GUNTER: Trudeau Libs the clan without an environmental plan

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Alberta’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions (including government, corporations and individuals) have been more successful and far less economically crippling than Ottawa’s.

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GUNTER: Trudeau Libs the clan without an environmental plan Back to video

Huh!? Surely that can’t be right. The Trudeau Liberals have been environmental fundamentalists — cultists even. They have imposed (often unconstitutionally) a no-more-pipelines act, a tanker ban, the cancellation of three major pipelines, regulations for a net-zero power grid, the Just Transition to renewable energy, EV mandates and, of course, the carbon tax.

Yet, despite all of those intrusions into provincial jurisdiction, and its autocratic rule-by-decree on all things “green,” national carbon emissions increased in the most recent available year (2022), according to the National Inventory Report released by Environment Canada last week.

In 2022, our country as a whole released 708 megatonnes of CO2, up just a little more than one per cent from the 698 megatonnes released in 2021.

But here’s the irony of ironies, only two provinces saw reductions in their emissions in 2022, Alberta and Saskatchewan, who just happen to be the two provinces most opposed to Ottawa’s climate-alarmism agenda.

This means greenhouse gas emissions have increased every year under the Liberals, except during the pandemic. And while emissions still have not returned to pre-pandemic levels, they have gone up every year since, despite the tens of billions the Liberals have spent (or committed to spend) trying to bring emissions down.

Why has Alberta succeeded where Ottawa has failed? It would be tempting to say it’s because we don’t have Justin Trudeau and his Environment Minister Steven “No More Roads” Guilbeault running things here.

The likely truth, though, is that Alberta has taken a pro-growth approach and worked with industry to reduce carbon emissions, whereas the feds have been confrontational, dictatorial and suspicious of any entity that makes a profit.

Alberta’s approach relies on innovation rather than regulation. For instance, Alberta has invested more in carbon capture while Ottawa’s approach could be termed “carbon prevention.” The Trudeau Liberals want to prevent carbon from being emitted, period, which means shutting down the oil and gas sector.

(And word came down Tuesday that the Libs are coming for the trucking industry next.)

Alberta is also a little more pragmatic than its federal counterparts. For instance, Alberta focuses on carbon intensity rather than raw carbon emissions. If you look at the volume of carbon emitted per dollar of GDP produced, Canada’s emissions — even by the feds’ own calculations — “have declined by 36 per cent since 1990 and 20 per cent since 2005.”

Their intensity should decrease another 25 per cent over the next decade, even if the energy sector is permitted to grow. Technologies and efficiency improve every day.

All those billions wasted for a tiny fraction of a decrease (about five per cent) in emissions since the Liberals came to power is a waste, just so “progressives” can feel good about saving the planet and smug while tooling around in their EVs.

Consider the carbon tax. Its goal, of course, is to make driving so expensive that fewer people will want to have a car or pickup and will take transit instead.

However, the National Inventory says transportation, which includes private vehicles, highway transport trucks, planes, transit and everything else on wheels, contributes almost as much to Canada’s annual CO2 amounts as oil and gas exploration.

But the carbon tax is not working as theorized. The Inventory also admits emissions from transportation are increasing faster than from oil and gas. And, “the general growth trend in road transportation emissions … is largely due to an increase in driving: more cars and trucks using more fuel and therefore generating greater emissions.”

While the carbon tax is working to increase inflation, it is not deterring people from driving cars and trucks. Far from it.

The federal Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development said recently that Ottawa has no environmental plan. That’s obvious.