Dan McTeague
COP28 – The grand delusion continues

From Canadians for Affordable Energy
Written By Dan McTeague
The 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) wrapped up this week in Dubai. That the two-week conference, whose object is to discuss the global phase-out of fossil fuels, is being held in one of the world’s top ten oil producers — the UAE — is only the first of COP’s absurdities.
The next is the sheer number of participants — more than 97,000 of them — flying to the desert, in most cases on the taxpayers’ dime, to talk about reducing carbon emissions in the hopes of cooling the planet.
The hyperbole from people such as Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, who said those at COP28 “are steering the course of our shared future but the science tells us we are in grave danger of bequeathing our children a completely unlivable world” is almost too much to bear.
And what did they actually accomplish? As has been the case for the past 27 conferences, very little. While there is a lot of grandstanding and speeches and promises from the 157 countries in attendance to phase out fossil fuels, no commitments were actually made.
Surely this comes as no surprise since all of the nations present run on fossil fuel users and have no real intention of abolishing them, especially not countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and India. There is no scenario where they would “phase out” the life blood of their economies for the sake of the quixotic goal of achieving Net Zero emissions so as to — maybe — reduce global temperatures by 1.5 degrees.
And as if to make the farce even more laughable, it has been announced that Azerbaijan will be the host for COP29. Oil, gas and related petroleum products account for 91% of Azerbaijan’s total exports. Is it at all likely that they will be getting rid of them anytime soon? Definitely not.
As was recently noted by Benny Peiser of Net Zero Watch, COP28 is happening while the Green Agenda is in deep crisis and is falling apart around the world.
- There is a massive backlash against the cost of Net Zero policies. Renewable energy projects have been scrapped including major wind projects in the US and the UK.
- Electric vehicle sales have slumped.
- Germany is facing an energy crisis, frantically bringing coal fired plants back into service to replace the energy lost when they shuttered their nuclear plants for nebulous environmental reasons.
- The Dutch Farmers party has made major gains in two successive elections after their environmentalist government in their obsession to achieve net zero tried to restrict them out of existence.
- Argentina has elected a new president who has called climate change a “socialist lie.” Even French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the EU to pump the breaks on net zero regulations.
Why? Because net zero policies are unpopular and damaging. It is all well and good to talk about targets and goals and objectives, but when rubber hits the road and daily lives are affected, that’s another story. People have come to see that pursuing these absurd policies comes at an enormous societal and economic cost.
If a country wants affordable, reliable power to keep the lights on and heat their homes, they need the baseload power that oil and natural gas provide.
Yet here in Canada the Trudeau government is doubling, no, tripling down on their punishing Net Zero Agenda.
Our environmental minister Steven Guilbeault even used COP28 as his stage to make two major regulatory announcements that will have a devastating effect on the Canadian economy.
Last week, he announced his methane emissions reduction plan and an emissions cap, without even consulting the leader of the province it would affect the most. Give me a break. The grandstanding, the virtue signaling — it would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging.
Canadians can’t afford groceries or pay their rent or buy homes. We are suffering an affordability crisis. The relentless taxation on our lives from a carbon tax to a second carbon tax (the Clean Fuel Standard), to Minister Guilbeault’s newest schemes, are all part of the Net Zero policies that are destroying our economy.
Remember this is all fuelled by the preposterous notion we can somehow affect the climate if we reduce our greenhouse gases from 1.4% of global emissions to 0.4%.
In light of all of that, the Trudeau government is more interested in how they are perceived on the world stage than how their policies affect the Canadians they are supposed to represent.
Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, to their credit, attended the conference with their own Alberta and Saskatchewan delegations to advocate for the industry that employs thousands of Canadians and is a major driver of the Canadian economy.
And, it should be taken as a compliment that Alberta was even given the “Fossil of the Day” award by activists at the summit for its temporary ban on large scale renewable projects.
At least Canada had a few representatives there with its best interest in mind, and that weren’t taken in by the grand delusion.
Dan McTeague
Carney… how he got the top job is a national scandal

Dan McTeague
Remember that he is the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) and its subgroup, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which seek to harness the might of global finance to force Net-Zero on people who would never vote for it, and stop banks from investing in oil and gas projects, to the detriment of both their shareholders and the wider Canadian economy.
Well, the coronation is over, and it was exactly as anti-climactic as I expected it would be. The Liberals pulled out all the stops to get Mark Carney over the finish line, preventing real challengers from running, and carefully stage-managing the whole farce so that (with the notable exception of Frank Baylis) no one even attempted to discuss anything of substance.
And, after all of the water-carrying and kool-aid slinging, 150,000 people — in a nation of 40 million — got to choose our newest prime minister, a man who has never submitted himself to the voters, who doesn’t even have a seat in parliament.
It is a national scandal.
To me this is all a perfect encapsulation of what the Liberal Party of Canada has become since Justin Trudeau took the reins in 2013. As a decades-long member of that party, and having had the honour of serving as a Liberal Member of Parliament for 18 years, I can attest to the fact that it was once a party of practicality and diverse viewpoints — the most important kind of diversity there is — all ordered toward the good of our beloved nation.
But once Justin took over, on the strength of the Trudeau name, it quickly devolved into a cult of personality, built on hair and socks, and animated by fluffy, far-left magical thinking from which good Liberals were forbidden from dissenting. Out went practicality and any concern for good governance. In came the world’s “first post-national state,” and Net-Zero carbon emissions. Why? Because it is the current year.
Well, predictably, it all fell apart, though it took some time for Team Trudeau to spend down the capital we built up over the years, when better men and women were in power. And now that we Canadians find ourselves in a tough spot of his creation, Justin has handed the keys over to his hand-picked successor and co-conspirator, Mark Carney.
But aside from the man at the helm, what is actually going to change?
Nothing of substance.
Sure, Carney has offered some criticism of Trudeau’s Carbon Tax, but only once the public had soured on it. Even then, he began walking back his support by saying the Carbon Tax had “served a purpose up until now,” and he’s now pledging that his government will “immediately eliminate the consumer Carbon Tax,” which is to say, the portion of the tax which is most visible to voters.
That really is his problem with it — not that it makes it harder for working Canadians to gas up their cars, heat their homes, or afford groceries. No, it’s because the tax is paid by consumers directly, and so it’s too easy to see how it’s making our lives more expensive. Meanwhile, the industrial Carbon Tax, which is paid by businesses, will remain untouched, or perhaps raised, despite the fact that those costs will ultimately be passed on to the consumers.
This “sneaky” move is characteristic of Carney’s career thus far. Remember that he is the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) and its subgroup, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA), which seek to harness the might of global finance to force Net-Zero on people who would never vote for it, and stop banks from investing in oil and gas projects, to the detriment of both their shareholders and the wider Canadian economy.
This scheme came apart pretty quickly earlier this year, as banks in both the U.S. and Canada withdrew from Carney’s pet projects in response to accusations that they were engaged in collusion. But even so, this story tells us quite a lot about Carney’s “Green” elitist instincts.
These could be summed up as follows: Never trust regular people to make decisions about their own lives. Make those decisions for them, and at such a high altitude that they’ll have no one to complain to once they realize that something has gone wrong.
This is not the way to prosperity, especially with the perilous economic threats we’re currently facing. Trump’s tariffs have bite because Trudeau and Carney have left our economy in such a precarious state.
And now Carney is proposing that we go toe-to-toe with the world’s largest economy while continuing to smother our own economic vibrancy with essentially the entire Net-Zero superstructure intact — excluding, apparently, the Consumer Carbon Tax, but including the Industrial Carbon Tax, “Clean Fuel” regulations; Electric Vehicle mandates; and the heaps of legislation and regulations which impede our building new pipelines and selling our oil and gas overseas. It’s madness!
Unfortunately, Donald Trump is doing his darndest to help them attempt it. I’m skeptical of the current polling numbers which show the Liberal Party soaring. I know enough of these pollsters to know where their sympathies lie, and whom they owe favours to. But the Rally ‘Round the Flag sentiment is real. And the people who put Carney in power are hoping it will last long enough to keep them competitive in an election. Maybe it will.
Hopefully Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives can stop that from happening. And their best bet would be to acknowledge what I’ve been saying for quite some time — that “Axe the Tax” is not enough. That the more they rely on piecemeal policies, bandaids for the gaping wounds in our economy, the easier it is for Carney and the Trudeaupians to just adopt their own twisted versions of them while ultimately changing nothing at all.
So Mr. Poilievre should pledge to not just Axe the Tax, but to Nix Net-Zero. The good of all Canadians, no matter their party, depends on it.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy
Carbon Tax
Don’t be fooled – He’s Still Carbon Tax Carney

Dan McTeague
Carney and the Trudeaupians in his cabinet haven’t had some kind of massive conversion. They’ve not done any soul searching. There’s no repentance here for having made our lives harder and more expensive. They remain ideologically opposed to Affordable Energy.
Over the next several days you will see headline after headline proclaiming that the Carbon Tax is old news, because Mark Carney has repealed it. ‘Promises made, promises kept!’ will be the line spouted by our bought-and-paid-for media, desperate to prevent Pierre Poilievre from winning the election.
Of course, this will be the same media who has spent the past few years declaring that Canadians love, are positively infatuated with, Carbon Taxation. So forgive me for scoffing at their sudden about-face, clapping like trained seals when Justin Trudeau’s newly anointed heir waives his pen and proclaims to the electorate that the Carbon Tax is dead.
The thing is, it’s not. It’s still there. And it will still be there as long as Mark Carney is running the show.
And of course it will. Mark Carney is an environmentalist fanatic and lifelong Apostle of Carbon Taxation. Just listen carefully to everything he’s said since he threw his hat in the ring to take over as PM. He’s said that the Carbon Tax “served a purpose up until now,” but that it’s become “too divisive.” He was careful to always pledge to repeal the Consumer Carbon Tax, rather than the entire thing. And in the end he didn’t even do that, just zeroed it out for the time being.
Carney and the Trudeaupians in his cabinet haven’t had some kind of massive conversion. They’ve not done any soul searching. There’s no repentance here for having made our lives harder and more expensive. They remain ideologically opposed to Affordable Energy.
The fact is, the only reason they’re changing anything is because we noticed.
They’re determined that that won’t happen again. The Carbon Tax will live on, but as hidden as it can possibly be, buried under every euphemism and with every accounting trick they can think of.
Trust me, we at CAE would be taking a victory lap if the Carbon Tax were really dead. We did as much as anyone – and more than most! – to wake Canadians up to what it was doing to our quality of life, our ability to gas up our cars, heat our homes, and afford our groceries. When the day comes that this beast is actually slain, we will have quite the celebration.
But that day is not today.
What happened, instead, was that an elitist Green ideologue shuffled the deck chairs on the Titanic in the hopes that the working people of Canada would miss the Net-Zero iceberg bearing down on us.
Don’t be fooled!
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