GREEN: Celebrate Earth Day by burning latest UN climate report
This Saturday is Earth Day, and it’s no coincidence that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a summary of its summaries of a massive, unreadable multi-volume report detailing how the climate is changing and what needs to be done. Again, unsurprisingly, the new plans are stricter than the already unachievable previous plans.
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Presenting the report, which is still not in its final form, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on developed countries to advance their already impossible “net-zero” greenhouse gas emissions from 2050 to 2040. He also wants to phase out coal completely in developed countries by 2030, and wants developed countries to go carbon-free, ie no gas-fired power plants, by 2035. Yes, in just 12 years.
If we don’t heed this advice, we are told we will miss the politically set target of limiting the rise in global mean temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. And we’re told UN scientists think we’ll see all sorts of negative trends — droughts, floods, storms, hot weather, cold weather, ocean acidification, glacial retreat (basically all the worst parts of the Bible). Some of this may be true, much is probably false, since almost everything is based on speculative computer models steeped in assumptions about how things might work in nature, rather than rigorously measured values that establish how they actually do in nature function. Canadians who believe computerization can correct divination will be concerned; those who believe the future is unpredictable will be less so.
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But anyhow, the Secretary General’s net-zero acceleration is a terrible idea that Canada’s governments should ignore, mainly because the side effects of this prescription will be far worse than the disease. In 2021, RBC estimated it would cost a cool $2 trillion to reach net zero by 2050. Broken down by year, the estimated costs competed with our healthcare system spending. And RBC’s estimate assumed continued use of natural gas, which the UN is taking off the table. And although, through RBC’s rose-colored glasses, a “nation of electric vehicles, solar-powered homes and hydrogen-powered airplanes” will help tremendously, RBC noted that even the best-case scenarios for these technologies could put Canada just three-quarters of the way to net zero — the old net zero of 2050, not the potential new net zero of 2040.
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Finally, as always, the climate benefits of all this will be negligible. Nothing Canada can do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (already a small and diminishing fraction of global emissions) would be enough to have a measurable impact on climate. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Trudeau’s friends are allowed to emit with abandon in China, the world’s largest emitter. Hopefully, Canadian policymakers will toss the new UN report into the bulky bin along with other silly UN reports, and given the Trudeau administration’s current woes, there’s room for hope.
Anyway, spring is coming. So on this Earth Day, check out the gas grill, get the boards for the salmon, slap on fossil fuel-based sunscreen (before those too are banned), and enjoy some of the most beautiful settings on earth that Canada has in abundance .
Kenneth Green is a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute.