by Maj (ret'd) CORNELIU E. CHISU, CD, PMSC,
FEC, CET, P. Eng.
Former Member of Parliament
Pickering-Scarborough East
The climate is changing anyway, as part of the nature of things, yet there are people so bent on controlling climate change that they imagine themselves close to God if not superior. They try their best to control the Universe and be the immortals of the future.
Just last week a physician in British Columbia actually diagnosed a patient with climate change disease. That was definitely a first, and one for the Guinness Book of world records. Does this mean we are desperately looking to cure a pandemic just about to happen? Fed by such alarming issues, world attention was focused on COP26, the global conference on climate change attended by close to 30,000 people. Politicians, bankers, movie stars, billionaires, experts, activist and such debated ways and means of stopping the climate from changing. Schwab, Soros, Bezos, Bloomberg, Gates, DiCaprio, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, the host, Boris Johnson, and many other heads of state seemed so alarmed by what is going on with the climate, that they just had to attend the conference in their private jets.
Blah, blah, blah were the new wise words of advice from the world expert on climate change, Greta Thunberg, which made the day.
In addition to these fruitful meetings ,the Bankers of the World met to put money on the table to stop the climate from changing. Notably our own Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and subsequently of the Bank of England, and now UN Special Envoy for Climate Change, has had a huge impact on getting financial services firms to align their lending and investment activities with the net-zero goals of the Paris agreement.
On November 3, brandishing a Midas touch, Carney revealed that the total assets of combined companies committed to achieving net-zero emissions had risen to $130 trillion from $5 trillion at the beginning of the year.
A consortium of over 450 financial firms across 45 nations chaired by Carney and known as the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net-Zero (GFANZ), have committed to align not only their own businesses, but more importantly their lending and investing practises, with net-zero goals, in order to fund the $150 trillion estimated price tag required to blunt the worst impacts of climate change.
The importance of the GFANZ commitment is that it leverages the power of large financial institutions to align with the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal of Paris. Guess where the money is coming from. Ironically, and without burning more words or emitting additional green house gases, they said that this is not meant to withdraw funding from carbon-intensive industries altogether. Instead, GFANZ members should engage climate experts, the NGO community, and governments, to develop "sectoral pathways" or road maps to net-zero for key sectors. They are to better advise and support their client companies in their own transition plans. Governments must also do their part by providing policy clarity and coordination for an orderly transition to net-zero. They claim their policies and words are clean and free of green house gases, but isn't it just more hot air?
Climate-related disclosure is on a fast-track to becoming mandatory. Following Carney's speech on GFANZ, Erkki Liikanen, Chair of the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation (IFRS), the international accounting body whose standards are used in 140 jurisdictions around the world (though not the U.S. and China), announced the establishment of a new International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB). Its role will be to develop a globally consistent and auditable sustainability reporting framework for the financial markets, in the same way that it has done for financial accounting standards. Here comes Big Brother, and he's watching…
Ashley Alder, Chairman of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO), the standard-setter for the securities sector, took the stage after Liikanen and said IOSCO would work closely with the ISSB, adding that IOSCO's endorsement would help speed the adoption of mandatory climate-related disclosure. This was a real touch of genius to a Comintern based thought. Lenin would be proud.
One of the stars of COP26 was our own Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who made it clear that the rest of the world should be following Canada's example in putting a price on carbon. "We know it, leaders know it, scientists know it and the private sector knows it: putting a price on pollution is the most efficient and powerful way to keep 1.5 alive," he stated, referring to the goal set in the 2015 Paris agreement to keep temperature increases limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But we don't need to look to the future to understand the devastation of climate change. The dinosaurs perished and climate change isn't some abstract event of the far-off future. Beware when a new asteroid hits the Earth along with the Paris accord.
In a falsely conciliatory way climate change is almost always presented as pitting the environment against the economy. That is why the Trudeau Liberals often tout their talking point about the economy and the environment as going hand in hand.
Never mind that our Canadian economy is largely based on exploiting our mineral resources like oil and gas. The wise men in power will print more money to deal with climate change. As long as the population pays their increasing taxes, climate change will be dealt with gracefully.
However, in their wisdom, the attendants of COP26 didn't say a word about the role of nuclear and hydro power, neither of which emits greenhouse gases. Natural gas - ironically used in Ontario to back up unreliable wind and solar power - is the cleanest burning fossil fuel. But all three are under relentless attack by environmental protesters and know-nothing politicians.
Even the UN (surprise, surprise) says nuclear power is a key component to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. But in Canada, the NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green party, Greenpeace and other environmental groups, oppose nuclear energy. In Ontario, politicians sitting on 31 municipal councils have irresponsibly called for eliminating the use of natural gas in the province's energy mix by 2030. The province's Independent Electricity System Operator, which manages the provincial power system in real-time, says this would "lead to blackouts and … increase residential electricity bills by 60%." Welcome to the dark ages…
In the real world, no form of energy production is without environmental consequences. However, if we cut emissions by abandoning low-emitting practical solutions like nuclear, hydro power and natural gas, while relying on intermittent wind and solar power instead, global blackouts will inevitably follow. So are we planning to freeze in the dark? To live like the Flintstones did? That's the not too distant future being set up.
Remember. The calamity of 'climate change' is just starting to be hyped, sucking up your tax dollars. Forget about Covid 19 and prepare for the next major crisis, the pandemic of all pandemics, otherwise known as 'climate change'. Hope you've been saving for that rainy day because the storm clouds are gathering…
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