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Energy

Why Bad Climate Legislation Is Worse Than No Climate Legislation

Published

4 years ago

13 minute read

From Michael Schellenberger

Moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin & Krysten Sinema Are Right to Oppose the Clean Energy Performance Program

Progressives are angry that moderate Democratic Senator Joe Machin has reportedly opposed the inclusion of climate-related legislation in President Joe Biden’s budget “This is absolutely the most important climate policy in the package,” said Leah Stokes, a Canadian political scientist who helped write the legislation. “We fundamentally need it to meet our climate goals. That’s just the reality.”

But that’s not the reality. The “Clean Energy Performance Program” is not needed to meet climate goals, and might actually undermine them.

Consider Waxman-Markey. That’s the name of the “cap and trade” climate legislation that passed the House but failed in the Senate in 2010. It had a climate goal of reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by the year 2020. Instead, the U.S. reduced its emissions by 22 percent.

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Had cap and trade legislation passed in the Senate, emissions would have declined less than 22 percent, because Waxman-Markey so heavily subsidized coal and other fossil fuels. As the Los Angeles Times reported at the time, “the Environmental Protection Agency projects that even if the emissions limits go into effect, the U.S. would use more carbon-dioxide-heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.”

The same thing would likely have been true for the Clean Energy Performance Program, which lock in natural gas. Consider France. According to the Commision de Regulation de L’Energie, €29 billion (US$33) billion was used to purchase wind and solar electricity in mainland France between 2009 and 2018. But the money spent on renewables did not lead to cleaner electricity. In fact, the carbon-intensity of French electricity increased.

After years of subsidies for solar and wind, France’s 2017 emissions of 68g/CO2 per kWh was higher than any year between 2012 and 2016. The reason? Record-breaking wind and solar production did not make up for falling nuclear energy output and higher natural gas consumption. And now, the high cost of renewable electricity is showing up in French household electricity bills.

Some pro-nuclear people supported the proposed Clean Energy Performance Program. They claimed it would have saved existing nuclear plants at risk of closure. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the closure of nuclear plants including Diablo Canyon in California, will result in nuclear energy in the U.S. declining by 17% by 2025. If the Program had passed, some pro-nuclear people believe, plants like Diablo Canyon could have been saved.

But the Clean Energy Performance Program would not have saved Diablo Canyon for the same reason it would not have saved Indian Point nuclear plant, which closed in New York, earlier this year: progressive Democratic politicians are forcing nuclear plants to close, and at a very high cost to ratepayers.

If the Clean Energy Performance Program had passed into law, Diablo Canyon’s owner, Pacific Gas & Electric, would simply have passed the $500 million to $1.5 billion penalty imposed by the Program onto ratepayers, along with the other billions in costs related to closing Diablo Canyon 40 years earlier than necessary. The same would have happened with Indian Point.

Where there is political support for saving nuclear plants, state legislators and governors save nuclear plants, as they did in Illinois a few weeks ago, and as they have done in Connecticut, New Jersey, and with up-state nuclear plants in New York. In other states, nuclear plants are protected from cheap natural gas by regulated electricity markets. And now, with natural gas prices rising dramatically, any nuclear plants at risk of closure for economic reasons are no longer at risk.

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What threatens the continued operation of nuclear power plants, and nuclear energy in general, is the continued subsidization of renewables, which the Clean Energy Performance Program would have put on steroids. Under the program, utilities would have received $18 for each megawatt-hour of zero-emissions energy it produces between 2023 to 2030, on top of the existing $25 per megawatt-hour subsidy for wind energy.

Under such a scenario, notes energy analyst Robert Bryce, a wind energy company “could earn $43 per megawatt-hour per year for each new megawatt-hour of wind energy it sells. That’s a staggering sum given that the wholesale price of electricity in New York last year was $33 per megawatt-hour. In Texas, the wholesale price of juice was $22 per MWh.”

Manchin is joined in his opposition to the Plan by moderate Democratic Arizona Senator, Krysten Sinema, and understandably so. The legislation would cost Arizona ratepayers nearly $120 billion in additional electricity costs, according to energy analysts Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling of the American Experiment. “This would result in a 45 percent increase in electricity prices by 2031, compared to 2019 rates,” they note.

As troubling, the Clean Energy Performance Program would increase dependence on solar panels made in China by incarcerated Uighyr Muslims living in concentration camps and against whom the Chinese government is committing “genocide,” according to the U.S. State Department. New research shows that China made solar panels cheaper through the use of forced labor, heavy government subsidies, and some of the dirtiest coal in the world. The Program would have done nothing to shift production of solar panels back to the U.S.

Nor would the legislation have done anything to internalize the high cost of solar panel waste disposal. Most solar panels become hazardous waste, and create dust from heavy metals including lead, as soon as they are removed from rooftops. A major study published in Harvard Business Review earlier this year found that, when the high cost of managing toxic solar panel waste is eventually accounted for, the true cost of solar electricity will rise four-fold.

As troubling, the continued expansion of weather-dependent renewables will increase electricity costs and blackouts across the United States, as they did in California and Texas. Those renewables-driven blackouts were likely on Senator Manchin’s mind when he made his decision to oppose the Clean Energy Performance Plan. He certainly knows about the problems of renewables in Texas and California, since I discussed them directly with Manchin when I testified before his committee earlier this year.

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A better approach would be for Congress to seek nuclear-focused legislation to expand nuclear from its current 19% of U.S. electricity to 50% by 2050. It should take as a model the British government’s announcement yesterday that it would put nuclear energy at the center of its climate plans. Global energy shortages triggered by the lack of wind in Europe have led nations to realize that any efforts to decarbonize electricity grids without creating blackouts must center nuclear power, not weather-dependent solar and wind.

Environmental Progress and I met with British lawmakers in 2019 to advocate for a greater focus on nuclear. At the time, many British energy analysts, as well as ostensibly pro-nuclear climate activists, Mark Lynas and George Monbiot, were telling the public that their nation did not need more nuclear, as Britain could simply rely more on wind energy, and natural gas. Now, electricity prices are skyrocketing and factories are closing in Britain, due to a bad year for wind.

It was a strange experience to be alone in Britain, without support from supposedly pro-nuclear Britons, in urging lawmakers to build more nuclear plants, but I was similarly alone in many other parts of the world, and got on with the task. Happily, one year later, former Extinction Rebellion spokesperson Zion Lights joined me in advocating for nuclear, and quickly forced the government to agree to a nuclear build-out.

Today, in the U.S., there is a growing grassroots movement for nuclear energy, one which saved nuclear plants, twice, in Illinois, and other states, and is gearing up to save Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in California. Doing so will require a new governor, since the current one, Gavin Newsom, made closing the plant a feature of his sales pitch to powerful environmental groups, including Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Fund which are, like Newsom himself, heavily funded by natural gas and renewable energy companies that stand to benefit from the Diablo’s destruction.

Leadership at the national level will need to come from Senators Manchin and Sinema. While a significant amount of electricity policy is determined by the states, the Senate can play a constructive role in maintaining the reliability, resiliency, affordability, I testified to Senator Manchin and other committee members. Senator Sinema is from Arizona, a state with the largest nuclear plant in the U.S., Palo Verde, and which is a model of how to make electricity both low in emissions, and in costs.

With the Clean Energy Performance Program now apparently dead, the Congress, led by Manchin and Sinema, should take policy action to not only keep operating the nuclear plants that have been critical to preventing power outages in recent years, but also expand them.

About Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,”Green Book Award winner, and the founder and president of Environmental Progress.

He is author of the best-selling new book, Apocalypse Never (Harper Collins June 30, 2020), which has received strong praise from scientists and scholars. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” wrote climate scientist Tom Wigley. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” says historian Richard Rhodes, who won the Pulitzer Prize for The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “Within its lively pages, Michael Shellenberger rescues with science and lived experience a subject drowning in misunderstanding and partisanship. His message is invigorating: if you have feared for the planet’s future, take heart.”

Additional Reading:

Why Biden’s Climate Agenda Is Falling Apart

Nuclear Plant Closures And Renewables Increase Electricity Prices & Unreliability, Testifies Michael Shellenberger to U.S. Senate

China Made Solar Cheap With Coal, Subsidies, And “Slave” Labor — Not Efficiency

Why Everything They Said About Solar Was Wrong

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While Western Nations Cling to Energy Transition, Pragmatic Nations Produce Energy and Wealth

Published on December 26, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Vijay Jayaraj

History will likely remember 2025 as the year energy corporatists finally stopped pretending there is a climate crisis. For a decade, a bizarre theater of the absurd played out as titans of the oil and gas industry apologized for their core business while pledging allegiance to a “green transition” that existed mostly in the imaginations of Western bureaucrats. But the curtain has seemingly fallen.

ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest energy producers, has slashed $10 billion from its low-carbon investment commitments through 2030. Simultaneously, the company announced that it expects $25 billion in earnings growth from 2024 to 2030 to be powered primarily by increases in oil and gas production, which will push daily output to 5.5 million barrels of oil equivalent by the end of the decade.

This is not a company abandoning climate responsibility but rather at last recognizing what has long been obvious: The path prescribed by the climate industrial complex is economically destructive and operationally impossible – even with massive government subsidies.

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For years, the global energy strategy has been surreal. Companies that built the modern world on the back of energy-dense hydrocarbons indulged those celebrating the arrival of wind turbines and solar panels to power civilization. But reality, stubborn and unforgiving, has interrupted the psychedelic revelry.

ExxonMobil’s low-carbon investments will be paced to policy support and customer demand, says the company. That is corporate speak meaning that spending on green projects is paused unless the government – using our tax dollars – subsidizes the risk or until a market exists.

Megaprojects, once heralded as the future, are now in line for deferral. Why? Because without taxpayer handouts, the economics of trying to bury underground a plant food like carbon dioxide simply do not work – and defy common sense.

The energy sector is pivoting from a strategy of “grow clean at all costs” to “returns first, transition last.” “Green” projects are being relegated to a secondary capital bucket – a token for good PR instead of a core activity.

Europe’s Shell and Aker BP and Canada’s Enbridge have withdrawn from the Science Based Targets initiative to establish “science-based emissions reductions.” This was a retreat from what is described as a “credible, science-based net-zero framework” because there was neither credibility nor science. It was a political suicide pact. The energy giants looked at the cliff’s edge and refused to jump.

British multinational BP, having abandoned its promise to go “Beyond Petroleum,” has raised its oil and gas spending and softened its renewable targets.

ENEOS Holdings, a Japanese refiner, has discarded hydrogen production targets, with CEO Tomohide Miyata explaining that “the shift toward a carbon-neutral society appears to be slowing.”

These U-turns represent a renaissance in policy realism. Energy needs do not disappear because politicians make speeches at climate summits or corporations allocate funds to ESG programs or governments attempt to control consumption and choices of appliances and automobiles.

Second thoughts about an inevitably doomed “green” transition is a victory for the single mother in the U.S. trying to budget for winter heating and for the small business owner in the U.K. whose margins are crushed by one of the highest commercial electricity rates in the world. And for the billions of people in developing nations, this pivot could be salvation from generational poverty.

The question now is whether governments will recognize what corporations have made clear: that the energy transition was a fantasy infused with scientific language and draped in moralistic gingerbread. Or will they continue to increase subsidies and regulations?

Very likely, there will be a bifurcation: on the one hand, western bureaucracies, particularly in Europe, continuing an economic decline under mandates and taxes, and on the other, pragmatic governments, many of them in Asia, pursuing prosperity with fuels and technologies that work.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Va. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research associate with the Changing Oceans Research Unit at University of British Columbia, Canada.

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Energy

The Top News Stories That Shaped Canadian Energy in 2025 and Will Continue to Shape Canadian Energy in 2026

Published on December 24, 2025

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From Energy Now

By Jim Warren

The times have been excessively interesting. This is especially true for the conventional energy sector where there was much more news served up in 2025 than normal people can comfortably digest in just 12 months.

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The past year provided a few flourishes of good news for supporters of conventional energy. But, for the most part it was a continuation of the disappointment, frustration and uncertainty which characterized the Justin Trudeau years.

Unfortunately, there’s a chance that disappointment and frustration will follow us into 2026.

Yet, the Festive Season demands all glasses be at least half full when we ring in the New Year. And, for all we know, the inveterate optimists among us could actually turn out to be right on a few counts.

The Alberta-Ottawa Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) may actually result in a pipeline being launched. And maybe the bit in the MOU about the cost of CO2 emissions rising to $130 per tonne will turn out to be just a typo. The Carney government could be forced to call an election in 2026. And Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, who unequivocally support expansion of conventional energy production and exports, could win it.

If the pipeline problem is satisfactorily resolved, we can then return to time honoured grievances we’ve put on the back burner, such as equalization and Canada’s catch and release legal system.

Let’s drink to that.

In keeping with the traditions of news publications at year-end, here is a list of the top 2025 news stories and events affecting Canada’s oil and gas industries in Canada.

The nine news items we came up with are presented below, listed in chronological order.  You, the reader, may have some additional ones of your own.

1. Goodbye Justin Trudeau, You Will Not Be Missed

The arrogant poser, with the colourful socks, who acted like virtue oozed from every pore of his body is now persona non grata. Six days into 2025 Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign as prime minister and member of parliament. It was one of the most joyous occasions of the year—heartily celebrated by many fans of the oil and gas industries.

For nine long years, the Trudeau government imposed environmental and climate change legislation intended to reduce expansion of conventional energy production and consumption. The Trudeau government’s actions have been be characterized as efforts designed to cancel the future of Canada’s conventional energy sector. Trudeau, his cabinet and caucus will forever be remembered for measures such as Bill C-48/the Tanker Ban and C-69/the No More Pipelines Bill—legislation that will live in infamy.

Danielle Smith probably said it best. “Pierre Trudeau only wanted to steal our oil, Justin Trudeau wanted to kill the industry.”

2. Trump and the Trade War

Donald Trump and his tariff war have had some important, positive effects in Canada. They exposed the vulnerabilities associated with relying on a single country to purchase approximately 93% of our oil exports. The critical importance of increasing access to new non-US customers for Canadian oil and natural gas was made crystal clear. Several polls taken over the course of 2025 indicated a majority of Canadians now support the construction of new oil and gas pipelines to one or more of Canada’s coasts.

Oil is Canada’s single most important export commodity.  And, a growing number of people appreciate handcuffing the conventional energy sector and limiting export options is economic madness; especially when the country is experiencing economic distress and the fiscal crisis created by Liberal Ottawa.

One of the unfortunate outcomes of the new tariffs Trump imposed on Canada is that in January they breathed new life into the political corpse of the Liberal party. Amazingly, this allowed them to elbow their way to an astonishing revival of fortunes and a minority election win on April 28.

3. Premier Danielle Smith’s Nine Bad Laws

Danielle Smith presented Mark Carney with a list of nine demands on March 25, 11 days after he replaced Justin Trudeau as prime minister. The list focused on the fortunes of the conventional energy sector and the barriers to new pipelines. It featured what Smith referred to as “the nine bad laws”—the laws that have to go if Canada is to recover from the economic and fiscal damage done during the Justin Trudeau years.

According to Smith, Liberal policies had adversely impacted the prosperity of Alberta and the rest of Canada and driven away billions in new capital investments.

The nine bad laws

  • Removal of the federal laws, regulations and policies that restrict access to oil and gas corridors to the East, West and North coasts.
  • Repeal Bill C-69
  • Cancel Bill C-48
  • Rescind the oil and gas emissions cap
  • Drop the clean electricity regulations
  • Dump the industrial carbon tax
  • End the net zero car sales mandate, including the ban on gas and diesel car sales by 2035
  • Eliminate the ban on single use plastics
  • Remove the restrictions on the free speech of conventional energy companies

The demands have been described as the things Albertans require to believe Confederation can accommodate their interests. They represent a set of issues which if not promptly addressed will continue to harm the economy and create a national unity crisis.

The Ottawa-Alberta MOU signed on November 27 proposes to eliminate or adjust several of the nine bad laws.

4. Canada’s Federal Election

 

Early in January of 2025 it finally looked like the stars had aligned in favour of the oil and gas community. Justin Trudeau was a terminally wounded lame duck, having announced his intention to resign as prime minister. And, it appeared the electoral fortunes of the Liberals were in the toilet.

There was dissention in the Liberal ranks—Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland had resigned the previous month. And, opinion polls taken in December and early January had shown the Conservatives had a commanding lead over the Liberals. Pierre Poilievre and company were heading for a majority. And, they were pledged to support the expansion of oil and gas production and the construction of new export pipelines from Alberta to one or more of Canada’s coasts.

By late January, fear of the Trump tariffs and Canada’s mainstream media had changed the political arithmetic. Canadians embraced a new superhero, Mark Carney. The legacy media extolled his record as an international financial wizard, macroeconomic guru, and leader of prominent institutions.

During the election campaign Carney adopted a duplicitous approach to discussing energy and pipeline policy. He embraced the longstanding Liberal strategy of saying one thing in the West while saying the opposite when talking to Quebecers.

More recently, Carney has been saying one thing to B.C. and oil pipeline opponent, Premier David Eby, and something entirely different to supporters of the oil and gas industries in Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Following the defection of three Conservative MPs to the government side of the House the Carney government is just one seat shy of a majority.

5. Bill C-5 Promises Much But Delivers Nothing

The Building Canada Act/Bill C-5 was heralded as the solution to Canada’s failure to get major economic development projects, including oil pipelines, approved and built ever since the Justin Trudeau Liberals formed their first government in 2015. It was passed by the House of Commons on June 20, 2025 with the support of both Liberal and Conservative MPs. The promotional efforts of the government and mainstream media pundits had many people thinking it would deal with many of the issues identified in Danielle Smith’s list of nine bad laws.

The government claimed Bill C-5 would expedite approvals for nation building projects that would help secure Canada’s economic future and diversify export opportunities. The Liberals said they would use every tool at their disposal to get projects promptly approved and completed. Those tools did not include ending the West coast tanker ban or changing Bill C-69, the Impact Assessment Act.

Bill C-5 turned out to be the most overhyped nothing burger of 2025.

On September 11, Ottawa announced the first five projects which qualified for the approval process established under Bill C-5. A second tranche of six projects was announced on November 13. The common denominator for all eleven projects is that they had all been previously proposed and approved and some were already under construction. In the first five months following the enactment of Bill C-5 there have been no big new investments announced that hadn’t already been announced.

6. LNG Canada Begins Exporting Liquified Natural Gas

David Eby, and the government of British Columbia have vigorously opposed construction of an oil pipeline running from Alberta to Prince Rupert. Pipelines carrying natural gas produced in B.C. to LNG terminals on the West coast are another matter.

Several large and small LNG projects have been approved by B.C. and the federal government. The largest of them, LNG Canada, began shipping liquified natural gas (LNG) from its processing facilities at Kitimat on June 30 this year. By the end of November, 25 cargoes of LNG had been shipped from the new terminal. When all phases of LNG Canada’s $40 billion system are fully operational they will be capable of exporting 3.68 billion feet of B.C. natural gas per day.

Thus far, LNG Canada’s operation is the only large LNG project that is up and running. Proponents of some of the other projects are apparently still looking for additional financing. And, there are concerns about a global LNG supply glut developing. Yet, a global oversupply is hard to envision given growing demand for natural gas in East and South Asia.

One thing is certain, all of B.C.’s currently approved LNG projects have met the criteria required to be announced by the federal government as new developments made possible only by the miracle of Bill C-5.

7. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

There are indeed fans of oil and gas who enthusiastically welcomed the unveiling of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on November 27. There were also some who denounced the deal, and skeptics who remain undecided. If there is a lack of meaningful progress toward building an oil pipeline from Alberta to Prince Rupert by mid-2026, the number of Albertans opposed to the MOU can be expected to grow.

Many of the skeptics contend it is yet another example of the Carney government’s unwillingness to clearly and forthrightly endorse a revived version of the Northern Gateway pipeline (a Northern Gateway 2.0).

Yet, Danielle Smith has been reported as saying the MOU addresses several of the demands contained in her list of “nine bad laws”.

The MOU proposes to drop federal clean energy regulations for Alberta, allow carbon capture projects to use CO2 for enhanced oil recovery without penalty, suggests a tanker ban carve out is possible on the northern B.C. coast and, perhaps most importantly, it elevates Northern Gateway 2.0 to the realm of the possible.

Waiting for the agreement between Ottawa and Alberta was frustrating for supporters of fossil fuels who were not privy to the behind closed doors discussions and negotiations which apparently began on or shortly after June 1. Subsequently, Danielle Smith optimistically identified dates when she hoped to announce federal movement on the nine bad laws and an agreement to get Northern Gateway 2.0 launched.

We hoped to hear something concrete by the week of the Calgary Stampede. It turned out there was no big announcement but Smith remained positive regarding discussions. The prime minister offered only highly qualified support for some of Alberta’s demands when speaking publicly.

The next deadline suggested was some time in October. October came and went. We listened for a commitment from the prime minister and got crickets. Smith said she was still fairly confident a deal would be forthcoming, probably by Grey Cup.

The day of the big game came and went and there was still no announcement. The goal posts had apparently been moved again. But wait, just a few days after Saskatchewan’s win on the gridiron, the government news agency, CBC, reported a rumour was going round claiming a deal was close at hand. And so it was.

The wait was exhausting. Here’s hoping the end result was worth it.

8. The “Green Jesus” of Montreal Quits Cabinet

Steven Guilbeault, one of the most politically divisive people to ever serve as a federal minister resigned from the Carney cabinet on November 27—within a few hours of the announcement of the Alberta-Ottawa Memorandum of Understanding.

Guilbeault’s resignation is one of the best signs to date that the MOU is a serious document.

Guilbeault is a high profile environmental activist (some would say fanatic) and climate change alarmist—famous for media stunts like scaling the CN Tower and demonstrating on the roof of Ralph Klein’s house in Edmonton. He became MP for a Montreal riding in the October 2019 federal election. Justin Trudeau appointed him Minister for the Environment and Climate Change in October of 2021 and gave him free rein over policy decisions.

The Trudeau government’s enactment of several of the policies harmful to the conventional energy sector such as Bill C-48/the Tanker Ban and Bill C-69/the No More Pipelines Bill actually occurred before Guilbeault became environment minister. However, under Guilbeault’s watch a series of excessively ambitious regulatory measures inimical to the future of the oil and gas sectors, costly to consumers and economically harmful were implemented.

Guilbeault’s actions as minister imposed added costs on Canadian consumers who were dealing with an escalating cost of living. They contributed to the abysmal showing of the Liberals in party preference polls for most of 2024—as a consequence the Party finally gave Justin Trudeau the boot in January 2025.

Examples of Guilbeault’s environment and climate change policy legacy include:

  • The environment ministry’s announcement of a hard cap on oil and gas emissions in the fall of 2021. This measure would effectively set limits on the growth of natural gas and oil production. The governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan vehemently opposed these measures as a federal intrusion into areas of provincial responsibility under the Constitution. The Supreme Court agreed and declared that the offending sections of Bill C-69/the Impact Assessment Act were unconstitutional—Guilbeault made no effort to amend his regulations.
  • Guilbeault was responsible for the major updating of the consumer carbon tax regulations announced in December of 2021. Those included the plan to increase the level of the tax to $170 for every tonne of CO2 emitted. The carbon tax angered voters already struggling with increases in the cost of living and caused support for the Liberals to tank by December of 2025.
  • Guilbeault introduced regulations limiting the number of gas and diesel fueled vehicles sold by Canadian manufacturers with a total phase out target of 2035. The regulations were published in December 2023. In early 2025, our new prime minister announced he was postponing implementation of the sales reduction target for at least one year. The Guilbeault regulations were largely responsible for Stellantis’ decision to shift thousands of jobs and production to US factories.
  • Guilbeault’s swan song as environment minister was the publication of updated clean electricity standards and regulations limiting the energy sources which can be used to produce electricity without penalties by 2030. The regulations were published by Guilbeault’s department in December of 2024. The Government of Saskatchewan has announced its intention to defy this mandate. It intends to continue using coal to generate electricity for another decade and possibly longer.

When Mark Carney assembled his first cabinet he demoted Guilbeault, moving him from the prestigious environment portfolio to the Department of Canadian Identity and Culture. Incidentally Carney left Jonathan Wilkinson, Guilbeault’s predecessor, as environment minister, out of Cabinet altogether.

9. What’s Old is New Again: Anti-Pipeline Lobbying, Misinformation and Insanity by the Sea

We better fasten our seat belts heading into 2026. Climate change alarmists, their allies in the media and several members of the federal Liberal caucus have already launched their assault on the MOU and prospects for a new oil pipeline to the West coast. Visions of Trans Mountain all over again.

The Complicit Media

In the days leading up to the federal budget, a frantic Elizabeth May falsely claimed Canada was legally bound to meet its net zero and green transition targets under terms of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. She claimed the Trudeau/Guilbeault anti-oil-and-gas legacy must remain inviolate lest we incur the wrath of the UN—a supposedly terrifying prospect.

In reality the only things the parties to the Paris Agreement bound themselves to was the submission of an outline of their plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and to submit an updated version of their plans every five years. No penalties of any sort are provided under the agreement should a country fail to get its homework handed in on time.

The legacy media gave May a free ride on that fabrication—no effort was made to correct her. May was similarly allowed a pass when she claimed oil tankers carrying oil from Prince Rupert would have to cross the most dangerous waters in Canada.

(See the Energy Now column MAY DAY! THE GREEN PARTY’S ELIZABETH MAY HAS IT WRONG: An Alberta to Prince Rupert Oil Pipeline Will Contribute to Greater Global Oil Tanker Safety – Jim Warren ).

Another disturbing example is how the environmental movement and the legacy media have been falsely presenting the Vancouver-based environmental lobby group, Coastal First Nations, as though it is some sort of official representative voice for all First Nations governments from Western B.C. Furthermore, neither environmentalists nor the traditional media acknowledge that many First Nations are actively involved in the oil industry and support the new pipeline proposal.

We can expect to see a lot more flagrant misinformation passing for news in 2026.

Insanity by the Sea

Then we have B.C. premier, David Eby, the poster child for the failure of the Team Canada approach to ensuring Canada successfully navigates the challenges presented by the Trump tariffs. Eby’s sense of team spirit does not extend to allowing neighbouring provinces to export commodities like oil through British Columbia.

No surprise, Mark Carney has proven loathe to publicly criticize Eby for his unCanadian obstruction.

The B.C. government is hostage to the minority of voters who constitute Eby’s base of support—the lunatic fringe of anti-development environmental zealots who back the NDP.

Eby fumes over the possibility of a pipeline being built. Yet he remains mute over bad legislation and hyper-woke courts that threaten the status of non-Indigenous land titles in his province. His priorities are clearly shaped by fear of being removed as NDP leader and/or losing the next provincial election.

Hopes for the election of a sane government are frustrated by division and disarray among B.C. Conservatives.

Steven Guilbeault Will Rise Again

Here’s another troubling prediction for 2026. Steven Guilbeault will take a leadership role in the movement to shred the MOU. Guilbeault and his fellow environmental crusaders intend to force the Liberal government to recant and return to the more rigidly orthodox green agenda Mark Carney supported before becoming prime minister.

It will up to Canadians who truly think “Team Canada” to overcome yet even more challenges in 2026.  In the meantime, investors will continue to take their energy opportunities and money elsewhere.

 

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