How can concerned Canadians nudge fossilized thinkers like Guilbeault to wake up before they ruin the country’s finances, fail to cut emissions, and impoverish and destabilize the country’s energy supply, leaving us dark, cold, and unemployed during the frigid winter? ?
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Canadians are well-meaning and big-hearted, right? We want a better world.
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Specifically, and right on top of our existential concerns, we want to avoid the harsh extremes of climate change. We also want to see everyone in the world go from poverty to prosperity, while maintaining our own happy standard of living, correct?
Is almost everyone still with me?
If so, why are we so willing to support a misguided and under-informed faction of leaders in Ottawa who are pushing the wrong policies to cut emissions?
This and other questions have been on the minds of leading climate activists like Chris Keefer ever since Justin Trudeau appointed a climate dinosaur, anti-nuclear activist, Steven Guilbeault, as his new environment and climate change minister.
How can concerned Canadians nudge fossilized thinkers like Guilbeault to wake up before they ruin the country’s finances, fail to cut emissions, and impoverish and destabilize the country’s energy supply, leaving us dark, cold, and unemployed during the frigid winter? ?
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Keefer may have a large part of the answer: put the karma on Guilbeault. Give him a taste of his own activist medicine.
To that end, Keefer organized a small showdown with Guilbeault on Wednesday at COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland.
As the leader of old-school environmental groups like Greenpeace and Équiterre, Guilbeault made headlines by staging dramatic protests. But Keefer, a Toronto emergency room physician and president of Canadian for Nuclear Energy, sees Guilbeault as yesterday’s man with yesterday’s plan, largely out of step with the Panel’s nuclear-friendly plans. Intergovernmental on Climate Change of the United Nations (IPCC).
Guilbeault’s hometown of Quebec is blessed with abundant hydroelectric power. This highlights a tendency for Quebec’s green leaders to view hydropower as the singular answer to climate change. They have been trying to get Ontario to ditch nuclear power and import Quebec hydropower for years. But hydropower is not available in most places, and not everyone is interested in giant transmission lines dividing the land. American voters in the state of Maine just rejected a plan to new lines from Quebec.
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Guilbeault also supports large investments in wind and solar energy, but those energy systems are intensive on land and must be combined with an expensive primary power generation system, often coal or gas, to completely replace their production when it is dark or still outside. . Even more damning for solar energy, numerous sources such as New York Times, the BBC , the W Ashington Post and the Wall street journal They have detailed credible allegations that China uses forced labor and dirty coal to cut solar panel costs and take over world markets.
“What cheap solar power enables is really cheap coal,” Keefer said.
The main IPCC climate scenarios now envision abundant, low-emission nuclear power as a key ingredient in combating climate change, a position taken by liberals as recently as last summer. However, Trudeau appointed a longtime anti-nuclear activist at Guilbeault to the climate portfolio.
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At COP26, Keefer was eager to face Guilbeault on camera. He succeeded after the minister spoke in a session on Ontario’s successful coal phase-out. Keefer pointed out to Guilbeault that 90 percent of Ontario’s coal power had been replaced by that province’s staunch nuclear power plants, then pointed to the IPCC’s call for increased nuclear power.
Keefer said he asked if Guilbeault had reassessed his position on nuclear power.
“It is not governments that are going to decide which technologies,” Guilbeault said, according to Keefer. “It will be the markets.”
Markets!
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That’s rich coming from a wind energy activist who, in 2010 after the Harper government pulled out of wind energy subsidies, complained to the Montreal Gazette: “We are abandoning our commitment to developing the Wind power in Canada unlike our other G8 competitors or even countries like China and South Korea. It is not just an environmental catastrophe, it is a series of lost job creation opportunities. “
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Nuclear plants create tens of thousands of great jobs in Canada. The wind creates high-tech jobs in manufacturing centers like Germany. Solar manufacturing creates wealth, jobs and forced labor in China. Is this the market that Guilbeault seeks to embrace? Is it the Mudblood energy you crave?
The best most Canadians can hope for with solar power is for panel installation jobs made in China, Keefer said. “They are intermittent jobs that generate intermittent power.”
When Keefer pressured Guilbeault to address his own position on nuclear power, Keefer said the minister cut him off. “I think I have answered your question,” he said.
Here I agree with Guilbeault. We have our answer. The only question is whether we will accept such a backward minister, government, and policies in fighting climate change and building Canada’s prosperity.
Reference-edmontonjournal.com