Wind and solar power, we are always told, are really cheaper than fossil-fuel power, if you tot up the true costs of using each type. These arguments have always been dubious on their merits, if not outright disingenuous. Yes, the wind is free and the sunshine is...
Once again, the world is staging ClimateFest 26, aka the United Nations Conference of the Parties, where peddlers of alternative energy schemes try to plunge their dippers into the river of climate change funding that flows around the world. This funding is generated...
The end of the year features a variety of excesses: people eat too much yummy food, drink too many intoxicating beverages, engage in unseemly displays of lawn, home, and garden kitsch, and in general, try to relax and celebrate the end of a tough year and the promise...
Once again, the world’s climate warriors are engaging each other during this week’s COP26 Climate Change Summit, aka the United Nations Conference of the Parties, in Glasgow, Scotland. Peddlers of alternative energy schemes strive to try to plunge their dippers into...
A Snapshot of Property Rights Protection in Canada After 10 years
The writ has been dropped and Albertans are off to the polls on May 29. That leaves just four weeks for political leaders and voters to sort out what is arguably the most divisive, yet significant, issue for this election - health care. On Day 2, NDP leader Rachel...
Canadian governments, like many around the world, are once again in the grip of toxic plastiphobia: an irrational, and potentially harmful fear of plastics. Proposals to ban “single-use” plastics (under varying definitions) are all the rage across Canada, where the...
In a recent article about climate change, Seth Borenstein, a science writer with the Associated Press, gave us a master class on how to sell the results of a computer model as if it represents reality. In the Borenstein world, a group of scientists can take a...
One of the eternal questions of public policy is: should governments get into bed with private businesses? Whether it is called a Public-Private Partnership, buying a controlling interest for taxpayers, investing in the technologies of tomorrow or just, avoiding a...
I’ll start this commentary by observing that I am not a climate skeptic. As an environmental scientist/engineer by training, I think climate change is real, but it’s like every other environmental issue: a more-or-less routine engineering challenge, rather than a...
A lot has been written about the recently revealed Conservative Plan to Combat Climate Change. Most of that (including my own first take) focused on the carbon tax part of the plan, which is just another rhetorically packaged tax-and-rebate scheme that has become the...
By now, everyone has seen the memes of Dr. Evil ordering up a change of focus in his campaign to maintain global fear: “Fear of [last crisis] is no longer working; Release the murder hornets!” Well, to judge from recent news articles, the meme should read: “Fear of...
The latest guidance for vaccine distribution published by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) shows how horribly politicized Canada’s pandemic response has been. At the very point of administering the “jab of life,” the government can still not play...
For several decades, Canada was the focus of a global attack on its natural resource economy, with its oilsands deposits (the world’s third-largest oil reserve) ranked as “public enemy number one.” Though only a tiny contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions...
Recent pronouncements by the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest its view of COVID-19 seems to be evolving from a “pandemic” threat that is novel and spreading, to an “endemic” threat that has established itself as just another new contestant in the vast ecosystem...