From Canadians for Affordable Energy

In a shocking turn of events, just weeks before the upcoming provincial election, Eby said that if re-elected his government would end the provincial carbon tax on consumers, provided the federal government removed the “legal backstop” that requires them to keep a tax in place.

Here’s a surprising development – the Carbon Tax, which was a keystone policy of the Green Left just a few short years ago is now a political pariah. Though, for some of us, it isn’t so surprising.

As you will recall, the federal Carbon Tax back was one of the Trudeau Liberals’ first announcements upon taking power. It was meant to set the tone for their commitment to tackling the “climate crisis,” and achieving net zero carbon emissions. The policy required that all provinces and territories which did not have their own carbon pricing scheme in place would have one imposed on them by Ottawa.

The Carbon Tax had buy-in from Green apologists all over the country, including many Conservative politicians. You may recall Patrick Brown, former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, stunning an audience of PC Members in 2016 when he announced. “Climate change is a fact… We have to do something about it, and that something includes putting a price on carbon.” Ever the political opportunist, Brown had bought into the notion that you can’t win if you aren’t in favor of a carbon tax.

And that is how it was sold. The carbon tax was inevitable. And it would come with all sorts of environmental benefits – ending forest fires, floods, and combatting all manner of bad weather. Plus, the price would mainly be paid by greedy corporations. The average Canadian, they said, would actually be getting more money back on the tax rebate than they’d paid in the first place. In their telling, the carbon tax sounded like it was all carrots and no sticks!

Of course, that was too good to be true. There were, in fact, plenty of sticks. Sky-high gas prices, heating bills, food prices, and an overall increase in our cost of living. Eventually the Parliamentary Budget Office issued a report which confirmed what many Canadians had already learned, that the tax would be a net loss for most households, with the middle class being particularly hard hit.

No wonder public support started to wane, and then to spiral. Even Trudeau’s desperate rebranding – he started calling the tax “pollution pricing” – couldn’t save it.

A Leger poll released earlier this year revealed that 7 in 10 Canadians do not support the Carbon Tax. It helps that Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has made ‘Axe the Tax’ a cornerstone of his campaign, consistently making the case that the Carbon Tax is harming consumers and making the country less competitive.

What was once considered the unsinkable Carbon Tax is now taking on water. And lots of it.

We saw early signs of this earlier this year when the annual Carbon Tax increase, scheduled for April 1^st, was loudly opposed by a number of premiers. Even Liberal premiers, such as Andrew Furey of Newfoundland and Labrador, pleaded with Justin Trudeau to hit pause on the increase.

More recently, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh has been waffling on the tax as currently structured, suggesting that it has “put the burden on the backs of working people.” Of course, as the Conservatives like to remind him, Singh voted in favor of this same tax twenty-four times in the House of Commons.

But perhaps the most significant nail in the carbon tax coffin came courtesy BC Premier David Eby. Remember that it was BC, under the Liberal premier Gordon Campbell, who implemented the first Carbon Tax in 2008 – not just the first in Canada, but rather, the provincial government claims, the first “revenue neutral” Carbon Tax in the world!

The Carbon Tax has been a hallmark of BC’s climate policies for nearly two decades. But in a shocking turn of events, just weeks before the upcoming provincial election, Eby said that if re-elected his government would end the provincial carbon tax on consumers, provided the federal government removed the “legal backstop” that requires them to keep a tax in place.

With Eby’s main opposition also pledged to repeal, it seems that even in the policy’s birthplace, no one wants to touch the carbon tax with a ten foot pole!

Now Eby defended the move by claiming essentially that the Trudeau Liberals’ fumbling of the issue has “badly damaged” what he says was the political consensus on the carbon tax. But the reality is that this was bound to happen eventually. In my capacity as President of Canadians for Affordable Energy, I’ve been warning Canadians for years that Trudeau’s carbon tax increase, compounded by his Clean Fuel Standard, which I’ve dubbed the Second Carbon Tax, would not only raise the price of fuel, but would increase the price of all goods, groceries included.

Once Canadians saw what the tax actually cost, and felt its devastating impact on their ability to make ends meet, to fill their gas tanks, heat their homes, and feed their families, they were bound to turn against it. This is exactly what we’re seeing now. And with elections looming, as go the voters so go the politicians who need their votes.

It seems the Carbon Tax is sinking and the rats are jumping ship.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

On Monday, before most people even knew its annual General Assembly was again invading New York City, the United Nations issued a press release proclaiming the unanimous adoption of what it calls its “Pact for the Future.” Designed to be a successor plan to its “Agenda 2030” — which the international globalist organization admits is failing — the press release boasts that this “Pact” is designed to create a glorious “new global order.”

Where have we heard those dangerous words before?

The U.N.’s alarmist general secretary, life-long socialist Antonio Guterres, had laid the narrative groundwork for Monday’s press release during a preview delivered last week. In that statement, Guterres – who famously proclaimed the world had entered into “the era of global boiling” last July – advocated for a complete restructuring of the world’s “institutions and frameworks” to address major issues like “runaway climate change,” something that no real data indicates is even happening.

In addition to his usual climate alarmism, Guterres also raised questionable alarm about what he termed the “runaway development of new technologies like artificial intelligence.”

“Our institutions simply can’t keep up,” Guterres said. “Crises are interacting and feeding off each other – for example, as digital technologies spread climate disinformation that deepens distrust and fuels polarization. Global institutions and frameworks are today totally inadequate to deal with these complex and even existential challenges.”

In other words, Agenda 2030, the U.N. plan adopted to leverage those institutions to solve all the world’s problems, has failed. The solution? Why, adopt a new “Pact for the Future” to solve all the world’s problems while also rejiggering all those institutions and frameworks. Sure, that will work.

You would think such an all-encompassing Pact approved by a unanimous vote of the world community would make headline news, but that did not really happen. Perhaps that lack of breaking news coverage can be attributed to the fact that a reading of the document itself reveals it doesn’t really offer many plans for specific action items.

Instead, it reads like something written by the talking points compilers for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign — a lot of lofty language that doesn’t actually say anything.

Nowhere is this reality starker than in the section on “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy.” After laying out the rationale for pushing the sputtering, subsidized energy transition – as always, painting oil, natural gas and coal as the convenient bogeymen justifying a forced move away from democratic national institutions to change forced by socialist central planning – the document offers only nebulous talking points instead of action items:

• “Countries can accelerate the transition to an affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy system by investing in renewable energy resources, prioritizing energy efficient practices, and adopting clean energy technologies and infrastructure.”
• “Businesses can maintain and protect eco-systems and commit to sourcing 100% of operational electricity needs from renewable sources.”
• “Employers can reduce the internal demand for transport by prioritizing telecommunications and incentivize less energy intensive modes such as train travel over auto and air travel.”
• “Investors can invest more in sustainable energy services, bringing new technologies to the market quickly from a diverse supplier base.”
• “You can save electricity by plugging appliances into a power strip and turning them off completely when not in use, including your computer. You can also bike, walk or take public transport to reduce carbon emissions.”

It all amounts to bits of advice, much of which constitutes laudable goals. But there is nothing new here, nor is there anything that is going to lead to meeting the UN-invented “net zero by 2050” target. The simple reality is that demand growth for energy – real, 24/7 energy – will continue to outstrip the ability of global or national governments to force reductions in carbon emissions, because modern life is not sustainable without the use of carbon-based energy. Period.

By citing the evolution of energy-hungry AI technology as a development to be feared and attacked, Guterres admits this reality. He also appears to be admitting that the attempt to displace democratic institutions with socialism using climate alarmism as the justification is also failing, thus necessitating the need for a different bogeyman.

It is all so incredibly tiresome and unproductive.

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.