It’s risky for Danielle Smith to question Trudeau’s climate narrative

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If you had asked a few weeks ago if Conservative leaders like Danielle Smith and Pierre Poilievre should challenge Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s narrative on climate change and climate science, I would have shrugged, sighed, and rejected the notion.

The fight would be controversial and deeply unpopular. Is it worth such political risk in a nation primed to see the next forest fire or flood as a portent of climate apocalypse? It’s hard to stand up against the politics of fear.

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There are sound reasons for concern about climate change, but there are also reasonable, science-based arguments against Trudeau’s most alarming claims. Unfortunately, such arguments aren’t easy for non-experts to articulate in a convincing fashion, certainly not in a 15-second sound bite.

It’s also the case that Smith is already framed by some of her critics across Canada as a crazy person, while Poilievre is labelled as a buffoon and a bully. Why add to such ferment?

After all, Smith is firmly in power and Poilievre is an excellent bet to win a majority government. Their popularity is based in large part on the solid economic arguments against Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh’s climate policies, namely the federal carbon tax, outlandish subsidies of foreign battery companies, and the green-tape strangulation of industrial development, with the latest scheme being Trudeau’s proposed cap on Alberta’s oil and gas emissions.

This week Smith and her United Conservatives came out with a catchy “scrap the cap” slogan. They made swell arguments about the major loss of oil production, wealth and jobs that will result from a cap. But never once did Smith go after the underpinnings of the whole matter, Trudeau’s dark climate narrative

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Why risk taking it on? Four reasons.

First, because Trudeau’s story about climate is the main tentpole of the anti-prosperity policies holding back Canada’s economy (while doing zilch or next to zilch to cut global emissions). Canada will never get the mines, pipelines, LNG facilities, nuclear power plants and the oil and gas production it needs to rebuild its prosperity and economic standing if we don’t rein in climate alarmism and its related anti-industry bigotry.

Second, until a thoughtful and fair critique of climate alarmism is made, and until the scientific foundation of Trudeau’s green schemes is proven to be cracked and crumbling, his narrative will shape public opinion, inform policy and, most importantly, guide court decisions, as it did when the Supreme Court adopted Trudeau’s framing and ruled in favour of his carbon tax in 2021.

Third, because prominent scientists in the climate realist camp — from Barack Obama’s former climate adviser to the 2022 Nobel Prize winner in physics, from an author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to a reputable Cambridge University professor — are now making credible critiques of the excesses of climate alarmism. But these scientists tend to be cautious. Their careful research and soft-spoken arguments won’t stick if political leaders don’t amplify their message.

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Finally — and most importantly — the fight should be taken up because I’ve now seen at least one North American politician with the jam and the smarts to make such an argument, shutting down fear in the face of great alarm.

Asked last week by a reporter if climate change led to more tornadoes and was a cause of Hurricane Milton’s ferocity, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave a lesson in climate realism. He said tornadoes have always been common in Florida, and that going back to 1851, 27 stronger hurricanes have hit Florida than Milton, with 17 of them occurring prior to 1960. “The most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labour Day hurricane,” DeSantis said. “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

DeSantis continued. “I just think people should put this in perspective. They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something. There’s nothing new under the sun. This is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history, and it’s something that we will continue to deal with.”

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The statement by DeSantis aligns with what climate realists are saying, that pegging any one catastrophic weather event to the slow and gradual global warming we’ve witnessed is fraught, that there’s no conclusive evidence that severe weather events are now worsening due to such warming, and that the models predicting catastrophic future scenarios are iffy at best.

He calmly made his case without getting caught up in the weeds. Skilled communicators like Smith and Poilievre can do the same. But will they? Perhaps it’s too risky, but the benefits to Canada of a less catastrophizing and more open and rational debate would be immense.

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