| | | Rex Murphy: Renewing vows in the church of climate change
Pledges by the Liberal government to reduce carbon emissions are, like the gas they pretend to control, pure vapour
Apr 23, 2021
Members of the White Rebels and Extinction Rebellion block 17th Street in Washington, D.C., after dumping cow manure outside the White House on Earth Day to protest U.S. President Joe Biden's climate plan, April 22, 2021.
Thursday, April 22, was the Christmas of the church of global warming. It was the high, holy holiday of goddess Mother Earth. The event is celebrated annually by Gaia’s many worshippers, and no greater day of worry and alarm for its clerics and curates, its high priests and apostles, is there than this one.
On Earth Day the governments of the world renew their vows to the “fight against global warming” and toss out new professions of their dedication to it.
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The new U.S. president, Joseph Biden, gave the day its greatest homage so far. He held a global summit, and in dire contrast to his predecessor and climate-change apostate, Donald Trump, (his name anathema to all), declared his presidency is back in the front pew of the green congregation.
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Biden proclaimed that the U.S. will trim carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent over the next nine years. As they say in the Psalms, and as was sung ever so sweetly by Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah. What a fine prospect this opens.
The icebergs will stop melting, the oceans will cease their rise, glaciers will swell in volume and range, hurricanes will surrender their rage and power. All Earth will be Eden before the snake.
Pay no heed to the vulgar fundamentalists of Extinction Rebellion who scattered cow dung by the wheelbarrow load in front of the White House. Pay no heed to their howls of “bulls–t” at its principal resident. Rare it is to see ignorance and vulgarity so serenely wedded. Mr. Biden is a saint and such mockery is a vile slander towards the man who has re-endorsed the Paris Agreement.
To cast doubt on Joe Biden’s ability to change the Earth’s atmosphere should be a capital offence. Surely he deserves better than Extinction Rebellion’s rude and vulgar discharges.
Perhaps unexpectedly, Boris Johnson, the U.K. prime minister, marched right up to the altar railings to proclaim his new-found fealty. Johnson gave a larger vow than any other leader. He promised that Britain will cut those fatal emissions to “78 per cent under 1990 levels by 2035.”
How he came to such an exquisitely calibrated pledge — 78 per cent, not 76 or 79 per cent — will only trouble minds not familiar with the time-tested operations of Ouija boards, crystal balls, or policy-formulation via nightly séances.
Prime Minister Johnson put the italics on his commitment by observing this was not, as he so felicitously phrased it, “some green act of bunny hugging.” Although, he confusingly added, “There’s nothing wrong with bunny hugging.”
Well, Boris, make up your mind on this. Either enfolding rabbits within your consoling embrace is a good thing or it is not. Do not equivocate. Rabbits the world over are nervous.
A demonstrator stands behind cardboard cutouts of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden during a climate change protest near the White House on April 21, 2021, a day ahead of Earth Day and Biden’s virtual global climate summit, in Washington, D.C.
And as all Canadians know, the high holy day of global warming could not pass without our own Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swinging the thurible and piling on the incense.
Unabashed by the consideration that so many of the Liberals’ promises have been broken, not met, and bypassed without contrition or apology, he naturally made another one. Obviously, in contrast to all the others, this one he means.
But first the bad news. Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, and now chair of The Elders, an international human rights group of very wise older people — no slur here, I am old. Wise? Open to question — tossed cold water on Canada’s performance. Said the esteemed elder: “Canada is the only G7 country where emissions have increased since the signing of the Paris Agreement.”
She has a point. According to The Canadian Press, a recent report showed that in 2019 Canada’s annual emissions increased slightly to 730 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and its equivalents, closer to where it was in 2005 than where it promises to be by 2030. How melancholy.
Nonetheless, this did not stay Mr. Trudeau from setting out a new and ambitious goal of cutting emissions by 40 to 45 per cent by 2030. But why this pledge has any more currency than all the previous ones, he left unspoken.
Mary Robinson has a point
Pledges by the Liberal government to reduce carbon emissions are, like the gas they pretend to control, pure vapour. They float upwards and dissipate, and from Jean Chrétien to Justin Trudeau, not a single one has survived the hollow pronouncement of their birth.
Which surely makes the latest vow a wonderful thing. For his newest promise to get the country to 40 or 45 per cent diminishment, all Trudeau has to do is to shut down the oil and gas industry, and most efficaciously, declare Alberta and Newfoundland pariahs of Confederation, and no longer welcome. Out you go.
In other words, shrink Canada to its proper, virtuous, oil-detesting, core. A small price, all will agree, to pay for saving the world and all its green nature from existential collapse.
Finally, to truly honour Earth Day, I propose that the governments of the world pass on to Greta Thunberg all policy development and authority over climate change. We need a young and true believer to design the future economies of the globe. Hail Greta. Daughter of Gaia. |
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