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Energy

UN Secretary-General Ramps Up Tiresome Climate-Fright Rhetoric One More Time

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By DAVID BLACKMON

 

In his unending quest to constantly heat up fright rhetoric about climate change, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last week referred to oil companies as “the godfathers of climate chaos” and urged national governments to place bans on their ability to advertise their products.

Speaking at an event called World Climate Day, Guterres told attendees that “we are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” adding, “we need an exit ramp off this highway to hell.”

The latter bit of hyperbolic nonsense was a reference to a bit of fright rhetoric he unveiled during the COP27 conference held in Egypt in November 2022. In that speech, Guterres warned: “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” 

He also warned, outrageously, that: “We can sign a climate solidarity pact, or a collective suicide pact.”

The global media establishment threw a collective hissy fit in March when former President Donald Trump used the term “bloodbath” to describe the damage that Biden administration policies are doing to the U.S. auto industry. Imagine the pearl clutching that would take place at the same media outlets if the GOP presidential candidate used the term “collective suicide pact” to describe his opponent’s climate policies.

Talking heads at CNN and MSNBC might faint dead away on air.

But because Guterres is a key pusher of the preferred climate narrative, his bombastic rhetoric is fine. In his most recent salvo, the secretary general failed to include reference to his July 2023 claim that the hot weather last summer (who knew it is hot in New York in July?) meant that “the era of global warming has ended” and “the era of global boiling has arrived.” We should all be grateful for that omission.

Guterres’ latest bit of panic speech comes as world events indicate that the climate change narrative is failing. The just-completed elections for the European Union Parliament resulted in a rejection of Europe’s ruling class that was significant enough to convince Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo to resign and French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve France’s parliament and call for snap elections.

In the United States, poll after poll shows low support for the Biden energy and climate agenda, and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is suddenly showing strong support for nuclear energy. Meanwhile, Biden’s vaunted offshore wind initiatives are faltering badly, and the U.S. electric-vehicle industry is also struggling.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Climate Crisis Fades Out,” former Obama climate advisor and author Steven Koonin says one reason why the climate alarm rhetoric is failing to move voters lies in the reality that “the energy transition’s purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial. The world has many more urgent needs, including the provision of reliable and affordable energy to all.”

Noting that the preferred, rent-seeking “solutions” to climate change offered by the ruling class are not really solutions at all — a theme I’ve written about for several years now — Koonin posits that we should be happy that the “crisis” narrative is failing and fading as it goes through what he refers to as the “issues-attention cycle.”

As a result of this focus on these non-solutions, global emissions have continued to rise in this century. Fossil fuels still provide roughly 80% of primary energy now despite more than $12 trillion in renewable energy investments in just the past 9 years. Koonin points out that the “latest United Nations emissions report projects that emissions in 2030 will be almost twice as high as a level compatible with the [2015 Paris Agreement] aspiration.”

Koonin believes the public’s fading attention to the issue of climate alarmism “means that today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies will be abandoned, making room for a more thoughtful and informed approach to responsibly providing for the world’s energy needs.”

But seeking more thoughtful and informed approaches does not appear to be a high priority at the UN these days, so we can all sit back and wait to see how Guterres will attempt to ramp up his tiresome, counterproductive hyperbole next. Expecting anything more is a fool’s errand.

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.

Business

Premiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs

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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.

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Economy

Gas prices plummet in BC thanks to TMX pipeline expansion

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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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