Joe Oliver: Canada will soon be alone and ignored in its climate obsession

financialpost.com:

In its fervour to achieve net zero emissions the federal government is increasingly isolated internationally, while its influence on other countries has vanished as, through incompetence and worse, it has tarnished Canada’s brand as a country to emulate.

As Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The European Union had a plan to reach net zero by 2050 but its member states have now been hit by a severe energy crisis and are backing off in response to popular discontent.

In a “brave new approach to politics” designed to stave off electoral defeat next year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reversed course and approved development of a giant offshore oil and gas field. And he delayed signing off on green policies that would have imposed “unacceptable costs” — calculated to be five times their economic benefits — borne disproportionately by blue-collar workers.

In support of Sunak’s belated awakening to economic and political reality, the Telegraph queried, “If the consequences are prohibitively expensive and involve saddling millions of households with additional expenditure for unknowable benefits in an unfair way, why would anyone make the transition?” Why, indeed, Mr. Trudeau, when according to a Leger poll only 15 per cent of Canadians think net zero is realistic? The question has added poignancy since the green policies of both countries can have only a negligible influence on global emissions and none on temperatures.

According to the EU’s top energy official, with renewables unable to make up for the disappearance of Russian natural gas, Europe will need U.S. fossil fuels for several more decades. No mention of Canada, the world’s sixth largest gas producer, since we