Climate nonsense and sanctimony from Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner

The new Environmental Commissioner of Ontario, Dianne Saxe, celebrates and looks forward to punishing you (she Orwellian-newspeaks it as “give a financial incentive to people”!) with the Ontario Liberals’ planned cap-and-trade carbon tax scheme for the greenhouse gas “pollution” that you “create”:

Hallelujah! It’s really about time. Again, the entire world recognizes that we need to put a price on carbon if we want to give a financial incentive to people to reduce the pollution that they create, the greenhouse gas pollution that they create. We have to put a price on it. If it’s free, if doing the wrong thing is free, and the right thing [is] expensive, the people are more likely to do the wrong thing.

Earlier in her interview with Steve Paikin on TVO’s The Agenda, Saxe was asked what had been the highlight of COP21, the UN’s mega climate conference that she attended in Paris last December. She said:

The highlight was reaching the agreement. That was an extraordinary achievement…it was an incredible achievement…in terms of a real tipping point for both national governments, and sub-nationals and non-state actors around the world. It was astonishing!

Of course, we all know it was a total non-agreement, but one that nonetheless will be used by the powers that be to rationalize imposing further coercive, extortionist measures to “save the planet.”

When Paikin asked Saxe what were some of the “neat ideas” that came out of the conference, she replied:

Portfolio decarbonization initiative, which is the recognition by big money managers around the world that ignoring the risk of carbon is now impermissible because there are physical risks, there are liability risks, there are stranded asset risks, and there are reputational risks which are now a necessary part of fiduciary duty of any money manager in the world.

Insanity! It’s a UN-led initiative, of course. Bear in mind, that “carbon” is carbon dioxide, i.e. plant food. So, money managers are supposed to advise clients to divest themselves of any stocks associated with the production of a harmless trace gas, without which there would be no life on earth.

Of course, no TVO discussion about the climate would be complete without the usual scaremongering idiocy about how we are all climate-doomed. Saxe obliged:

The most frightening thing in Paris was learning about the science. I thought that I was pretty up-to-date with how bad things are and how fast things are moving when in fact things are much worse than I thought.

And one of the biggest factors is that in this entire process of planning ahead of how bad it’s going to be, we have left out one of the biggest sources of carbon in the world, which is the melting of the permafrost. So the challenge is even bigger than we knew, the urgency is greater.

But climate changes naturally all the time. And there has been no global warming for almost 19 years now. So if the permafrost is melting, it ain’t your fault. There are other reasons for it, such as natural climate phenomena and fluctuations.

And please, don’t neglect to mention recent weather events as being proof of manmade climate change! Saxe had a good one:

It probably helps that right in the middle of the conference there were $5 billion worth of floods around the world, $4 billion alone in India, the huge flood in northern England…it seized people’s attention.

“Helps”? That’s a rather cruel, callous, opportunistic view of what the poor Brits endured, losing their possessions and homes on their water-logged Boxing Day. Actually, the floods in northern England were caused not by manmade climate change but by government negligence, mandated by the EU directives (based on misbegotten UN-driven “climate change” ideology) to stop the traditional flood-control dredging of rivers. But don’t let facts get in the way of a sensational phony narrative.

And, of course, don’t forget to wring your hands over the grandchildren—again! Saxe made sure they got the usual warmist’s shout-out:

In 1992 when I went to the Rio conference we thought we were talking about a problem that would matter to our grandchildren. In 2015 we realized it’s a problem for us all right now, and moving fast.

Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner checked the usual boxes in the “climate change” catechism:

• the evils (imaginary) of greenhouse gas “pollution”
• it’s your fault, and you must be punished and pay
• put a “price” on “carbon,” i.e. tax you, and then tax you again
• decarbonization of everything, i.e. stop economic growth
• believe “the science,” but only if it’s UN-authorized
• weather is proof of manmade “climate change”: heavy rain causing floods, etc
• urgency (because “the science” is supposedly beyond debate and settled)
• think of the poor little grandchildren, i.e. emotional blackmail

Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner is obviously a devoted believer in the church of manmade global warming. (She has to be—it’s the second mandate listed on her job description.) So, Dianne Saxe will have to help the Liberal government that appointed her force Wynne-beleaguered Ontarians to do the wrong “right thing.”