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Justin Trudeau’s “green” fairy tale continues. And our nation’s economy and the West’s efforts to contain Vladimir Putin are both suffering from our prime minister’s banter with unreality.
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Last week German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was in Canada. What he was hoping for was a commitment from the federal government to start shipping LNG (liquefied natural gas) to his country so that Germany could stop buying natural gas from Russia by 2024.
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It would be difficult, but hardly feasible, for Canada to keep such a promise.
There are two LNG facilities on the East Coast – one in New Brunswick, another in Nova Scotia – that could be operational in two years, with sufficient regulatory support from governments.
The problem would be to provide them with enough natural gas. This would require a pipeline from western Canada. But it’s unpopular in Quebec, which means the Ottawa Liberals will never accept it.
They would rather let our European allies freeze in the dark (and let Putin intimidate any nation he wishes) than risk upsetting Quebec voters and radical environmental groups.
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Trudeau instead signed a deal with Scholz to supply hydrogen to Germany by 2025. But hydrogen is not what Germany needs.
And the hydrogen agreement which turns out to be non-binding, which is good, because the whole project is full of fanciful thoughts. The Liberals are proposing to ship hydrogen to Germany in three years from a plant in Newfoundland and Labrador that does not even have regulatory approval (let alone the start of construction), by using technology (from wind power to hydrogen) that has not even been proven on a large scale yet.
A similar project in Denmark hopes – hopes – to produce enough hydrogen per turbine “to power around 50 to 70 taxis every day”.
Trudeau’s hydrogen proposal is unlikely to hurt Germany’s efforts to wean itself off Russian gas.
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In other words, in 2021, the increase in China’s coal consumption alone was equivalent to 10 times the total amount of coal used by Canada.
I know that’s not a direct comparison to hydrogen and natural gas, but it underscores the futility of begging our future and our standard of living to meet Trudeau’s magical plans for a carbon-free economy. (Not to mention wasting hundreds of billions of tax dollars in “green” subsidies.)
China produces at least a third of the planet’s man-made emissions. According to some estimates, it is closer to 40%.
If China has always taken cutting emissions and moving away from coal seriously, it is no longer because it needs to keep its economy booming to avoid popular discontent with communist rule.
China’s coal consumption is at record highs, as are its emissions. And of all the new coal mines and coal-fired power plants opening around the world, half are in China.
Trudeau could decree that Canada’s nine remaining coal-fired plants would be shut down, the tar sands filled; every plane, train, tractor-trailer, car, SUV, bus, van, and pickup truck has its ignition boosted, every factory shut down, every pipeline clogged, and every home oven and air conditioner turned off and the atmosphere of the world would not notice it.
That’s why I say Trudeau’s “green” obsession has become a cult.
