With China, India, Saudi Arabia & Others Opposing ‘Mitigation’ Section At COP26, Canadians Would Be Suckers To Keep Falling For The Charade

Are we supposed to hold our own economy back and make life less affordable while others are allowed to keep growing?

It’s one thing to get played for a sucker by getting tricked.

In life, we often default to trusting people, and a world where nobody trusted anyone would be a disaster.

So, sometimes we get tricked.

Hopefully of course, we quickly learn the lesson, and don’t allow that person to trick us again.

Also, being tricked tends to bring with it a sense of shame.

That shame is actually helpful, because it provides an incentive to not get tricked again.

All of this is understandable.

But what isn’t understandable is knowingly allowing ourselves to be tricked, and then holding up our foolishness as a virtue.

Yet, that’s exactly what’s going on at the COP26 conference.

A key aspect of the conference is about mitigating climate change, especially through emission reductions.

The inconvenient aspect for the virtue-signaling leaders in Western countries is that emissions in much of the developed world have already peaked, and are now declining. Those declines are happening not because of things like carbon taxes (emissions in the US are going down faster than in Canada), but because of technological innovation.

Countries like Canada, the US, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, and more have already passed through the heavy industrial stage of economic development.

Basically, without politicians doing anything, we are already reducing emissions.

Meanwhile, emissions in countries like China, India, and other places are still going up, in large part because large proportions of those countries are still in a heavily industrial stage of development.

But this creates a dilemma.

Virtue-signaling Western politicians are obsessed with looking like ‘climate heroes,’ and – in their minds – this requires them to damage their domestic economies and impose economic pain on their population, all so they can look like they are taking ‘climate action.’

The fact that the free market and technological innovation is already reducing emissions in developed countries gets in the way of their obsessive crusade, so they simply ignore it.

Countries like China, India and more, understandably say that they have every right to develop as other countries did. Thus, they won’t sign on to things that will damage their economic growth.

Other countries like Saudi Arabia already have a high standard of living, and their leaders are simply refusing to go along with something that would severely damage their economy.

Thus, they are opposing the mitigation section of the proposed COP26 agreement:

“In what has been the fiercest opposition to the summit’s draft agreement published Wednesday, Bolivia’s chief negotiator Diego Pacheco said his country and 21 other allied nations — including major emitters like China, India and Saudi Arabia — would oppose the entire section on climate change mitigation.

China, India and Saudi Arabia are all part of the Like-Minded Developing Countries group Pacheco was speaking for. None have replied to CNN’s request for comment on their stance.

That section contains all of the agreement’s language around reducing emissions, including the recognition that the world should aim to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is what scientists say is necessary to avert the worst climate impacts. The countries’ biggest point of contention, Pacheco said, was urging everyone to ratchet up their ambitions on emissions by the end of 2022, for COP27.”

What is the fix?

The logical response to this problem would be to put aside the egos of our politicians and realize that there is no need for the COP26 conference, and no need for COP27 or any future conference.

Developed nations are already cutting emissions through technological progress.

Countries like India, China, and others will reach a similar point in time.

Technological advances in areas like carbon capture and storage, and direct air capture will continue to make it possible to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

We don’t need carbon taxes, and we don’t need restrictions on our oil and gas sector.

In fact, because of the high environmental & labor standards of the Canadian oil & gas sector compared to other countries, more use of Canadian oil & gas would be a net benefit for the environment.

Fairness

Here’s the thing.

When it comes to fairness, it is unfair to ask developing countries to crush their economies at a level far short of what developed nations reached.

It is also unfair to ask the Citizens of developed nations to pay higher taxes and accept a lower-standard of living when those countries are already cutting emissions through technological advancement.

This is a situation in which the ’emissions problem’ is actually solving itself, without the need for conferences and ego-obsessed politicians.

Are we suckers?

With all of the above in mind, now is when we have to decide whether we are all a bunch of suckers, or whether we will wise up to the charade.

Of course, if you’re reading this you are probably already someone who can see through the foolishness of the climate virtue-signaling and fear-mongering, so I’m referring to the broader Canadian political class and those influenced by them.

Imagine a world where countries like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia continue to have high levels of economic growth, while countries like Canada, the United States, the UK, and more all severely restrict our economies.

There would be a net economic power shift to authoritarian states, and since military power flows from economic power, the world would thus become much more hostile to those who value individual freedom and democracy.

Instead, we should acknowledge that people around the world have the right to pursue economic growth and wealth, and focus our efforts on continuing to embrace free enterprise and innovation, which is what will truly make it possible to both reduce emissions and continue to raise our standard of living.

We need an abundance mindset that recognizes economic reality while also recognizing the tremendous potential of human beings when we are free to produce and advance, rather than submitting to the fear-mongering of politicians trying to elevate themselves above those they are supposed to serve.

Spencer Fernando

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