Oh, for some climate common sense…

Most people have common sense. If they didn’t, none of us would be alive today.

Most people, in other words, know to avoid things that are life-threatening.

We teach kids to look before crossing a road. We teach them not to talk to strangers. We’re constantly yelling at them not to put things in their mouths.

Kids that learn their lesson live to pass on their common sense to their children.

Those that don’t…. Well, they get a Darwin Award.

Of course, there’s always lucky kids who lack common sense and still manage to survive. They grow up to be politicians.

Make no mistake about it, common sense is sorely lacking in politicians, particularly in those who have championed the cause of fighting climate change and have chosen to throw all caution to the wind.

In Europe, politicians have spent one trillion Euros on decarbonizing their economies and achieved nothing other than to increase electricity prices, hobble their economies and create energy poverty. CO2 emissions have actually increased since 1997.

You would think that here in Canada, our politicians would have learned something from the European experiment.

Ontario Premier Wynne

Nope. In Ontario, two successive Liberal governments have embarked on greening their economies to the point where rural residents are looking at $3,000 per month utility bills and some small businesses are looking at hydro bills of $30,000 to $40,000 per month.

And with the newly implemented cap and trade program, electricity prices are expected to jump even more.

One law firm who has done some work in the area reports that hydro bills for small and medium sized businesses will jump $130,000 per year and will hit $720,000 by 2030.

Now, most business owners have common sense. They look at the rising cost of electricity and apply their problem solving skills. What they rapidly conclude is that it makes a lot more sense to close down operations in Ontario and open up shop across the border in Illinois where electricity rates are half as expensive.

For a province that owes close to $300 billion and needs tax revenue in a bad way, the loss of businesses and jobs is going to hurt.

That undoubtedly explains why Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne’s popularity is now 14 per cent. Voters have some common sense.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley announcing her government’s climate change plans.

Here in Alberta, we managed to avoid the running off the cliff with the rest of the green lemmings, but then the voters in a fit of pique elected the NDP government of Rachel Notley.

Alberta introduced its carbon tax at the beginning of the year as part of its climate change initiative.

The government touts its carbon tax will help reduce CO2 emissions and not cause serious economic harm.

In fact, Notley argues the NDP plan will actually help diversify the economy and create jobs.

Faith is a wonderful thing, but common sense is always better. What the Notley government does not understand is that the tax will have a cascading effect.

The carbon tax will increase the cost of doing business and, as such, reduce the return on capital invested and businesses will react accordingly.

“Accordingly” means they will try to reduce costs. The quickest way will be to reduce labor costs by either downsizing staff or reducing wages.

This, of course, will have a ripple effect. As real wages decline, so does consumption.

You get the idea. The net effect is a decline in economic growth. Businesses leave, people leave.

To what end?

That’s where the absurdity of carbon taxes and all the other so-called green initiatives becomes glaringly obvious.

The fact of the matter is that even if every single business and person were to disappear from Alberta – from all of Canada – it would not make one bit of difference to global CO2 emissions.

Common sense tells us that if a cure for a disease is worse than the disease itself, you don’t apply the cure.


Leave a Reply


WordPress.com Logo


Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s