Net Zero’s days are numbered? Why Europeans are souring on the climate agenda

Dr. Benny Peiser recently spoke about how the E.U. and various European nations have started a ‘rollback’ of their climate agendas due to ‘increasing costs and increasing hostility from the public.’

A recent presentation given in Canada brings welcome news to the reality-based community: Net Zero’s days are numbered. The costs of the “utopian” green agenda have been realized, and the public are not buying it any more.

This is the message of Dr. Benny Peiser of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who was in Calgary on April 9 to speak about “Europe’s Net Zero rebellion and the implications for Canada.”

“The game is over for anyone who is willing to commit industrial suicide through the implementation of Net Zero policies,” he says, going on to cite public opinion and political decisions which are driving the political agenda of the future.

Peiser shows how the European Union and the nations of Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, and Italy have started this “rollback” – due to “increasing costs and increasing hostility from the public.”

Saying that Canada, where he spoke, is “maybe five years” behind the Net Zero rollback in Europe, he said the agenda was in retreat there as its “astronomical” costs have now been grasped by the public.

“This is direct,” he says.

We have been telling [the public] for 15 years this will be very expensive … and your energy bills are going up because of the renewables.

This is all far too abstract for people. They don’t get that.

Citing reports which show that Net Zero will cost over a trillion euros a year, every year, he says:

This they get directly – the car they can’t drive, the way they heat their homes. What they’re allowed to do.

That has caused huge opposition and a lot of headache for governments.

Peiser says political parties across Europe have realized that they face being swept from power in the forthcoming elections in June.

Politics pivots back to reality

The headaches Peiser cites include the near collapse of the German government late last year over a policy to make heat pumps compulsory. A week after Peiser’s talk, news came that the Scottish coalition government has collapsed, with the Greens withdrawing support from the ruling SNP after the abandonment of climate change targets.

Politicians are faced with a choice between electoral oblivion and public opinion, and Peiser says this has led to structural change in European policy.

Peiser believes that the enormous public support behind the farmer protests, coupled with green policies creating crisis in the German government, has made the E.U. think again.

“As a result of these protests governments and the European Commission itself have begun to cave in,” Peiser said. “They are not just losing farmers but a large chunk of the public at the same time.”

Peiser is aware that election cycles see politicians shelve unpopular policies – only to resume them after the votes have been counted. Yet he notes a structural change in priorities.

“The E.U. in its draft agenda for the next five years has decided to relegate climate and shift to defense,” he continued, saying that the European Union is shifting from the green agenda to the “real agenda.”

This pivot to reality is one that is long overdue. As Peiser points out, the case for Net Zero is one that is made out of words, not of facts. To take one example, that of electric vehicles, he says “the biggest fear in Europe is not climate change. The biggest fear is cheap electric vehicles from China.”

The E.U.’s recent Net Zero Industry Act (NZIA) has been shaded by economic and industrial concerns, as well as fear from the climate lobby that it too is a rollback of Net Zero commitments.

Passed on April 25, its name alone would suggest business as usual for the climate agenda.

However, in a press conference introducing the Act last November, German “conservative” MEP Christian Ehler was keen to anticipate criticism from the Green lobby, saying “this is not an attempt to scrap social achievements or environmental law.”

Ehler stressed the need to keep industry “on our side” and that the past practices of regulation threatens the economic future of European industry,

It’s simply reflecting the very fact that our industry is burdened by regulation in a way that we can’t expect them to succeed – if we really want to have them on our side – and if we really have to have an economic future for the European industry.

READ: New documentary exposes climate agenda as ‘scam’ to increase globalist power and profit

An act in name only

This may explain why, according to two experts, the Act is in fact just words. Yet it is not only the threat of Green-inspired regulation which faces European industry.

Chinese dominance of the market has rendered E.U. Net Zero measures to create a “sustainable” industry producing “green technology” such as solar panels mere “paper tigers,” according to one analyst.

Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow at think-tank Bruegel said this in response to the E.U.’s new Act.

His comments, reported by Euractiv on April 26, included an explanation why the legislation “doesn’t change anything.”

A second analyst, Nils Redeker of the Berlin-based Jacques Delors Centre, agreed according to Euractiv that the new measures “could, in practice, and will most likely, be ignored.”

The green lights are going out all over Europe, most obviously in what was once its industrial and economic powerhouse.

Germany in crisis

Following a budget crisis which also threatened the survival of the German government’s “Red/Green/Yellow” or “traffic light” coalition last November, the former E.U. paymaster of Germany was said to be “likely in recession.”

The February 19 report by the Daily Telegraph noted the resulting “uncertainty” over Net Zero implementation. This is another sign of the impact of reality on the deeply unpopular policies of what Peiser called the “utopia” imagined by the Green lobby.

The Daily Telegraph also reported that the German central bank had warned of “no end in sight” for the “ongoing weakness” of Europe’s largest economy.

The Bundesbank added that “uncertainty regarding climate and transformation policy remains elevated.”

In his analysis of the electoral cost of Net Zero, Peiser seems to have read the room very well. The political climate has changed.

As the British government is faced with power cuts over soaring demand for electricity, its refusal to build more gas-fired power stations may see the actual lights go out as well as the figurative beacon of an agenda the Conservative Party have greenlit for years.

U.K. climate chief quits

The outgoing head of the U.K.’s climate change committee has conceded that Net Zero is a toxic brand:

Net Zero has definitely become a slogan that I feel occasionally is now unhelpful, because it’s so associated with the campaigns against it.

Chris Stark, who looks exactly as you would imagine he would, blamed a minority faction of imaginary “culture warriors” whilst saying on April 22 in The Guardian that the cost of living was effectively irrelevant.

“It’s the culture warriors who have really taken against it,” said Stark. “A small group of politicians or political voices has moved in to say that net zero is something that you can’t afford, net zero is something that you should be afraid of … But we’ve still got to reduce emissions. In the end, that’s all that matters.”

Stark’s missionary zeal is untouched by a Europe-wide survey cited by in Peiser’s presentation. According to the survey, conducted in January by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), it is the climate zealots themselves who are the minority.

With a sample from 12 European nations, it shows a clear majority in 10 countries for “reducing energy bills” over “reducing carbon emissions.” In Germany, support for lower energy costs is more than twice that for the higher ones promised by “reducing emissions.”

Peiser explained, “What [the survey] tells you is that a clear minority of Europeans are prioritizing the climate issue over their energy cost issue.”

READ: Climate expert warns against extreme ‘weather porn’ from alarmists pushing ‘draconian’ policies

Describing the clear majority of European citizens against the cost of Net Zero, he says “that is the most dramatic change I’ve seen in the last 20 years.”

This “realization of cost moment” is one which Peiser shows had been predicted in the 1970s by Anthony Downs, whose “issue attention cycle” predicted public understanding of the true cost as the point beyond which climate policies will no longer enjoy public support.

The graph roughly charts the interest and support of the public, which moves from ignorance of the “problem” to generate public support through a sense of alarm. This enthusiasm steeply fades as the public realizes the price of the product they have been sold.

Yet this process is based on the common sense to the common man. The U.K.’s former climate change chief Christopher Stark is immune to this determining factor.

He displays the alarming detachment from reality which typifies the Net Zero zealot, and which Peiser warns is proving electorally – and industrially – suicidal.

Speaking of the implementation of Net Zero, Stark claimed, against rapid deindustrialization, soaring energy prices, and former measures to restrict cars and home heating to costly and inferior alternatives, that “the lifestyle change that goes with this is not enormous at all.”

This also ignores the likely “power cuts” that Britain will face, given a massive upsurge in Net Zero-driven electricity demand.

The Daily Telegraph, reporting accusations from the Green lobby that Rishi Sunak was “abandoning” Net Zero, said on March 17 that without more gas fired power generation, support for Net Zero “would collapse.”

The report continued that “the U.K. would almost certainly endure power cuts, causing civic and commercial havoc, without more gas-fired baseload in place.”

The piece concludes with a verdict which is now becoming a theme: “And then the case for tackling climate change, already increasingly questioned, would become politically toxic.”

The rule of law – or the rule of lawyers

As Peiser notes, this toxification has weakened the power of politics itself, with the rule of law being replaced by the rule of lawyers. He notes a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, which condemned the Swiss government for “violations of the Convention [on Human Rights] for failing to implement sufficient measures to combat climate change.”

Peiser said the ruling showed that democratic majorities do not have the legal power to refuse an agenda enforced by activist judges. He went on:

The judges in their in their ruling said it’s kind of naive to think that democracy would work just with majorities in Parliament and that only judges can rule or decide what makes legal sense – that’s why it’s so important for judges to tell parliaments what they should do.

That’s essentially what they were saying today.

Peiser was speaking on the same day the ruling was announced, which according to a Swiss report will “have a direct impact on the Council of Europe’s 46 member states” and that “its ramifications will extend to the whole world.”

This element of legal insurrection is one direct example of how the sovereignty of democracy is being undermined. In this case, a group of elderly female climate campaigners received a sympathetic hearing from the ECHR’s presiding judge, Siofra O’Leary. Her judgment overruled the Swiss courts’ dismissal of the case. It read:

The Court found that the national courts had not provided convincing reasons as to why they had considered it unnecessary to examine the merits of the complaints. They had failed to take into consideration the compelling scientific evidence concerning climate change and had not taken the association’s complaints seriously.

As Peiser warns, we are ruled by Science Followers, whose emotional enthusiasm for the climate panic talks past the costs of the sale of this agenda. It is a product which most people now recognize promises the permanent collapse of living standards in the West, and is taking democracy down with cries for climate “justice.”

Suicidal policy vs. ‘populism’

Peiser says Net Zero is already “suicidal” – and not in name only. Changing the branding will not wash with voters, Peiser says, as the impact of cost and on freedom is “direct.”

This, he says, is what is driving the beginning of the end of Net Zero.

“Europeans have been told that this Net Zero issue and renewables and so on will make life easier for people.” Instead, he says, “the opposite has happened.”

They’ve been told that energy costs would go down. They’ve gone up.

He observes a factor which could apply to practically any of the policies he also claims are driving “populism.”

So people are beginning to realize that what they’ve been told hasn’t actually materialized.

The opposite has materialized.

Peiser himself notes that this “opposite effect” is driving the rise of “populist parties … skeptical of mass immigration, of Net Zero and of other mainstream policies.”

He says, “I don’t know exactly why they’re called populist but something makes them popular.”

Yet his own presentation shows a simple explanation. What is called “populism” is simply a reaction to the insanity of the policies of national suicide presented as wisdom. The emergence of these parties is the opposite reaction to a political system whose every argument is a contradiction of reality.

Peiser says that this political correction is coming, and soon.

The mainstream parties are concerned that they will hemorrhaging voters.

That’s what the prospects are for the elections in June.

His assessment is shared by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which predicted a “sharp right turn” in the forthcoming E.U. Parliament elections.

He says that for Europe “there might be – for the first time – a center right populist majority in Parliament. If that were to happen of course all bets are off.”

What is more, Peiser concludes that political climate change is coming home – to yours:

That’s the situation in Europe which sooner or later will come to a theater close to you.

Related Topics:#ClimateAgenda #DrBennyPeiser #EuropeanUnion #FrankWright #GlobalWarmingPolicyFoundation #LifeSiteNews #NetZero feature

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Alberta

How economic corridors could shape a stronger Canadian future

Published on November 12, 2025

Todayville

Ship containers are stacked at the Panama Canal Balboa port in Panama City, Saturday, Sept. 20, 2025. The Panama Canals is one of the most significant trade infrastructure projects ever built. CP Images photo

From the Canadian Energy Centre

Q&A with Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation

Building a stronger Canadian economy depends as much on how we move goods as on what we produce.

Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation, says economic corridors — the networks that connect producers, ports and markets — are central to the nation-building projects Canada hopes to realize.

He spoke with CEC about how these corridors work and what needs to change to make more of them a reality.

Gary Mar, CEO of the Canada West Foundation. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

CEC: What is an economic corridor, and how does it function?

Gary Mar: An economic corridor is a major artery connecting economic actors within a larger system.

Consider the road, rail and pipeline infrastructure connecting B.C. to the rest of Western Canada. This infrastructure is an important economic corridor facilitating the movement of goods, services and people within the country, but it’s also part of the economic corridor connecting western producers and Asian markets.

Economic corridors primarily consist of physical infrastructure and often combine different modes of transportation and facilities to assist the movement of many kinds of goods.

They also include social infrastructure such as policies that facilitate the easy movement of goods like trade agreements and standardized truck weights.

The fundamental purpose of an economic corridor is to make it easier to transport goods. Ultimately, if you can’t move it, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you can’t grow your economy.

CEC: Which resources make the strongest case for transport through economic corridors, and why?

Gary Mar: Economic corridors usually move many different types of goods.

Bulk commodities are particularly dependent on economic corridors because of the large volumes that need to be transported.

Some of Canada’s most valuable commodities include oil and gas, agricultural commodities such as wheat and canola, and minerals such as potash.

Rail cars carry commodities through Saskatchewan. Photo courtesy CN Rail

CEC: How are the benefits of an economic corridor measured?

Gary Mar: The benefits of economic corridors are often measured via trade flows.

For example, the upcoming Roberts Bank Terminal 2 in the Port of Vancouver will increase container trade capacity on Canada’s west coast by more than 30 per cent, enabling the trade of $100 billion in goods annually, primarily to Asian markets.

Corridors can also help make Canadian goods more competitive, increasing profits and market share across numerous industries. Corridors can also decrease the costs of imported goods for Canadian consumers.

For example, after the completion of the Trans Mountain Expansion in May 2024 the price differential between Western Canada Select and West Texas Intermediate narrowed by about US$8 per barrel in part due to increased competition for Canadian oil.

This boosted total industry profits by about 10 per cent, and increased corporate tax revenues to provincial and federal governments by about $3 billion in the pipeline’s first year of operation.

CEC: Where are the most successful examples of these around the world?

Gary Mar: That depends how you define success. The economic corridors transporting the highest value of goods are those used by global superpowers, such as the NAFTA highway that facilitates trade across Canada, the United States and Mexico.

The Suez and Panama canals are two of the most significant trade infrastructure projects ever built, facilitating 12 per cent and five per cent of global trade, respectively. Their success is based on their unique geography.

Canada’s Asia-Pacific Gateway, a coordinated system of ports, rail lines, roads, and border crossings, primarily in B.C., was a highly successful initiative that contributed to a 48 per cent increase in merchandise trade with Asia from $44 million in 2006 to $65 million in 2015.

China’s Belt and Road initiative to develop trade infrastructure in other countries is already transforming global trade. But the project is as much about extending Chinese influence as it is about delivering economic returns.

Piles of coal awaiting export and gantry cranes used to load and unload containers onto and from cargo ships are seen at Deltaport, in Tsawwassen, B.C., on Monday, September 9, 2024. CP Images photo

CEC: What would need to change in Canada in terms of legislation or regulation to make more economic corridors a reality?

Gary Mar: A major regulatory component of economic corridors is eliminating trade barriers.

The federal Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act is a good start, but more needs to be done at the provincial level to facilitate more internal trade.

Other barriers require coordinated regulatory action, such as harmonizing weight restrictions and road bans to streamline trucking.

By taking a systems-level perspective – convening a national forum where Canadian governments consistently engage on supply chains and trade corridors – we can identify bottlenecks and friction points in our existing transportation networks, and which investments would deliver the greatest return on investment.

Alberta

Mark Carney Has Failed to Make Use of the Powerful Tools at His Disposal to Get Oil Pipelines Built

Published on November 12, 2025

Todayville

From Energy Now

By Jim Warren

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It can be refreshing when politicians clearly and unequivocally state their positions on important public issues. That’s what former BC premier, John Horgan, did during the 2017 BC provincial election campaign.

Horgan forthrightly announced he would use “every tool in the tool box” to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion (TMX). For the next three years, Horgan stayed true to his word. Enthusiasm for the fight waned somewhat in July of 2020 when the Supreme Court foreclosed on any further delays over things like a lack of consultations with First Nations.

Of course, how one feels about frank and honest statements by politicians can depend on who is losing out. It can be less refreshing when every tool available is being employed in service of a measure you oppose. But, you at least have a better idea about what you are up against when your opponent clearly spells out where he stands.

The tool box has not been used much in support of pipelines

At this point in Mark Carney’s first year as prime minister it’s become rather obvious, he rarely employs any of the tools at his disposal in support of new oil pipelines. One might reasonably conclude that the opposite is the case—the vast powers of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Government of Canada have been employed in opposition to any new oil pipelines to any Canadian coast.

The Liberal government has tried and failed to sell supporters of the oil industry on the idea that Bill-C5, The Building Canada Act, has paved the way for a new pipeline to Canadian tidewater. The prime minister knows Bill C-5 won’t do that.

Ninety some CEOs from Canada’s oil and pipeline sector have informed the PM that Bill C-5 by itself will do nothing to get a pipeline to any coast. They have sent letters saying this to Carney on three separate occasions since he became prime minister. One point repeatedly stressed by the CEOs as well as the Government of Alberta is that it is not possible to build a pipeline from Alberta to the West coast without the repeal of, or significant amendments to, the West Coast Tanker Ban, Bill C-48, and the Impact Assessment Act, formerly Bill C-69 (aka the No More Pipelines Bill).

Carney’s failure to address those concerns defies logic and common sense. The approval and completion of an oil pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert under Bill C-5, is in direct conflict with the tanker ban and would face virtually the same insurmountable barriers the Impact Assessment Act presented for previously cancelled pipeline projects. It is not logically possible for all three things to be true at the same time (i.e. Bills C-48 and C-69 remain in place and a pipeline to Prince Rupert is completed)

What possible harm could arise if the prime minister simply stated something to the effect that the boundaries of the region where oil tankers are banned under C-48 will be adjusted to accommodate pipeline projects approved under Bill C-5? You wouldn’t think saying so would remove any hide from Carney’s butt and would provide greater assurance to prospective pipeline proponents.

Wrong.

Carney will not say anything of the sort. That’s because he is more concerned about staying on the good side of the environmental activists who are among his most fervent supporters. The environmental groups leading the crusade against climate change, climate alarmed members of Carney’s caucus, and cabinet would just as soon see the tanker ban remain in place. They want Bill C-48 to serve as a trip wire to thwart projects like a revived Northern Gateway project. They would similarly balk at any tinkering with the Impact Assessment Act which might facilitate the approval and completion of such a pipeline.

Follow the money

Just follow the money. Here’s one of the many pieces of evidence we might consider. Mark Carney has been shoring up his support among anti-oil environmentalists with government cash. Among the un-budgeted expenditures announced by the government in early 2025 was the $206 million to be spent over the next five years under the auspices of the Climate Action Awareness Fund (CAAF). The funds will be used to combat the declining urgency among Canadians for combating climate change. The initial tranche of $14.4 million issued so far this year will be available to help young Canadians address climate change. It appears the principal delivery agents for CAAF funded projects will be environmental organizations, including those groups who were active in the infamous anti-Alberta oil campaigns.

In other words anti-oil environmental groups stand to be among the beneficiaries of $41.2 million per year in government largesse. This level of support is far more generous than the roughly $16.5 million, per year, Alberta’s Allan Commission reported Justin Trudeau’s government had been lavishing on anti-oil environmental groups.

No doubt the Liberals will claim the millions in CAAF funding is a wise investment as opposed to what it really is—an expensive perk for the government’s green supporters. It makes sense to expect the efforts of some of the groups being funded will be devoted to handcuffing the oil industry.

The tool box is actually wide open. It’s just not being used in support of increasing Canadian oil production, exports and revenues.

The tool box is far from empty

The bully pulpit available to the prime minister’s office (PMO) may indeed be far less influential than the one available to a US president. Nevertheless, a clear and unequivocal statement by the nation’s prime minister in support of building a new pipeline to the coast, under reasonable approval requirements, would go a long way toward encouraging potential proponents and reducing public angst and anger in the oil producing provinces.

Canada’s prime ministers have near Trumpian powers at their disposal should they choose to use them. The Justin Trudeau Liberals used the heavy hand of the Emergencies Act to stifle horn honking in Ottawa. Sure, the courts said using the Act in that instance was an overreach on the part of the government, but nobody in government was penalized for imposing it.

If the Emergencies Act isn’t enough to bulldoze a pipeline through to the coast the government can dust off the “peace, order and good government,” powers assigned to Ottawa under Section 91 of the Constitution. And let’s not forget the notwithstanding clause—available to stifle spurious lawsuits claiming that a pipeline is offending someone’s rights.

Admittedly, making use of those two options sounds pretty silly. However, it was Carney himself who suggested he was prepared to do something along these lines on one of the two or three occasions when he slipped up and gave people the impression he would back a pipeline. When campaigning in Kelowna last winter the prime minister said he would use all the powers available to the federal government to get one built. Since then he has backtracked, given Quebec a veto over pipelines to the East coast, and indicated any effort to get a new pipeline approved would require a national consensus and be subject to legislation and regulatory checks that would be extremely difficult if not impossible to meet.

Mark Carney is no John Horgan

Clearly, Mark Carney is no John Horgan. Our prime minister continues to dissemble, obfuscate and change the subject when it comes to getting behind a pipeline that would represent the most economically significant, nation building project capable of producing huge revenues within a relatively short period of time.

The recent federal budget did little to increase the possibility of getting a new export pipeline anytime soon. The conventional energy sector has been facing government barriers to growth in investments, production and exports for over a decade now. It is true the budget announced the elimination of one of those growth killing measures, the emissions cap. And the Liberals deigned to return free speech to those who support oil and gas. Saying something positive about conventional energy firms’ efforts on behalf of environmental sustainability will cease to be deemed illegal greenwashing. However, those positive changes still leave several other equally harmful policies in place.

The budget anticipates a huge increase in private sector investment in response to a package of uninspiring policy tweaks and sugar-coated forecasts. There is little, if anything, in the budget to justify its excessively optimistic predictions. On the other hand, the budget announced that carbon capture projects will not count toward emissions reduction credits if the CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery. This will be a bane to CO2 capture efforts in the oil sands and potentially gives the federal government another reason to stifle growth in production and exports.

The flight of investment during the Liberal years owes much to the lack of confidence generated by policies like Bills C-48 and C-69. Doing something to limit the investment killing effects of those two pieces of legislation would cost relatively little, generate billions in oil export revenue, and help restore investor confidence.

If Carney has actually decided there will be no new oil pipeline to the West coast, at some point in the near future that reality will catch up with him. Remaining elusive about pipelines today may help the Liberals should there be a snap election. But, it will do little to advance national unity and is likely to boost the independence vote in Alberta’s referendum.

Here we go again. On Friday November 7 the prime minister told attendees at Canadian Club event in Toronto not to worry the long sought pipeline “was going to happen.”

Pardon me if I’m not convinced. Over the previous three months the liberals clearly acted as though becoming an energy super power could happen without increasing oil production and exports.