I was doing my usual melancholy read through the news of the day when I was startled out of the torpor it inevitably brings.
An online story from one of our broadcasters contained an incredible sentence. For — the sentence made sense. Hence, it was incredible.
Here it is: “One economist suggested Europe should drop its focus on climate change and instead prioritize keeping their countries warm and their lights on in the coming months.”
What! Drop the focus on climate change! Europe! Green Germany! This lone economist must be a new Luther at the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral.
I remain in shock. Europe should drop its focus on climate change? What? And a Canadian news source is repeating this heresy?
Are butterflies transitioning back to caterpillars? Is yoga now a health risk? Is Heritage Canada funding “actual” anti-racists?
What else can explain this singular, unique dip into the blindingly obvious? Are there no “vetters” at
Global News, for such was the source.
The second half of the sentence was even more provocative — that throwaway about Europe prioritizing “keeping their countries warm and their lights on in the coming (winter) months.” What’s this? States and nations are being advised that the warmth and comfort of their citizens in winter 2022 should take precedence over the neurotic spectre of global warming in 2100?
Our PM has less authority on the merits of a business case than I have on the workings of the Hadron supercollider
apple.news
Well,
glue me to a Rembrandt! Tie me to the top of the CN Tower with organic rope. How thought has changed; a little reality leads to a great change of mind, at least to some. The trickle of common sense is not confined to Europe. It has been noted close to home.
A
recent piece by Tristin Hopper in the National Post began with a masterfully crafted first paragraph carrying the same burden of the obvious: “It could well represent one of the biggest missed opportunities in Canadian history: An embattled Europe is clamouring for natural gas, and one of the world’s biggest producers (that would be us, Canada) of the stuff can’t sell it to them.”
The piece quoted the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, on a state visit to Canada (he wore, it is helpful to note, traditional German dress — no beaver hat or lumberjack insignia to “fit” in) as saying, “Canada is our partner of choice” in transitioning away from Russian energy. “We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this.”
Got that? His country really needs liquified natural gas, really needs our natural gas. Now this is a big thing.
The head of a huge European country, under the unforgiving thumb of Vladimir Putin, comes to Canada, and asks, “Canada, can you help? You have so much of the stuff that we need so badly. You can short-circuit that awful Putin’s hold over us if you help us.”
Nor was this his first overture to Canada. As a recent op-ed from Heather Exner-Pirot of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute made clear: “Scholz approached (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau about LNG back in March … German officials planned this trip hoping that a deal could be announced by now. But those hopes were dashed as Germans came to understand what the oil and gas industry in Canada already knew: it is next to impossible to get pipelines and export terminals built in this country, and the federal government will suffocate any companies foolish enough to try with regulatory hurdles and delays.”
And what did Trudeau tell Scholz during the chancellor’s recent visit? That there’s “
never been a strong business case” for liquified natural gas exports from Canada’s East Coast to Europe.
Two things: A) Justin Trudeau has less authority on the merits of a business case than I have on the workings of the Hadron supercollider or the esoteric mystic permutations of the Kabbalah. B) The current state of all Western Europe is the most massive “business case” for LNG there ever could be. When the chancellor of Germany asks for LNG, that is a “business case.”
Further, other nations have solicited Canada’s help on the energy crisis.
Recall that cruel maxim from Gospel writer Matthew, which I paraphrase: they ask for bread, and you give them a stone.
Here, 2,000 years later in Canada, it takes a turn: They ask for natural gas, which we have, and you promise them hydrogen, which we do not. We landlock what providence has given us while a tyrant threatens a continent, and offer fantasy relief 10 years down the road. I wonder what the chancellor really thinks about his trip to ally Canada?
Tristin Hopper’s piece had
all the detail. Consider how much our failing health-care system, our national debt, all our social service systems could and should be reinforced by an un-ideological, perfectly common sense support of our natural resources, and the flow of revenues such support would bring.
But no — the startling quote from that one economist at the beginning is, despite how welcome it was, nothing but false, fugitive, forlorn hope. Give up “global warming” for guaranteed “heat and light?” How unprogressive. It will never happen.
Let us be cold and in the dark, let Europe remain on Putin’s cat’s paw — it is good for the planet.
Glue me to another Rembrandt. (I’d go for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel but I’m afraid of heights and allergic, therefore, to high art.)