Many of us are blogging to draw attention to knowledge and information dismissed or suppressed by legacy and social media as “misinformation”, simply because the thoughts and ideas are rational and reasonable rather than alarmist. Tom Harris reminded me in his recent comment that we have many many colleagues speaking out in the public square sharing our concerns. So let this post introduce a valuable resource in this fight for reasonable climate understandings and policies, namely CANADIANS FOR SENSIBLE CLIMATE POLICY Join the Movement for Responsible and Sensible Climate Policy.
The home page summarizes why this mission is important and what is at stake and the path forward.
Climate Activism is BIG business
The Green Budget Coalition in 2024 is made up of 21 of the leading Canadian environmental activist organizations publicly lobbying for $287 billion in government spending on their causes.
That is 62% of the total federal tax revenue.
According to public data, in Canada alone these organizations control billions in funds, raise and spend millions on PR campaigns and employ hundreds of staff to achieve these objectives. Globally, the climate activism industry controls trillions of dollars and has armies of advocates. This politicisation of public policy impacts every Canadian.
Even when done with the best intentions, power without oversight isn’t peace, order or good government. To advocate for the best policy, we encourage a range of views, even the controversial ones. We dare to question, to be wrong and to explore all sides of complex issues.
What matters is adopting sober, reasonable and sensible policy in the interests of all Canadians.
Our Concerns
Strange Math
Carbon dioxide gets a lot of attention compared to the many other environmental concerns. Every bad weather event gets assigned to it. The main player in the greenhouse effect remains water and clouds. A changing climate may be unpredictable but that does not mean abnormal.
With prosperity comes costs which must be balanced against the benefits. Strange does not mean unexplainable. Proclamations of doom and crisis are always suspicious.
Odd incentives
Big Oil, corporate interests, corrupt politicians, conspiracy theorists, corporate PR firms and paid skeptics. These are all boogeymen for why, despite general popularity and political backing, there remains a dire crisis with minimal progress.
What if the crisis is exactly because the incentives are designed to perpetuate a cycle? What if the problem isn’t bad intentions or ethics but a social mission over funded to irreverence which needs to be called out as ineffective?
Motivated Reasoning
Motivated reasoning is choosing only the good parts of a story while ignoring the rest because it is what we want to believe. It is quite common in everyday life. When it comes to climate change, calm, pragmatic discussions are rare with many complex and passionate explanations and perspectives.
Those complex explanations may well be accurate, but any analysis of climate change must acknowledge the issue has emotional and personal implications for many Canadians.
Outsourced Problems
When speaking unpopular opinions, one’s intelligence, integrity and ethics will almost always come under fire. When speaking popular opinions rarely is there such scrutiny. It’s human to deeply care for our environment. Why don’t we see the mass implementation of responsible governance, moderation & sustainability? Why so much green washing? Why are 9/10 solutions just shifting our problems into other people’s lands.
Transporting environmental destruction from Canada to Qatar, China or Nigeria is not ethical or effective. If being sustainable was easy or obvious someone would have done it long ago.
Little Accountability
Spending must be within context. Canada is estimated to produce about 2% of the worlds total CO2 emissions with our higher emissions per capita being within expectations for an oil producing nation. Alberta accounts for much of this higher status. The Federal government revenue was $447 billion. A provincial government like Ontario was $179 billion.
A hundred billion or trillion dollar public effort to reduce a rounding error in emissions isn’t just another project, it’s a significant financial commitment with long lasting implications.
Boomers
Your generation has enjoyed a splendid life because of the sacrifices made by your parents during and after WW2. Post war, jobs were easy to find, economies expanded throughout the developed world and Boomers “Never-had-it-so-good.” In retirement your lifestyle was far better than any previous generation enjoyed.
Now, you have a choice, you can either watch economic hardship unfold while passing on huge debts to the next generations or speak up and blow the whistle on the biggest waste of capital the world has ever seen.
Non-Boomers
You are inheritors of a huge debt by the leadership of today. Do you want to spend your life in bad economic times? Do you want your children to live through the same hardships as you stand to inherit? How much time have you invested in thinking about what the Net Zero at 2050 policies cost? Can humans in fact control climate? Is the financial sector pushing that agenda biased? Are the alternative energy jobs long-term or busy-work?
Decide for yourself. Make your thoughts known.
Course Correction
Cost-Benefit Accounting
Alberta and Saskatchewan’s embrace of lower-regulation, pro-petroleum and chemical development is a source of concern to many Canadians. Yet, this comes with benefits to those same groups including massive subsidies to public spending, foreign investment, increased buying power and lowered cost of living in all provinces.
A sensible climate policy transcends politicisation, it works for those who are pro-petroleum or anti-petroleum, left or right wing, those who see increased carbon as beneficial or those seeking net-zero. Sober energy policy improves lives by balancing concerns and offering pragmatic decisions which achieve universal objectives.
Open Discussion
The journalists spread the word and the activists too, the science becomes “settled” and 97% of climate scientists agree. Your life could get a little easier, just don’t listen to skeptics, realists, opponents, the scientists not surveyed, friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, or uncles. An agency will sort the details and inform you of the correct and proper truth.
Never, a sensible climate policy comes from open inquiry, where facts and data are the observations in agreement and the debate is about the meaning and impacts of that data. Experts will breakdown confusion, answer questions and offer clarity.
Prioritize the Everyday Canadian
Climate change policies and activism have a track record of growing budgets, increased powers, and increased access to new technologies and insights. Show us the benefits. Show us the increases in quality of life. Show the practical applications and decreased risks and dangers.
A sensible climate policy is measurable, and though perhaps driven by fear and concern, increased attention and effort means more tangible results.
Maximize Well-being
In cost-benefit analysis, choices are made between conflicting values. Energy and climate policy can be framed as altruists against economics. It can be framed as common good against special interests. It can be framed as differing scientific views.
A sensible climate policy will be driven by maximizing well-being and benefit to society.
Ensure Accountability
Climate policy is often ignored except by special interests. The tale of energy companies against the activists is contradicted by the funding patterns which see energy companies actively funding, hiring and promoting climate change activists. In the energy business “green energy” is just another opportunity.
A sensible climate policy must have checks and balances. Lobbying can benefit everyone in a marketplace of ideas but as a monopoly, everyday Canadians will never be served.
Science Matters 
When reason fails, the problem was never a provable, rational, fact based problem. It is simply politics and propaganda that must be challenged.
Propaganda accepts no other explanation than its own. They don’t do science, or reasoned conclusions based on observations. The make it up and attack people who point out their deceits.
When they are the state, and control academic funding, pay half the salaries and control what is taught in Universities and schools, and what is allowed to be published in the MSM, how do you fight it?
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