Everytime I see Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest getting together I cringe with fear. Their latest mission is a renewed push for cap and trade because the feds just aren’t moving fast enough – especially now that “they have dug themselves out of the recession.” (Who knew? Does that mean that Alberta can quit sending equalization payments?)
Coincidentally Lorrie Goldstein has addressed the recent inclusion of climate change into the G8-G20 agenda, (Summit will deliver more hot air) with a note of warning regarding the possible economic ramifications:
Indeed in the real world, getting the global economy moving again, presumably the main concern of the G8/G20 leaders, will cause greenhouse gas emissions to rise.
Unless, of course, they were to establish a global cap-and-trade market by putting a world price on industrial carbon dioxide emissions, thereby allowing the same giant U.S. investment banks that just finished crashing the global economy by trading in highly speculative and ultimately worthless subprime mortgage bonds, to do the same thing all over again with carbon credits.
My own suspicion is that the Green Scheme Twins see this as a golden opportunity to not only appease a very powerful environmental lobby, but also push for a new speculative industry that might cause some serious economic backlash if handled improperly (not to mention the potential for fraud.)
Lorrie Goldstein has addressed this issue many times before, for example in his March 27 column – Inconvenient Questions:
Does the fact the earliest corporate boosters of Kyoto and carbon trading were the fraudsters at Enron never cause you to wake up in a cold sweat?
How about the fact your “allies” on cap-and-trade are the giant U.S. money houses that just finished wrecking the global economy, now looking to make another quick killing by brokering trading in highly speculative carbon credits, the European market for which, aside from doing nothing to cool the planet, is awash in multi-billion-dollar frauds?
Largely ineffective
What about the 2002 report by Statistics Norway that Norway’s 1991 carbon tax has been largely ineffective in reducing emissions?
Or last week’s story in the Times of London that the U.K.’s energy regulator has found many of Britain’s wind farms are a bust when it comes to delivering electricity?
That, in the words of Michael Jefferson, professor of international business and sustainability and a former lead author of the IPCC: “Too many developments are underperforming. It’s because developers grossly exaggerate the potential. The subsidies make it viable for developers to put turbines on sites they would not touch if the money was not available.”
Gee. Hard to see that one coming, eh? Who knew that when governments insanely guarantee to pay grossly inflated prices for “green” electricity for 20-25 years, thus handing developers windfall profits from the hides of electricity consumers, many don’t deliver the goods?
Not you, obviously. Or Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.
One thing for sure. Whenever you see Premiers McGuinty and Charest put their heads together, you’d better hang on tight to your wallet – until they pry it away by force.
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Related
Scan of Arctic ice dispels melting gloom, scientist says – Citizen (H/T NNW)

