For shame!

Vincent J. Curtis

11 Oct 23

RE: It’s time for oil & gas to get real about Net Zero. Op-ed by Catherine McKenna The Hamilton Spectator 11 Oct 23.

The latest tactic among the most extreme of the climate crazies is to shame Big Oil, and to demand that they stop doing their shameful things.  Catherine McKenna, Canada’s own climate Barbie and former federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, is one of those extreme climate crazies.  (She is CEO of Climate Solutions and Chair of the UN Secretary General’s expert group on Net Zero emissions.)  In her column she demands that Suncor “get real” on net zero.

Oil companies have a fiducial responsibility to their shareholders, which include many pension plans, to make a profit and to pay a dividend.  They have something approaching a moral responsibility to supply product to an oil-thirsty world.  The modern world cannot function without oil: wind mills need lubricating oil, electrical transformers need dielectric oil, hydraulic systems need hydraulic oil, and even the wheel bearings on a Tesla need lubricating grease.  You can’t just stop oil unless your plan is to demolish the modern world.

I don’t give McKenna credit for thinking that far ahead.  She can’t see that Net Zero means nothing if China, India, and Russia utterly ignore it, as they are ignoring this white, liberal fetish and guilt trip.  Canada is responsible for 1.6 percent of world CO2 emissions, and if Canada disappear tomorrow it would have no effect on world climates in the year 2100.

Net Zero is the prescription the beautiful people have to remedy their guilt feelings, which they believe other people should be having.  Net Zero won’t hurt the wealthy, but it will eviscerate the middle class.

-30-