From the Fraser Institute

By Bjørn Lomborg

Surprisingly, a green, low-carbon world produces less and more expensive food, and makes over 50 million more people hungry by mid-century.

Food scarcity affects many people around the world. Canada can help, as the world’s fifth largest exporter of agricultural goods and the fourth largest exporter of wheat. Indeed, Canada exports so much food that measured in calories it can feed more than 180 million people.

We hear often that carbon cuts are a priority because climate change is causing world hunger and that even Canada will be hit by higher prices and less choice. These alarmist claims are far from true, and the recommended policies are counterproductive.

Over the past century, hunger has dramatically declined. In 1928, the League of Nations estimated that more than two-thirds of humanity lived in a constant state of hunger. By 1970, malnutrition afflicted just one-quarter of all people. Since 2008, the world has seen less than one-in-ten of all people go hungry, although Covid and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have increased the percentage from a low of just over 7 per cent to 9 per cent in 2023.

This positive trend is because humanity has become much better at producing food, and incomes have risen dramatically. For instance, we have more than quintupled cereal production since 1926, and more than halved global food prices. At the same time, extreme poverty has dropped precipitously, allowing parents to afford to buy their children more and better food.

There is obviously still more to do, but securing food for the vast majority of the world has been an unmitigated success in the human development story.

As we move towards 2050, it is likely incomes will keep increasing, with extreme poverty almost disappearing. At the same time, food prices will likely slightly decline or stay about the same, as even more people switch to higher-quality and more expensive foods. All credible predictions foresee even lower levels of malnutrition by mid-century.

The impact of climate change on food supply is often portrayed as terrible, but in reality, it means that things will get much better slightly slower. It will change conditions for most farmers, making conditions better for some and worse for others. In total, it is likely the net outcome will be worse, but only slightly so. One peer-reviewed estimate shows the climate impact on agriculture is equivalent to reducing global GDP by the end of the century by less than 0.06 per cent.

CO₂ is a plant fertilizer, as is well-known by enterprising tomato producers, who routinely pump CO₂ into their greenhouses to boost productivity. We see a similar impact across the living world. Since the 1970s, the increasing CO₂ concentration has caused the planet to become greener, producing more biomass. Satellites show that since 2000, the world has gotten so many more green leaves that their total area is larger than the entire area of Australia.

In total, models show that without climate change, the global amount of food, measured in calories, produced in 2050 will likely increase 51 per cent from 2010. Even under extreme, unrealistic climate change, it will increase 49 per cent. Across all models and scenarios, the difference in calories per person is one-tenth of a percent.

The graph shows how many children died each year from malnutrition from 1990 to 2021, with the World Health Organization estimating the impact of climate change up to 2050. Since 1990, the average number of children dying has declined dramatically from 6.5 million to 2.5 million each year. This is an incredible success story.

The WHO expects the decline to continue, with annual deaths halving once again. But in a world with climate change, deaths will still decline but slightly more slowly. Unfortunately, the lower death decline in 2050 created almost all the media headlines from the WHO study, entirely ignoring the dramatic reduction in overall death.

The overarching response from climate campaigners is to demand radical emission cuts to help. But this ignores two important facts. First, trying to affect change through climate policy is the slowest, costliest and least impactful way to help. While even significant climate policy will take over half a century to have any measurable impact and cost hundreds of trillions, it will at best help increase available calories by less than one-tenth of a percentage point. Instead, a focus on increased economic growth is over one hundred times more effective, increasing calorie availability by over 10 per cent. Moreover, it would work in years instead of centuries, and deliver a host of other, obvious benefits.

Second, cutting emissions increases most agricultural costs, like pushing up prices for fertilizer and gas for tractors, along with increased competition for land for biofuels and reforestation. Uselessly, most models just ignore these costs — like the WHO simply imagining a world without climate change. But it turns out that the impact of cutting emissions harms food production much more than climate change does. Surprisingly, a green, low-carbon world produces less and more expensive food, and makes over 50 million more people hungry by mid-century.

While we are being told stories of climate agricultural catastrophes and urged to cut emissions dramatically, the evidence shows that the impact is tiny, making the world improve slightly less fast. The proposed cure is worse than the problem it seeks to fix.

Bjørn Lomborg

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

Drug cartels, China, and Canada’s negligence are fueling the deadliest epidemic of our time

It took the threat of U.S. tariffs for Canada to wake up to the horrors of the fentanyl epidemic that is destroying young lives and shattering families. Canadians, who panicked over COVID-19 deaths, have hardly noticed that far more healthy Canadians and Americans are now dying from fentanyl overdoses than ever died from COVID.

Yet while Americans confront this deadly epidemic, Canada remains oblivious to how deeply the crisis has infiltrated our borders.

A grim milestone came in 2021 when U.S. opioid overdose deaths exceeded 100,000 in a single year. More than a million Americans have died from opioid overdoses since these highly addictive drugs first entered the market. Today, fentanyl overdose is the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 25.

Behind every kilogram of fentanyl lies half a million potential deaths. Behind every pill—a game of Russian roulette.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid so powerful that one kilogram can kill 500,000 people. Its extreme potency makes it both highly dangerous and easy to smuggle. A single backpack thrown across the border can carry $1 million worth of the drug. It is easy to see why so many opportunists are willing to risk their lives producing and selling it. Overdose statistics fail to capture the bodies found in deserts or those murdered in the vicious drug trade.

Fentanyl is produced for a few cents per pill but sold on the street for many times that, making it both profitable and a cheap high. Incredibly addictive, it is found in virtually all street drugs, giving “the most bang for the buck.” Made by amateurs, these drugs are carelessly laced with lethal doses. And because the pills look identical, users never know whether a dose will get them high—or kill them.

But Canada is not just a bystander in this crisis. A loophole in our border laws—the “de minimis” exemption—has turned Canada into a gateway for fentanyl entering U.S. communities. This exemption allows exporters to ship small packages valued at less than $800 directly to customers with minimal border inspection. Chinese exporters exploit this loophole to ship fentanyl precursors into Canada, where they are processed into pills or moved to Mexico under the supervision of Mexican drug cartels.

The Trump administration has pressed Canada to close this loophole. That it has existed for years, almost unnoticed, should shock us to the core.

The problem of fentanyl production within Canada should not be minimized. The RCMP reports that fentanyl labs are appearing across B.C., often producing methamphetamine alongside fentanyl. These small labs supply both domestic and international markets. The threat is real, and it is growing.

Exactly how many Canadians have died from fentanyl overdoses is unclear. However, with Canada’s population roughly one-ninth of the U.S., it is reasonable to estimate that Canadian deaths are approximately one-ninth of U.S. numbers.

But overdose numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. The number of lives wrecked by this drug is staggering. Parents watch their children—once vibrant and full of promise—disappear before their eyes. Their beauty fades, their minds unravel, and their lives collapse into the desperate cycle of chasing the next fix. Some escape. Many don’t. Until death takes them, that is.

The new Trump administration has promised to confront this carnage. “This is a drug war,” Peter Navarro, assistant to the president and director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, recently told reporters. “The Mexican cartels have expanded up to Canada, making fentanyl there and sending it down to the U.S. The Chinese are using Canada to send in small parcels below the radar. It’s important that Canadians understand we are trying to stop the killing of Americans by these deadly drugs.”

But while the U.S. acts, Canada hesitates. Trump is addressing the problem—Canada is enabling it.

The Trump administration also views Canada’s lax drug laws and casual attitude toward buying and selling even the most dangerous drugs as an exacerbating factor. However, on the fentanyl issue, it is clear Trump is determined to tackle a problem Canada has largely ignored. He should be commended for this, and Canada should start cleaning up its own mess.

Yet fentanyl smuggling from Canada is only part of a larger issue. Behind the drug trade lies an even more insidious enemy: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The importation of fentanyl precursors from China, facilitated by Mexican cartels, has turned Vancouver into a money-laundering hub for the CCP. Investigative reporters like Sam Cooper and Terry Glavin have revealed the depth of this corruption, despite the Hogue Commission’s failure to expose it fully.

Ryan P. Williams, president of the Claremont Institute, warns that “The fentanyl crisis is part of a larger campaign by the CCP to destabilize Western nations. They flood our streets with poison while corrupting our institutions from within. If Canada doesn’t confront this threat, it will lose not only lives—but its sovereignty.”

Our new “fentanyl czar,” appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, should not only address the drug crisis but also expose how deeply a hostile CCP has compromised Canada.

Tackling the fentanyl problem will be enormously difficult—likely impossible— for the Trump administration without cooperation from China, Mexico and even Canada. And forcing that cooperation is likely the first part of Trump’s plan.

Canada’s role may be small, but it must take full responsibility for securing its borders and confronting the fentanyl crisis. Trump has forced us to act. Now, if we are serious about restoring our nation’s integrity, we must break the CCP’s grip on our institutions.

In doing so, we will save Canadian lives.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired Manitoba judge. He is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He was recently named the ‘Western Standard Columnist of the Year.’