The Womb of Climate Hysteria

An example of climate hysteria

Laurel Collins – a New Democratic Party member of the Canadian House of Commons – has an odd habit of bringing her genitals into public policy debates. She felt so compelled on multiple occasions in response to testimony I responsibly delivered to Canada’s Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development in Ottawa last week. This was the line that led to her curious outburst:

Business and finance have crucial roles to play in forging national and transnational outcomes – including greater social inclusivity and environmental sustainability – but their most appropriate roles have become increasingly maligned and misunderstood as climate hysterics have become more commonplace.

This was her response:

I am wildly emotional. {Climate} is the existential crisis of our time. To hear that asking for high ambition is climate hysteria makes me wildly emotional…. Climate emergencies are not gender neutral. When I think about my womb and the two children I bore from that womb and the future we are leaving them, I am wildly emotional…. We need to think about the intersection of gender and the climate crisis.

Thank you, MP Collins, for vibrantly illustrating my point on hysterics.

The Environment and Sustainable Development Committee was dealing with a serious policy matter: whether to multiply ESG disclosures on Canadian businesses and/or impose ESG investment restrictions on Canadian pension plans in furtherance of global net zero goals. It’s unclear what these matters have to do with MP Collins’ womb. As a rational being who accepts the reality of climate change, I made several modest points. First, to decarbonize industries and energy grids, we need to invest rather than divest. Second, ESG investment strategies that fail to account for the decades-long tail of the energy transition have and will continue to underperform broader strategies that recognize oil and gas will be consumed in large quantities for the foreseeable future.

Is no price too big? Seriously?

Cue the hysterics. To climate catastrophists like Laurel Collins, there is no price too big nor any sacrifice too great to endure in pursuit of Paris Accord targets – even when those costs and sacrifices would do nothing to alter current climate dynamics. After all, for Collins, climate change is a mortal threat to her two children and their generation. Shutting down Canada’s fossil fuel companies and foisting ever higher carbon taxes on the poorest Canadian citizens are but minor inconveniences to save the produce of her womb from extinction. In further disregard to Canadian pensioners, she also favors a permanent wealth tax on corporations. Canadian pensioners can go hungry and ill-housed for all she cares; after all, her children’s lives are at stake.

Hysterics, pure and simple. As we all know, the likelihood of Laurel Collin’s children dying from climate change is virtually zero. Suggesting that carbon neutrality by 2050 is a do-or-die, existential cliff for humanity is senseless, reminiscent of all the misguided hype we heard leading up to Y2K.

Most of us will wake up on January 1, 2050 to find the world is still miraculously bustling along, not collapsing into a ball of fire.

So I stated later in my testimony. But why lose the chance to be hysterical in front of a camera when what’s really at stake are hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, hundreds of billions worth of Canadian pension savings, and energy security for every Canadian citizen – 42 million and growing – for centuries to come.

Humans need other things, too

Climate change is real, as are climate risks. But so are other human needs. As I concluded in front of the Committee,

If the global economy does not continue to grow, or if pension savings do not continue to increase in value relative to inflation, it won’t much matter what the global temperature is: millions, if not billions, will be unable to feed, clothe and/or shelter themselves.

Trade off deniers are no better than climate deniers.

We should end genital-obsessed hysterics around climate and design lasting, multi-faceted solutions. As Pope Francis has said,

We must combat poverty, restore dignity to the excluded and protect nature all at the same time.

This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.