantis but you can’t say they didn’t ask for it. By deciding to engage in a subsidy war with the United States, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Ontario Premier Doug Ford ensured they would be held for ransom.
Politically, they have no choice now but to pay up. Mr. Ford and Mr. Trudeau have boasted so much about attracting electric-vehicle investments, they would both lose face if Stellantis packed up its marbles. They may argue in public over who should pay most of the ransom to prevent Stellantis from cancelling plans to build a $5-billion electric-vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont. But none of that will matter in the end.
Neither Ford nor Junior will lose any sleep over this heinous waste of tax payer money.
I’ve always believed the difference between the cost of a government subsidy and the value of the project it is subsidizing is nothing more than a political premium – the price the government of the day is willing to pay to bring an uneconomical project to a riding or region the ruling party feels is important to its re-election.
Special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry recently warned that the world can’t tackle climate change without first addressing emissions from agriculture.
Kerry noted that agricultural production is responsible for roughly one third of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions and argued that reducing those emissions must be “front and center” in the quest to defeat global warming. Kerry made the remarks at the Department of Agriculture’s AIM (Agriculture Innovation Mission) for Climate Summit in Washington, D.C.
Two kinds of road-blocking are taking place in Europe right now. In the first, the sons and daughters of privilege, people with names like Edred and Tilly, are holding up traffic to put pressure on governments to speed up Net Zero. If we don’t cut carbon emissions drastically, they say in their cut-glass tones, our poor planet will be consumed in a heat death of rotten mankind’s own making.
In the second, working people – farmers, truckers, cab drivers – are clogging the streets to put pressure on governments to slow down Net Zero. Or better still, scrap it altogether. If we don’t cut out the Net Zero nonsense, say these people who make and deliver things for the Edreds and Tillys of the world, farms will close, jobs will be lost and economic precarity will intensify.
Champagne says Ontario needs to ‘pay fair share’ to end ‘stalemate’ with Stellantis
Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne is calling on Doug Ford’s Ontario government to pay its “fair share” of subsidies in order to break the “stalemate” that saw Stellantis halt construction of its electric vehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont., this week.
Stellantis said it stopped construction on a portion of the plant because the federal government had not delivered on what it promised and would move to “contingency plans” should Ottawa not fulfil its negotiation commitments.
“The message to our colleagues in Ontario is: ‘pay your fair share and we will bring this stalemate, if you want, to a conclusion,'” Champagne told reporters in Seoul, Korea on Tuesday.
How many cheques can Trudeau write with our money?
