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.”
Daily Caller
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Make no mistake about it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) signed into law on Friday by President Donald Trump falls neatly in line with the Trump energy and climate agenda. Despite complaints by critics of the deal that Majority Leader John Thune struck with Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski to soften the bill’s effort to end wind and solar subsidies from the Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the OBBBA continues – indeed, accelerates – the Trumpian energy revolution.
Leaders in the oil and gas industry, hamstrung at every opportunity by the Biden presidency, hailed the bill as a chance to move back into some semblance of boom times. Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told his members in a memo that, “For the oil and gas industry, the bill…signals a transformative opportunity to enhance domestic production.”
API CEO Mike Sommers also praised the OBBBA as a positive step for his members: “This historic legislation will help usher in a new era of energy dominance by unlocking opportunities for investment, opening lease sales and expanding access to oil and natural gas development.
While leaders of organizations like those must curb their enthusiasm to some extent in their public statements, they and their peers must be somewhat amazed at how much real substantive change the thin GOP majorities shepherded by Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson managed to stuff into this bill. This industry, historically an easily demonized bogeyman for Democrats and too often ignored by previous Republican presidents, does not experience days as encouraging as July 3 was in the nation’s capital.
Even so, many Republicans, especially in the House, remained unsatisfied by amendments the Senate made to the bill related to IRA subsidy rollbacks. To help Speaker Johnson hold the party’s narrow House majority together, President Trump committed the executive branch to strict enforcement of the new limitations, and promised the White House will work with congressional allies to move a major deregulation package ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
But the OBBBA as passed is chock full of energy and environment-related provisions. FTI Consulting, a business consultancy with a major presence in Washington, DC, published a quick analysis Thursday that projects natural gas and nuclear as the biggest winners as the OBBBA’s impacts begin to take hold across the United States. Interestingly, the analysis also projects battery storage to expand more rapidly over the next five years even as wind and solar suffer from the phasing-out of their IRA subsidies.
The side deal struck by Thune and Murkowski is likely to result in significant new investment into wind and solar facilities as developers strive to get as many projects on the books as possible to meet the “commenced construction” requirement by the July 4, 2026 deadline. The bill’s previous language would have required projects to be placed into service by that time. But even that softer requirement will almost certainly cause a flow of capital investment out of wind and solar once that deadline passes, given the reality that many of their projects are not sustainable without constant flows of government subsidies.
What it all means is that the OBBBA, combined with all the administration’s prior moves to radically shift the direction of federal energy and climate policy away from intermittent energy and electric vehicles back to traditional forms of power generation and internal combustion cars, effectively reset the policy playing field back to 2019, prior to the COVID pandemic. That was a time when America had become as energy independent as it had been in well over half a century and was approaching the “Energy Dominance” position so dear to President Trump’s heart.
Trump’s signing of the OBBBA gives the oil and gas, nuclear, and even the coal industry a chance at a do over. It is an opportunity that comes with great pressure, both from government and the public, to perform. That means rapid expansion in gas power generation unseen in 20 years, rapid development of next generation nuclear, and even a probable chance to permit and build new coal capacity in the near future.
Second chances like this do not come around often. If these great industries fail to grab this brass ring and run with it, it may never come around again. Let’s go, folks.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Carbon Tax
Canada’s Carbon Tax Is A Disaster For Our Economy And Oil Industry

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Lee Harding
Lee Harding exposes the truth behind Canada’s sky-high carbon tax—one that’s hurting our oil industry and driving businesses away. With foreign oil paying next to nothing, Harding argues this policy is putting Canada at a major economic disadvantage. It’s time to rethink this costly approach.
Our sky-high carbon tax places Canadian businesses at a huge disadvantage and is pushing investment overseas
No carbon tax will ever satisfy global-warming advocates, but by most measures, Canada’s carbon tax is already too high.
This unfortunate reality was brought to light by Resource Works, a B.C.-based non-profit research and advocacy organization. In March, one of their papers outlined the disproportionate and damaging effects of Canada’s carbon taxes.
The study found that the average carbon tax among the top 20 oil-exporting nations, excluding Canada, was $0.70 per tonne of carbon emissions in fiscal 2023. With Canada included, that average jumps to $6.77 per tonne.
At least Canada demands the same standards for foreign producers as it does for domestic ones, right? Wrong.
Most of Canada’s oil imports come from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Nigeria, none of which impose a carbon tax. Only 2.8 per cent of Canada’s oil imports come from the modestly carbon-taxing countries of the U.K. and Colombia.
Canada’s federal consumer carbon tax was $80 per tonne, set to reach $170 by 2030, until Prime Minister Mark Carney reduced it to zero on March 14. However, parallel carbon taxes on industry remain in place and continue to rise.
Resource Works estimates Canada’s effective carbon tax at $58.94 per tonne for fiscal 2023, while foreign oil entering Canada had an effective tax of just $0.30 per tonne.
“This results in a 196-fold disparity, effectively functioning as a domestic tariff against Canadian oil production,” the research memo notes. Forget Donald Trump—Ottawa undermines our country more effectively than anyone else.
Canada is responsible for 1.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions, but the study estimates that Canada paid one-third of all carbon taxes in 2023. Mexico, with nearly the same emissions, paid just $3 billion in carbon taxes for 2023-24, far less than Canada’s $44 billion.
Resource Works also calculated that Canada alone raised the global per-tonne carbon tax average from $1.63 to $2.44. To be Canadian is to be heavily taxed.
Historically, the Canadian dollar and oil and gas investment in Canada tracked the global price of oil, but not anymore. A disconnect began in 2016 when the Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline and banned tanker traffic on B.C.’s north coast.
The carbon tax was introduced in 2019 at $15 per tonne, a rate that increased annually until this year. The study argues this “economic burden,” not shared by the rest of the world, has placed Canada at “a competitive disadvantage by accelerating capital flight and reinforcing economic headwinds.”
This “erosion of energy-sector investment” has broader economic consequences, including trade balance pressures and increased exchange rate volatility.
According to NASA, Canadian forest fires released 640 million metric tonnes of carbon in 2023, four times the amount from fossil fuel emissions. We should focus on fighting fires, not penalizing our fossil fuel industry.
Carney praised Canada’s carbon tax approach in his 2021 book Value(s), raising questions about how long his reprieve will last. He has suggested raising carbon taxes on industry, which would worsen Canada’s competitive disadvantage.
In contrast, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre argued that extracting and exporting Canadian oil and gas could displace higher-carbon-emitting energy sources elsewhere, helping to reduce global emissions.
This approach makes more sense than imposing disproportionately high tax burdens on Canadians. Taxes won’t save the world.
Lee Harding is a research fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.
-
Daily Caller19 hours ago
Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Resets The Energy Policy Playing Field
-
Agriculture2 days ago
Lacombe meat processor scores $1.2 million dollar provincial tax credit to help expansion
-
conflict2 days ago
US airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Was it obliteration?
-
Crime1 day ago
The Left Thinks Drug Criminalization Is Racist. Minorities Disagree
-
Business1 day ago
Dallas mayor invites NYers to first ‘sanctuary city from socialism’
-
Alberta Sports Hall of Fame and Museum1 day ago
Alberta Sports Hall of Fame 2025 Inductee profiles – Alpine Skiing Athlete – Brady Leman
-
Carbon Tax20 hours ago
Canada’s Carbon Tax Is A Disaster For Our Economy And Oil Industry
-
Business10 hours ago
The Digital Services Tax Q&A: “It was going to be complicated and messy”