Can Ontario stop Global Warming?

Vincent J. Curtis

1 July 2018

RE:  Ford’s Doctrine of Short Term Gain (Hamilton Spectator 30 June 18)

Dr. Winfield’s article perpetuates the myth that Canada, and even Ontario, has the means of stopping the critical amount of world carbon dioxide production - the production that will send the earth into overheating hyperdrive.  They would have us believe that Ontario needs to cripple its economy in order to save the world.

The facts say otherwise.  Canada’s proportion of world carbon dioxide emission is 1.54 percent.  Canada ranks below International Shipping (at 1.78 %) and above International Aviation (1.39 %) on the list of emitters.  If world trade and international travel increase, Canada’s proportion of world emissions would drop, while a world-wide recession would see Canada's proportion increase.  Canada’s contribution to world carbon dioxide emissions is so small, that factors far outside her control have greater impact than anything Canada is capable of doing.

Of Canada’s contribution, Ontario’s is about a third of the total – about 0.5 percent of the world’s total emissions.  Now, a third of nothing isn’t very much and half of that is even less.  If the world is going to hell because of carbon dioxide, the sacrifice of Ontario’s economy now isn’t going to stop it.

Strangely, those measures that are demanded of Ontario to save the world track closely with the progressive view of the good and wholesome: “renewables”, public transit, higher gasoline taxes, cap-and-trade, “efficiency”, and in general more government control and taxation.  Nuclear power is bad, despite being completely reliable and not emitting carbon dioxide.

In February, 1996, the Spectator published an article of mine that held that only nuclear and hydro-electric generation could meet North America’s growing need for cheap electricity.  Solar and wind were too expensive and too unreliable to meet Ontario's needs.  The Ontario Liberals’ madcap fifteen years proved that forecast true.

I said then [i.e. 6 Jan 96] and it is still true, that the progressive view is that the economic and cultural success of the western world is an evil and needs to be humbled.  The shaming of western societies and the crippling of western economies has been progressive’s constant policy, and Dr. Winfield’s article is just one more little raindrop in that thunderstorm.

The people who have been affected by two decades of shaming and economic humbling are starting to react, and are voting in governments that are going to pay attention to their needs, not to the chest-thumping of the comfortable moralizers.

-30-