From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

“When something is unsustainable, it eventually stops,” former Vice President Al Gore said in an op/ed published by The Wall Street Journal. Given recent events, one might think Gore was referring to the ruinously costly attempts by governments of the Western world to force an energy transition via trillions of debt-funded dollars in subsidies for unreliable, intermittent energy sources like wind, solar and green hydrogen.

It has become obvious to most in the energy business now that the stick-and-carrot approach to a forced transition implemented by the Biden administration is not just unsustainable but a colossal failure. The stick of heavy-handed regulations and mandates combined with the carrot of economically ruinous government subsidies has resulted in a massive uptick in the national debt along with a playing field littered with dozens of bankruptcies by both startups and pre-existing green energy companies alike. Collectively, their waste of federal dollars makes the Obama-era Solyndra failure look like pocket change.

As critics of the Biden Green New Deal suite of policy choices repeatedly warned, the rent-seeking industries that became the chosen clients of the Democratic Party over the last four years – wind, solar, electric vehicles and green hydrogen – cannot displace fossil fuels in any scalable sense because the laws of physics don’t allow it. Too many companies in these industries also cannot be sustained for more than short periods of time without constant new injections of additional government subsidies, all of which in the U.S. have the impact of increasing the national debt.

When the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act passed on party line votes in congress in 2022, I and others warned that the Democrats in congress and the Biden White House viewed the bill as just an initial down payment on their long-term goals. A steady succession of new IRA-type debt-funded bills would be required in the coming decades to sustain the transition, and without those added tranches of trillions of dollars in additional subsidies, most startups in those non-competitive energy businesses would ultimately fail. It wasn’t hard to see this coming.

In his op/ed, Gore writes all this financial carnage off with his typical climate alarm fearmongering, saying things like “treating the transition to a sustainable economy as optional isn’t an option,” and “the cost of inaction is indefensible and unbearable.” To which the only proper response is to ask Gore to tell that to all the lower income Americans who have seen their utility bills and food prices inflate to unbearable levels as they have borne the brunt of the inevitable outcome of the policies Gore, Biden and their cronies have happily forced onto the public. It’s one of the greatest transfers of wealth from the poor to the wealthy in global history. If you want an example of unsustainability, there it is.

Most hilariously, Gore states that “in the U.S., the fossil-fuel industry, its allies and captive policymakers seek to punish companies and investors pursuing sustainability goals with frivolous lawsuits, smear campaigns and the withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management.” Holy smokes, talk about a prime example of Clintonian projection, there it is.

No industry has been subjected to a decades-long constant stream of frivolous lawsuits and smear campaigns from critics quite like the coal and oil and gas industries have sustained in modern times. Right now, today, the oil industry is spending hundreds of millions of dollars defending itself against a well-organized lawfare campaign in which left-wing law firms recruit friendly, mostly-Democrat officials in cities, counties and states around the country to file frivolous lawsuits claiming billions of dollars in unsubstantiated damages related to climate change theoretically caused by emissions coming mainly from China. That is the very definition of a frivolous smear campaign and lawfare campaign rolled into one.

But it is Gore’s complaint about the effort by the Trump administration to implement a “withdrawal of state-controlled funds under management” that really takes the cake here. Apparently, this former vice president believes that elections really don’t matter at all.

But elections do matter, policies can change and billions of dollars in funds awarded to political cronies of one president can indeed be clawed back by another. Gore can rage against these winds of change all he likes, but that is American democracy in action.

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.

From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

During its tenure, the Trudeau government rejected any semblance of spending restraint and increased spending (and borrowing) at every turn. However, due to the rising cost of deficits and debt, coupled with pressures to increase spending in neglected areas such as defence, the next federal government—whoever that may be—may finally be forced to find savings and reduce spending.

But where to look?

The government should immediately review all spending on the basis of efficiency, value for money, and the appropriate role of government—similar to the spending review initiated by the federal Chrétien government during the 1990s. Here are some line items ripe for the cutting board.

Regional Development Agencies: The federal government operates seven Regional Development Agencies (RDAs), which deliver financial assistance (a.k.a. corporate welfare) to businesses. Despite spending an estimated $1.5 billion in federal taxpayer money in 2024/25, the RDAs do not provide any widespread economic benefits to Canadians. Instead, they simply redistribute those dollars to private firms and pick winners and losers in the free market. When reporting on the results, the government offers vague platitudes such as “businesses are growing” and “communities are developing economically.”

Government Money for Journalism: In 2024/25 the federal government spent an estimated $1.7 billion to support Canadian journalism including the operating costs (e.g. wages) of newspapers and broadcast outlets such as the CBC. Despite these efforts, and the considerable price tag, hundreds of news organizations have closed since 2020 and layoffs have persisted—largely due to the disruptive effects of the Internet. Simply put, the traditional media sector is in decline, and the government’s costly attempts to reverse this trend have been ineffective.

Federal Support for Electric Vehicle Purchases: As part of its push to reduce emissions, the federal government will spend an estimated $587.6 million to subsidize electric vehicle (EV) purchases in 2024/25. This spending is inefficient and wasteful. EV incentives are expensive—costing a minimum of $177 per tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, whereas the federal carbon tax in 2024 was much cheaper at $80 per tonne of GHG emissions.

The 2 Billion Trees (2BT) Program: Ottawa has earmarked $3.2 billion for the program from 2021 to 2031, with expenses in 2024-25 alone estimated at $340 million. While laudable in theory, the program has been poorly executed. In its first two years, the federal government spent roughly 15.0 per cent of the total budget to plant merely 2.3 per cent of the two billion trees. In fact, the 2BT program has used trees planted under a different program to artificially boost its numbers.

Canada Infrastructure Bank (CIB): Established in 2017, the CIB is a federal Crown corporation tasked with investing and attracting investment in Canadian infrastructure projects. Over its more than seven-year lifespan, the CIB has approved approximately $13.2 billion in investments across 76 projects (as of July 2024). In 2024/25, federal CIB funding will equal $3.5 billion. Though multiple problems plague the CIB, chief among them is its inefficiency in advancing projects. As of July 2024, only two CIB-funded projects had been completed. This lack of progress was a chief concern in a previous House of Commons committee report that made the sole recommendation to abolish the CIB.

Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF): With federal grants and contributions, the SIF funds projects based on their purported potential to deliver innovation and economic benefits for Canadians. While Canada certainly suffers from a lack of innovation, this spending (to the tune of $2.4 billion in 2024/25) simply shifts jobs and investment dollars away from other firms and industries—with no net benefit for the overall economy. Similarly, increased government spending on innovation may simply crowd out private-sector investment, leading to no net increase in innovation investment.

Global Innovation Clusters (GIC): The federal government launched the GIC program, like the SIF, to address the lack of innovation in Canada. The government expects to disperse $202.3 million through the GIC in 2024/25 alone, targeting the five “clusters” of business activity the government chose in 2018. But again, because the clusters represent specific industries and technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, marine technologies, manufacturing), the federal government is incentivizing firms to spend time and resources modifying their businesses to secure grant rather than focusing on the development of new/improved goods and services.

Green Municipal Fund (GMF): The GMF spends federal tax dollars on municipal projects that purportedly accelerate the transition to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In 2024/25, the federal government will contribute $530 million to the fund. While the fund maintains emissions-reduction targets for projects, several projects approved for funding will not reduce GHG emissions in any measurable way—for example, “climate-friendly” home tours and funding for climate advocacy groups in Ottawa. In other words, the GMF is spending taxpayer dollars on projects that make no apparent progress towards the GMF’s stated goal.

In total, these eight spending initiatives add up to approximately $10.7 billion in potential savings for the 2024-25 fiscal year alone. And remember, these are just the low-hanging fruit. The next federal government can find further savings through a more comprehensive review of all spending.

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Grady Munro

Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute