Rebel News Podcast EZRA LEVANT: Alberta company prosecuted for lying about carbon offsets — but aren't they all liars?
Steven Guilbeault, the convicted criminal that Trudeau appointed to cabinet, announced — to a foreign audience, of course — that he wants to phase out fossil fuels by 2050 — or earlier.
That might sound very far away, but it’s not. We’re almost in 2024 — so imagine phasing out every natural gas stove and furnace, every barbecue, every car and truck, every ship and plane, every tractor and most power plants in the next 25 years.
Just here in Canada, though. The rest of the world is going full tilt with fossil fuels. Here’s a CNN story:
"China is surging ahead with coal, a new report shows, rapidly approving and building new power plants despite its own promises to cut back on carbon as the world plunges ever deeper into the climate crisis. Last year, the country approved the highest number of new coal-fired power plants since 2015, according to the report, released Monday by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) and the Global Energy Monitor (GEM).”
NPR put it here: "China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds... Everybody else is moving away from coal and China seems to be stepping on the gas...We saw that China has six times as much plants starting construction as the rest of the world combined."
That’s not quite true that “everybody” is moving off coal. India isn’t. Here's a headline from Bloomberg: "India Power Giant to Add More Coal Plants to Meet Soaring Demand."
But here’s another story that’s related. In the news today from the CBC:
Alberta filed 1st ever criminal charges against a carbon offset firm. Here's why they may not be the last 25 charges filed against company involved in auditing carbon offsets highlight regulatory challenges... For the first time ever, a Canadian province has filed criminal charges against a business for providing false information related to carbon offsets, a spokesperson for Alberta's Environment Ministry said, underscoring the sometimes murky activities of companies in a complicated, rapidly growing industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Carbon offsets are bought and sold under a trading system with governments putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions to compel companies to fight climate change. Since 2007, Alberta has run a mandatory carbon offset system for large emitters, such as oil and gas companies, landfills and food processing firms. If they produce more than their allotted levels of carbon dioxide, they must purchase credits to offset those emissions. The credits are generated by companies that reduce emissions by doing things like building wind farms or installing solar panels. To ensure accuracy, the credits are verified by third-party auditors. The Alberta litigation centres on the role of one of these third-party verifiers.
But that’s the thing. How do you know? How do you “audit” a carbon offset? How do you audit carbon at all? It’s a natural element. It’s in the air; it’s what a great many things are made of. Hydrocarbons. Carbohydrates. Do you see the word in there? Carbon is one of the most common elements. It’s in most of our food. It’s in most parts of us as people. It’s in the breath we exhale; it’s what plants inhale.
How do you even track it? You can’t; you guess; you estimate, which is why it’s such a beautiful scam.
The whole industry is a fraud. It’s a pixie dust thing. At least with crypto-currencies, you know if you have it or not — that’s the one thing the blockchain is suitable for. You know if you have it. How do you know where a puff of carbon dioxide went? You don’t; you can’t, it’s a joke, it’s for suckers.
This is why Justin Trudeau and Steven Guilbeault are shovelling 450 million dollars of it into the third world. I wonder what their kick-back is.
But really: why is the province of Alberta going through the motions of pretending that the industry is a real thing, that carbon offsets are real, and that this one scammer is an outlier? They’re all scammers. And it’s no less of a scam when Alberta does it to itself than when Steven Guilbeault does it.
GUEST: Chris Fleury, lawyer for former MPP Randy Hillier and MP Derek Sloan, working with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, have had charges dropped for the two for attending a rally against COVID lockdown measures in 2021.