I am pleased that Nielle Hawkwood in her recent letter (“Fight Climate Change”) brought up the topic of “ideology” with respect to the notion of man-made climate change, asserting “ideology has nothing to do with efforts to reduce the effects of the climate changing burning of fossil fuels.”
So, let’s consider, the political, ideological goals of its adherents and proponents. The National Post’s Peter Foster in a recent (Aug. 8) article titled The transition to a low-carbon economy should be avoided, noted that after the collapse of the Soviet Union discredited socialism, its adherents migrated into the environmental movement, justifying their undying goal of government control over the economy and individual action with calls for suppression of fossil fuel use combined with wealth redistribution.
“Radical socialism has far from disappeared. It has simply gone green. The transition to a low-carbon economy is still code for a transition to more political control, less freedom and less wealth,” Foster writes.
From 2008 to 2012, Gerald Butts, the senior political adviser for Justin Trudeau, was the President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund Canada. In May 2012, when asked about the proposed route for the Northern Gateway pipeline, he responded, “We don’t think there should be a carbon-based energy industry by the middle of this century. The real alternative is not an alternative route. It’s an alternative economy,” just code words for replacing a capitalist free enterprise economy with a socialist economy, as openly espoused by socialist Naomi Klein as a goal of her Leap Manifesto, which is heavily supported and endorsed by environmentalists and labour unions.
The Manifesto calls for a radical overhaul of Canada’s economy, ending fossil fuel use and switching “our energy systems to 100 per cent renewables.” In her book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Klein asserted that “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war” and that the issue of global warming has given ‘progressives’ (code for socialists) “the most powerful argument against unfettered capitalism” ever.
Not surprisingly, the Communist Party of Canada thinks the same. Combating supposed man-made climate change, for example, by stopping any new development of the Alberta oilsands, rejecting pipelines and phasing out coal, was part of its platform for the 2015 federal election, a component of its agenda, “to fight for really fundamental change in our country – not just cosmetic change – to open the door to socialism”.
Ms. Hawkwood cites the huge wildfire that affected Fort McMurray as “one of the horrendous effects of climate change.” Well, she is in good company making such a nonsensical claim. Speaking in May at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences held at the University of Calgary, socialist Naomi Klein likewise linked the Fort McMurray fires to climate change! Reminds one of actor and climate change activist Leonardo DiCaprio, now embroiled in a massive $3.5 billion Malaysian 'embezzlement scheme', claiming to have witnessed a ‘terrifying’ sign of climate change in Calgary — a Chinook.
Ron Voss
