Rex Murphy: Santa Justin puts a lump of coal in every Canadian's Christmas stocking

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is flanked by Minister of Canadian Heritage Steven Guilbeault, left, and Minister of the Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson at a news conference in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2020. PHOTO BY BLAIR GABLE/REUTERS

To try to sell the hiked carbon tax as an answer to the economic devastation of the past year is a breathless audacity

Deliberately appropriating the emotions and character of the pandemic and rhetorically slapping them on «the fight against climate change.» It is political cynicism with a smiley face. All that was missing from Justin Trudeau’s announcement of a $170-per-tonne carbon tax by 2030 was, «By the ghost of John A.»

It is political cynicism with a smiley face

To try now to fuse it with a «recovery from COVID,» to link the Liberals’ predetermined goal to a completely extrinsic and unique event, to try to sell it as an answer to the economic devastation of the past year, is a breathless audacity. Just as we follow the science on COVID, so too we must follow the science on global warming, was Trudeau’s message. There is no equivalency, not even in metaphorical terms, between the real science of the first, which has in fact produced a vaccine for a hitherto unknown, present-day illness, and the «science» of the second, which much like astrology or futurism speaks to conditions 80 years out. Global warming science is a hodgepodge of wild models, failed predictions, overzealous researchers, and a great clutter of thousands of advocacy organizations that have been bellowing «the science is settled» when it so plainly isn’t and can’t be, for over two decades now.

The analogy is forced, meretricious and hollow

A so-called carbon tax in Canada is not and can never be the answer to global warming. were the only province in Canada with such a tax, claiming that this would cleanse the rest of the entire country.

The U.S. has no federal carbon tax and yet has lowered carbon-dioxide emissions more successfully than Canada. The unflattering but objective truth is, whatever Canada does or does not do is at the very best marginal if not perfectly irrelevant to the scale of the presumed warming crisis. If the government weren’t involved, you’d call that an investment.

Source: Rex Murphy | National Post