From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Owen Klinsky

Energy giant Shell won its appeal against a landmark 2021 legal ruling claiming the company was partially responsible for climate change and needed to cut carbon emissions.

The original decision handed down in 2021 ordered Shell to reduce its carbon emissions by 45% by the end of 2030, with anti-fracking group Friends of the Earth Netherlands bringing the claims. Now, a Dutch appellate court has thrown out the ruling, stating that climate science is not developed enough to impose specific emissions reduction requirements on private businesses like Shell.

“The court of appeal… takes as its point of departure that there is a broad consensus that, in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C, reduction pathways must be chosen in which CO2 emissions are reduced by a net 45% by the end of 2030 relative to at least 2019,” the Hague Court of Appeal wrote in its ruling. “The court cannot determine what specific reduction obligation applies to Shell.”

The Shell logo is displayed outside a petrol station in Plymouth on August 15, 2024 in Somerset, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

The court also noted Shell has already made efforts to lower emissions.

“To assume the impending violation of a legal obligation alleged by Milieudefensie [Friends of the Earth Netherlands] et al., the court would have to find that it is likely that Shell will not have reduced its scope 1 and 2 emissions by 45% by 2030, despite Shell’s concrete plans and the measures Shell has already taken to implement those plans,” the ruling stated. “Milieudefensie et al. have not provided sufficient arguments in support of that.”

The Hague’s decision comes as world leaders meet in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations’ COP29 climate summit this month, with the U.S. finalizing a levy on “excess” methane emissions from oil and gas producers Tuesday. A variety of world leaders, including President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva opted not to attend this year, while representatives from Afghanistan’s Taliban are slated to attend the climate confab for the first time ever.

Friends of the Earth Netherlands, Shell and the Hague Court of Appeals did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

Canada’s most dangerous criminals are being sent to women’s prisons simply by identifying as such. This can only happen because the country is run by people like Justin Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being.

You’ve probably heard plenty from Justin Trudeau and his progressive clones about conservative premiers “attacking” and “targeting” the so-called “LGBT community” for legislation protecting children from sex change surgeries. But you won’t hear a word about the victims of LGBT ideology – and you won’t hear a thing about the growing list of insanities inflicted on Canada by the policies they have passed and supported. 

Consider the case of Adam Laboucan, who as a teenager brutally raped a 3-month-old infant and allegedly drowned a toddler – he was convicted only of the violent pedophilic assault, because he was less than 12 years old when he drowned the 3-year-old boy, and under Canadian law you must be at least 12 to be prosecuted. 

Laboucan’s case – which LifeSiteNews reported on last year – was so disturbing that he became Canada’s “youngest designated dangerous offender.”  

Now, according to The Canadian Press, Laboucan is “seeking escorted leave from prison to attend Indigenous cultural ceremonies in Vancouver.” You see, Adam Laboucan has changed his name. He is now known as Tara Desousa, and the CP obediently refers to him by his preferred pronouns, leading to ludicrous sentences such as this one: 

Desousa, then named Adam Laboucan, was 15 years old in 1997 when she sexually assaulted an infant she was babysitting in Quesnel, B.C. The baby required surgery to repair the injuries.

Laboucan, of course, was not a woman when he attacked the infant and drowned the child. He is not a woman now, despite having obtained sex change surgeries since then (he is 43). He is considered so dangerous that B.C. Supreme Court Judge Victor Curtis imposed an indefinite sentence on him in 1999 because there was, in the view of the court, no foreseeable “time span in which Adam Laboucan may be cured.” The B.C. Court of Appeal affirmed the dangerous offender designation in 2002. 

They did so for good reason. Expert psychiatrists stated that Laboucan exhibited everything from “transsexual to pedophilic tendencies.” He was given to self-mutilation and even self-cannibalism. He was promiscuous and volatile, threatening to kill a female guard and behaving so erratically that a 2010 parole review again affirmed his dangerous offender designation due to his problems with “gender identity, impulsive behavior, violence and sexual deviance.” But in 2018, he began to identify as a woman. As LifeSiteNews reported shortly thereafter:  

In a 2021 brief to members of the House of Commons, incarcerated women’s rights advocate Heather Mason told a House Committee that numerous women prisoners had been subject to sexual harassment by males who call themselves females who are living in female prisons. Mason made special mention of Laboucan (Desousa) stating: “One of these women reported that while in the mother-child program, two transgender individuals with convictions for pedophilia, Madilyn Harks and Tara Desousa, would loiter near her and her child, making sexist and inappropriate antagonizing comments.” The person who calls himself Madilyn but was named Matthew has been labelled a serial pedophile with an “all-encompassing preoccupation in sexually abusing young girls.”

Note well: the reason one of Canada’s most dangerous criminals, a man with violent pedophilic impulses and a history of profound mental disturbance, can get sent to a women’s prison is because our country is run by people like Trudeau, who believes gender ideology with every fibre of his being. 

Now, Laboucan – wearing his new female identity like a skin suit – has applied in Federal Court in Vancouver to attend a “healing centre for women” run by the Circles of Eagles Lodge Society, an Indigenous organization.  

Laboucan’s most recent attempt at parole – in June 2024– was denied, with the Parole Board of Canada stating that that the victim of Laboucan’s assault and the family “have suffered pain, anxiety and anguish and long-term emotional impacts resulting from your offending. Each time you come up for parole, they are haunted by your offending and the damage you inflicted on their defenceless son/grandson.” 

Of course, the government now expects you to believe that these crimes were committed by a woman – and the board did say that “escorted temporary absences” were “the next logical step in reintegration and gradual release,” despite the fact that he is “an undue risk to society.”

Laboucan’s Vancouver-based lawyer, Caroline North, declined to comment on the Federal Court application when asked by the Canadian Press. 

Jonathon Van Maren

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Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.