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.

By Ryan Thorpe 

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau billed taxpayers for $157,642 in household food expenses over a two-year period, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“The fact that Trudeau spent more on food than what the average Canadian worker makes in an entire year is outrageous,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Here’s a crazy idea: how about the prime minister pays for their own groceries like everyone else.”

Trudeau billed taxpayers $81,428 in 2022-23 and $76,214 in 2021-22, the latest years for which records are available.

The CTF filed an access-to-information request seeking “records showing total spending on household groceries for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.”

The Privy Council Office released records to the CTF showing Trudeau expensed $188,864 for “food and food preparation” during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 fiscal years.

Taxpayers were forced to pay $157,642 (or 83 per cent) of the total cost.

For the sake of comparison, the average Canadian family spent a combined $29,989 on groceries during the 2022 and 2023 calendar years, according to Canada’s Food Price Report.

That works out to an average grocery bill of $288 per week.

Meanwhile, Trudeau billed taxpayers for an average of $1,515 in household food expenses per week – five times more than what the average family spends.

“The prime minister reimburses amounts related to food based on Statistics Canada data on household spending, which is adjusted using the consumer price index to account for inflation,” according to the records.

In 2022-23, Trudeau racked up $97,645 in grocery expenses, with taxpayers forced to pay $81,428.

In 2021-22, Trudeau racked up $91,218 in grocery expenses, with taxpayers forced to pay $76,214.

“Expenditures include all food related expenses incurred by the Prime Minister’s Residence,” according to the records. “In addition to household groceries, it also includes food expenditures for events that are hosted at the residence.”

The records do not make clear how much was spent on personal groceries versus event-related expenditures.

“It’s one thing for the prime minister to bill taxpayers for government business, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for a single cent of the prime minister’s personal groceries,” Terrazzano said. “The current policy needs to change, the government needs to improve transparency on this spending and anyone who wants to be the next prime minister needs to commit to not billing taxpayers for their personal groceries.”

The prime minister’s annual salary is $406,200. The average Canadian worker’s annual salary is about $70,000, according to Statistics Canada data.

Taxpayers also paid for Trudeau’s personal chef. The prime minister’s personal chef took home an annual, taxpayer-funded salary between $68,468 and $79,234.

Between 2015 and 2022, taxpayers were on the hook for an average of $57,538 per year for Trudeau’s household groceries, according to previous reporting from the National Post.

The Official Residence for Canada’s prime minister is 24 Sussex. But Trudeau has lived at Rideau Cottage – a two-storey, 22-room mansion on the grounds of Rideau Hall – since becoming prime minister in 2015.

However, Trudeau’s meals have continued to be prepared at 24 Sussex, then shipped to Rideau Cottage via courier, according to the National Post.

“While Canadians have been tightening their belts during a cost-of-living crisis, Trudeau was sparing no expense,” Terrazzano said. “The prime minister’s salary is nearly six times more than the average Canadian’s and he lives in a taxpayer-funded mansion, so surely he doesn’t need to stick taxpayers with huge grocery bills.”