Sophomoric Socialists Pledge to Save the Planet from Carbon Catastrophe

Vincent J. Curtis

16 June 2019

At the NDP party conference this weekend, leader Andrea Horwath gave the impression she running for class president.  Playing the ever-popular socialism card, she promised to cut the school’s carbon dioxide emissions by fifty percent!  The applause was so prolonged that she forget to promise ice-cream for all.

Horwath has no idea where this fifty percent cut will come from.  She admits to having no idea how much it’s going to cost.  She has no inkling of the economic dislocation achieving that goal will create.  And she has no concept of the utter futility of the attempt.

It will certainly require a massive increase in government power to direct the economy, and, ironically, “tailored support” for those massive, capital-intensive industries that generate a lot of carbon dioxide.

The utter futility of it all, other than as an electioneering gambit, is that Ontario only contributes about one half of one percent of the world’s emissions of CO2, while China contributes thirty percent, and India seven percent.  Forty percent of the world’s population doesn’t believe in this peculiar western fixation with CO2, and they’re going to be adding scores of gigawatts of thermal coal generated electric power to their grids before 2030.

An Ontario reduction from one half to one quarter of one percent will be swamped by the next Chinese or Indian power plant.

Sackcloth-and-ashes environmentalism won’t save Ontario, and it won’t even save Andrea’s immortal soul.
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