Energy
‘Anti-human’: Tucker Carlson, Michael Shellenberger blast John Kerry’s COP28 speech
From LifeSiteNews
‘I think it’s fair to call it a death cult at this point, when you’re stifling energy supplies that are necessary to keep people alive, allow poor people to escape the use of wood and dung, I don’t know what else you call it than an anti-human death cult,’ Shellenberger told Carlson.
American conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson and journalist Michael Shellenberger recently blasted Democratic climate czar John Kerry for giving an “anti-human” speech at this year’s United Nations COP28 “climate change” conference.
Making the strong statements during the Monday edition of his X (formerly Twitter) show, Carlson played a clip of Kerry, who serves as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, explaining at the COP28 conference in Expo City, Dubai on Sunday that he sees the global elimination of coal-fired power plants as an essential measure in tackling so-called “climate change.”
Ep. 44 Another half-demented 80-year-old yelling about things he doesn’t understand. These are our leaders. They don’t care about our future because they don’t have one of their own. pic.twitter.com/iylpXALJjZ
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 4, 2023
Calling Kerry and many in U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration “half-demented 80-year-olds,” Carlson pointed out that despite the pleas of Kerry and others like him, other nations are moving full-stream ahead with the burning of coal as a means of powering their countries, and thereby sustaining their populations and economies.
“China, for example, burns more coal each year than the rest of the world combined… this year, the Chinese have generated 14 percent more electricity from coal than they did last year; same thing in India,” Carlson said, adding that other large nations such as Indonesia have also ramped up their use of coal.
Carlson argued that this presents a hypocrisy among the Biden administration, which often talks about “climate change” and the purported role of the West in the creation of the so-called crisis while ignoring the behavior of China, India and other nations.
Continuing his show, Carlson interviewed journalist Michael Shellenberger about the behavior of Kerry and other members of the political establishment, inquiring what he sees as the true motivation behind the climate “religion.”
Shellenberger replied by accusing the global “elite” of having an outright hatred for humanity, pointing to the fact that politicians, including the British prime minister, took private jets to the recent U.N. conference in Dubai, all the while increasing energy costs for ordinary citizens and harping on the need for their citizens to reduce energy consumption.
“I think that what’s so different now is that the elites are just openly and blatantly expressing their hatred of humankind, particularly the hatred of working people, of poor people,” Shellenberger told Carlson “the obvious alternative to coal is natural gas… if this was actually about ‘climate change’ you would just produce more natural gas because it produces half the carbon emissions of coal.”
“But John Kerry and other climate activists are against natural gas,” Shellenberger continued. “And they have been stifling the production of natural gas… it’s so obviously hypocritical but even worse than that I think it’s really anti-human… it really is about being against humankind, about being against humanity.”
Pointing to the fact that cheap and reliable energy is one of the main factors that keeps the masses out of poverty, particularly in places like India and China, Shellenberger characterized the West’s plans as akin to a “death cult,” in which Western leaders use “apocalyptic” language about the climate in an attempt to stop or limit the production of cheap energy, regardless of its human consequences.
“I think it’s fair to call it a death cult at this point, when you’re stifling energy supplies that are necessary to keep people alive, allow poor people to escape the use of wood and dung, I don’t know what else you call it than an anti-human death cult.”
Carlson replied in agreement, telling Shellenberger that far from being motivated by the health of the environment, the true goal is “tyranny.”
Kerry, under former President Barack Obama, was on the team that negotiated the Paris Accords, which demanded that successful, wealthy countries drastically cut back emissions. It was never voted on in the U.S. Senate as an official treaty. President Donald Trump pulled the country out of the accords, but the U.S. has rejoined the agreement under the Biden administration.
“A global transition away from oil, gas, and coal would not only harm U.S. economic development but also afflict harm on the poorest nations,” according to Alex Epstein, an energy policy commentator. “Fossil fuels are so uniquely good at providing low-cost, reliable energy for developing nations that even nations with little/no fossil fuel resources have used fossil fuels to develop and prosper. E.g. South Korea (83% FF), Japan (85% FF), Singapore (99% FF),” Epstein wrote recently on X.
The net-zero movement led by COP is particularly dangerous to Africa and other poor regions.
Consider: ⅓ of the world uses wood/animal dung for heating/cooking. 3B use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.
Only FFs can provide the energy they need to develop. pic.twitter.com/u2f3uZpvPc
— Alex Epstein (@AlexEpstein) November 29, 2023
“Every prosperous country has developed using fossil fuels,” he wrote. “No poor country has been able to develop to the point of prosperity without massive FF use. The reason is that development requires energy, and FFs are a uniquely cost-effective, including scalable, source of energy.”
LifeSiteNews co-founder Steve Jalsevac, who has researched this topic for decades, says “implementing Kerry’s policies would result in hundreds of millions more deaths than they would save. That is the real intention,” he says, “world depopulation on a massive scale.”
Business
Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
By Jay Goldberg
Thirty-nine hundred dollars – that’s how much the typical two-car Ontario family is spending on gas taxes at the pump this year.
You read that right. That’s not the overall fuel bill. That’s just taxes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau keeps increasing your gas bill, while Premier Doug Ford is lowering it.
Ford’s latest gas tax cut extension is music to taxpayers’ ears. Ford’s 6.4 cent per litre gas tax cut, temporarily introduced in July 2022, is here to stay until at least next June.
Because of the cut, a two-car family has saved more than $1,000 so far. And that’s welcome news for Ontario taxpayers, because Trudeau is planning yet another carbon tax hike next April.
Trudeau has raised the overall tax burden at the pumps every April for the past five years. Next spring, he plans to raise gas taxes by another three cents per litre, bringing the overall gas tax burden for Ontarians to almost 60 cents per litre.
While Trudeau keeps hiking costs for taxpayers at the pumps, premiers of all stripes have been stepping up to the plate to blunt the impact of his punitive carbon tax.
Obviously, Ford has stepped up to the plate and has lowered gas taxes. But he’s not alone.
In Manitoba, NDP Premier Wab Kinew fully suspended the province’s 14 cent per litre gas tax for a year. And in Newfoundland, Liberal Premier Andrew Furey cut the gas tax by 8.05 cents per litre for nearly two-and-a-half years.
It’s a tale of two approaches: the Trudeau government keeps making life more expensive at the pumps, while premiers of all stripes are fighting to get costs down.
Families still have to get to work, get the kids to school and make it to hockey practice. And they can’t afford increasingly high gas taxes. Common sense premiers seem to get it, while Ottawa has its head in the clouds.
When Ford announced his gas tax cut extension, he took aim at the Liberal carbon tax mandated by the Trudeau government in Ottawa.
Ford noted the carbon tax is set to rise to 20.9 cents per litre next April, “bumping up the cost of everything once again and it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
“Our government will always fight against it,” Ford said.
But there’s some good news for taxpayers: reprieve may be on the horizon.
Federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s promises to axe the carbon tax as soon as he takes office.
With a federal election scheduled for next fall, the federal carbon tax’s days may very well be numbered.
Scrapping the carbon tax would make a huge difference in the lives of everyday Canadians.
Right now, the carbon tax costs 17.6 cents per litre. For a family filling up two cars once a week, that’s nearly $24 a week in carbon taxes at the pump.
Scrapping the carbon tax could save families more than $1,200 a year at the pumps. Plus, there would be savings on the cost of home heating, food, and virtually everything else.
While the Trudeau government likes to argue that the carbon tax rebates make up for all these additional costs, the Parliamentary Budget Officer says it’s not so.
The PBO has shown that the typical Ontario family will lose nearly $400 this year due to the carbon tax, even after the rebates.
That’s why premiers like Ford, Kinew and Furey have stepped up to the plate.
Canadians pay far too much at the pumps in taxes. While Trudeau hikes the carbon tax year after year, provincial leaders like Ford are keeping costs down and delivering meaningful relief for struggling families.
Economy
Gas prices plummet in BC thanks to TMX pipeline expansion
From Resource Works
By more than doubling capacity and cutting down the costs, the benefits of the TMX expansion are keeping more money in consumer pockets.
Just months after the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) project was completed last year, Canadians, especially British Columbians, are experiencing the benefits promised by this once-maligned but invaluable piece of infrastructure. As prices fall when people gas up their cars, the effects are evident for all to see.
This drop in gasoline prices is a welcome new reality for consumers across B.C. and a long-overdue relief given the painful inflation of the past few years.
TMX has helped broaden Canadian oil’s access to world markets like never before, improve supply chains, and boost regional fuel supplies—all of which are helping keep money in the pockets of the middle class.
When TMX was approaching the finish line after the new year, it was praised for promising to ease long-standing capacity issues and help eliminate less efficient, pricier methods of shipping oil. By mid-May, TMX was completed and in full swing, with early data suggesting that gas prices in Vancouver were slackening compared to other cities in Canada.
Kent Fellows, an assistant professor of Economics and the Director of Graduate Programs for the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, noted that wholesale prices in Vancouver fell by roughly 28 cents per litre compared to the typically lower prices in Edmonton, thanks to the expanded capacity of TMX. Consequently, the actual price at the gas pump in the Lower Mainland fell too, providing relief to a part of Canada that traditionally suffers from high fuel costs.
In large part due to limited pipeline capacity, Vancouver’s gas prices have been higher than the rest of the country. From at least 2008 to this year, TMX’s capacity was unable to accommodate demand, leading to the generational issue of “apportionment,” which meant rationing pipeline space to manage excess demand.
Under the apportionment regime, customers received less fuel than they requested, which increased costs. With the expansion of TMX now complete, the pipeline’s capacity has more than doubled from 350,000 barrels per day to 890,000, effectively neutralizing the apportionment problem for now.
Since May, TMX has operated at 80 percent capacity, with no apportionment affecting customers or consumers.
Before the TMX expansion was completed, a litre of gas in Vancouver cost 45 cents more than a litre in Edmonton. By August, it was just 17 cents—a remarkable drop that underscores why it’s crucial to expand B.C.’s capacity to move energy sources like oil without the need for costly alternatives, allowing consumers to enjoy savings at the pump.
More than doubling TMX’s capacity has rapidly reshaped B.C.’s energy landscape. Despite tensions in the Middle East, per-litre gas prices in Vancouver have fallen from about $2.30 per litre to $1.54 this month. Even when there was a slight disruption in October, the price only rose to about $1.80, far below its earlier peaks.
As Kent Fellows noted, the only real change during this entire timeline has been the completion of the TMX expansion, and the benefits extend far beyond the province’s shores.
With TMX moving over 500,000 barrels more per day than it did previously, Canadian oil is now far more plentiful on the international market. Tankers routinely depart Burrard Inlet loaded with oil bound for destinations in South Korea and Japan.
In this uncertain world, where oil markets remain volatile, TMX serves as a stabilizing force for both Canada and the world. People in B.C. can rest easier with TMX acting as a barrier against sharp shifts in supply and demand.
For critics who argue that the $31 billion invested in the project is short-sighted, the benefits for everyday people are becoming increasingly evident in a province where families have endured high gas prices for years.
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