Alberta Premier Danielle Smith surveys damage after the Jasper wildfire. Credit: Danielle Smith / YouTube
Speaking at the UCP annual general meeting, the Premier took shots at the federal government and vowed not to “budge an inch.”
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pledged to “triple down” on conservative principles, including energy extraction and anti-trans policies at the Alberta United Conservative Party’s annual general meeting in Red Deer today in front of an energetic crowd of 6,000 people.
“We will build new pipelines, oil and gas facilities, petrochemical plants, hydrogen plants, and more because Alberta is an energy superpower, and we will not apologize for it,” said the premier, who was defiant against the federal government and any attempts to regulate energy and greenhouse gas emissions.
Taking a shot at the federal government Smith decried federal attempts at regulating carbon emissions during her speech.
“Justin Trudeau, Steven Guilbeault and their band of woke MPs have done everything they can to shut down Canada’s and Alberta’s most economically important industry as quickly as possible,” said Smith.
In a particularly spicy moment, the Premier dismissed federal environment and climate change minister Guilbeault’s “tantrums” and “green schemes,” suggesting that Alberta would not “budge an inch … EVER.”
Smith threatened to continue to block any legislation that affects the energy industry.
“We have already invoked the Sovereignty Act against Justin Trudeau’s reckless and unaffordable 2035 net-zero electricity regulations, which we will not enforce in Alberta,” she said.
Premier Smith denounced federal attempts at regulating carbon emissions during her speech at the UCP’s annual general meeting. Credit: Danielle Paradis
Premier Smith is facing a leadership review as a part of the AGM and met with members at an accountability session where they discussed past policy proposals including the proposal to ban solar farms on agricultural land.
Last year, the Alberta government imposed a seven-month moratorium on renewable energy projects after this policy proposal passed.
According to the Canadian Press, a webinar used as a part of the government’s engagement process said that Alberta is looking to prohibit wind and solar farms on irrigated land.
In the afternoon, the members will debate a policy resolution that would “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity” by abandoning “Net-Zero” targets and recognizing that CO2 is a “foundational nutrient to life.”
UCP members voted in favor of a resolution to “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.” Credit: Danielle Paradis
Alberta’s United Conservative Party has passed a resolution to rebrand carbon dioxide — the chief gas whose overabundance in Earth’s atmosphere is causing the climate emergency — in a brazen display of climate science denial that harkens back to the 1990s fossil fuel industry playbook.
Resolution 12, which falls under the “environmental stewardship and emissions reduction” area of the policy discussion, will “recognize the importance of CO2 to life and Alberta’s prosperity.”
In approving the resolution, the UCP resolved to abandon the province’s net zero targets, remove the designation of CO2 as a pollutant, and further “recognize that CO2 is a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth.”
“We must prioritize policies that protect our economy and our way of life. CO2 is an essential nutrient for mass, driving growth and boosting plant production. According to the CO2 Coalition, higher CO2 levels have led to healthier crops and improved food security worldwide,” said a UCP member speaking in favour of the policy who cited the notorious CO2 Coalition.
The resolution passed by a wide majority.
UCP members vote in favor of Resolution 12. Credit: Danielle Paradis
A member who spoke against the bill, saying that just like like someone can drink too much water and experience water poisoning, too much CO2 can be bad. He was booed by the crowd.
The policy discussion took place in Red Deer, Alberta, where 6,085 UCP members and observers debated 33 policy resolutions at their annual general meeting. Earlier in the day, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith pledged to “triple down” on conservative priorities, including further expanding oil production and attacking Canadian climate policies.
As severaloutlets have reported previously, Resolution 12 flies in the face of the scientific consensus on climate change, and the party’s rationale for the resolution states a widely debunked claim that “the Earth needs more CO2 to support life and to increase plant yields.”
Carbon dioxide is the gas principally responsible for exacerbating the greenhouse effect, the consequence of which is global warming. Whereas carbon is a foundational building block of life on Earth, carbon dioxide is an asphyxiating gas whose atmospheric proportions are so high they’re disrupting the normal function of the carbon cycle.
The resolution was submitted by the members of the legislative assembly (MLA) representing the provincial ridings of Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock (Glenn van Dijken), and Red Deer-South (Jason Stephan).
The argument that carbon dioxide is a “gas of life” has been a common yet easily refutable talking point popularized by climate change deniers and other right-wing extremists. One such group, the anti-wind energy group Wind Concerns, referred to carbon dioxide as a “gas of life” in an interview with DeSmog last year. Their leader, Mark Mallett, took credit for contributing to the anti-renewable energy moratorium instituted by Alberta UCP Premier Danielle Smith.
Climate scientists have long confirmed that increased CO2 in the atmosphere does not, as climate change deniers insist, create better growing conditions for plants.
The argument that carbon dioxide is beneficial for the environment appears to have first been made by the Greening Earth Society (GES) in the mid-late 1990s. GES was a creation of the Western Fuels Association, and it was later determined the two groups were one and the same. GES published the World Climate Report, a non-academic and non-peer-reviewed journal that served as a platform for climate change denial. They were transparent in acknowledging their funding from fossil fuel companies, and appear to have originated several talking points now common amongst climate change deniers, including those that advocate for increased atmospheric carbon dioxide, which would result in faster plant growth and greater agricultural yields.
In the “rationale” section of the resolution, the United Conservative Party document argues that “CO2 is a nutrient foundational to all life on Earth.”
While plants need both light and carbon dioxide to thrive, the over-supply of CO2 in recent decades is leading to plants being deprived of their nutrients. One biologist was quoted in a 2017 Politico article describing this as akin to “the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history,” and that injection is diluting the nutrients in the food supply.
While the resolution notes that the “carbon cycle is a biological necessity,” it doesn’t appear the resolution’s sponsors are aware that increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere throws the carbon cycle off balance. This is precisely what’s causing the climate emergency: too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere combined with the destruction of natural carbon storage is destroying the carbon cycle as we know it. The proposed resolution is as contradictory as it is scientifically illiterate.
The resolution also states that current CO2 levels are around 420 PPM, which is described as being “near the lowest level in over 1000 years.” Where this idea comes from is not clear, but it is not supported by verifiable scientific evidence. To the contrary, CO2 levels were 34 percent lower than today in the year 1024, at about 280 PPM. CO2 levels have climbed steadily since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, though they have grown most aggressively since 1950. NASA estimates that, despite wide fluctuations over time, CO2 levels had not exceeded 300 PPM over the last 800,000 years, but have stayed above that level since 1950.
The argument that more CO2 will support life, increase yields, and “contribute to the health and prosperity of all Albertans” — as stated in the resolution — is not supported by scientific evidence. The opposite is a far likelier outcome. As the principal driver of the climate crisis and global warming, increasing CO2 levels will exacerbate droughts, wildfires, and floods, among other disasters, in turn resulting in loss of life and major disruptions to global supply chains. The consequent economic disturbances and their aftereffects will worsen the affordability crisis and result in increasingly negative economic outcomes for all, not just Albertans. Rather than stimulate Alberta’s agricultural sector, climate change will destroy it, and the evidence this is already happening is quite clear.
Another policy resolution is focused on the provincial government’s “scrap the cap” program. The policy builds on a previous resolution to repeal the carbon tax and instead: “Prohibit any consumer carbon tax or carbon pricing scheme or carbon cap and trade system from being implemented in Alberta.”
The resolution also proposes to support “any federal or interprovincial government’s efforts to “axe the tax” (the federal conservative campaign) by eliminating the federal carbon pricing backstop from being imposed on Albertans and Canadians.”
Other resolutions over the weekend have focused on print-based identification, and a requirement for in-person voting “to deal with all the voter fraud.”
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer giving a speech during the Interpol General Assembly, at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, November 4, 2024
ILLEGAL migration is a security threat equivalent to terrorism, the Prime Minister said today as he aped Tory rhetoric.
Pouring cash and hardline language at the problem, Sir Keir Starmer announced an extra £75 million to police Britain’s borders.
Speaking at the global policing organisation Interpol’s conference in Glasgow, Sir Keir said that “people smuggling should be viewed as a global security threat similar to terrorism.”
The new Border Security Command Labour is establishing would “treat people smugglers like terrorists,” he pledged.
…
Government presentation of the question appeared inflammatory, as the Downing Street press release for the Prime Minister’s speech headlined “national security threat.”
Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union general secretary Fran Heathcote said: “While we welcome the government’s commitment to tackle people smugglers, the best way to deal with deaths in the Channel is to adopt our Safe Passage policy that would create a safe and legal route for refugees to come to the UK and here begin their asylum claim.”
Small boat crossings are presently on the rise, with more than 27,500 people having made the dangerous passage across the Channel so far this year, more than in the same period in 2023.
Cuba is in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis, and October’s widespread power outages are only adding to the Cuban people’s troubles. For the last six decades, Cuba has been on the receiving end of myriad sanctions by the United States government. This blockade has proved devastating to human life.
Reporting on Cuba’s blackouts have either omitted or paid brief lip-service to the effects of US sanctions on the Cuban economy, and how those sanctions have created the conditions for the crisis. Instead, media have focused on the inefficient and authoritarian Communist government as the cause of the island’s troubles.
Pulping the economy
Michael Galant (The Hill, 1/5/24): “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves for association with ‘a sponsor of terror.’”
One of President Donald Trump’s final acts in office was to re-designate Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, after President Barack Obama had removed them from the list in 2015 as a part of his Cuban thaw. Inclusion on the list subjects a country to restrictions on US foreign aid and financing, but, more importantly, the SSoT list encourages third-party over-compliance with sanctions. “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves,” The Hill (1/5/24) reported.
Trump reportedly added Cuba to the list for harboring members of FARC and ELN, two left-wing Colombian armed movements. However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro later “noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks,” the Intercept (12/14/23) wrote. Indeed, if Cuba deported the dissidents, they would have been in violation of the protocols of the peace talks, which they were bound to by international law (The Nation, 2/24/23).
President Joe Biden has not begun the process of reviewing Cuba’s inclusion on the list, despite his campaign promises to the contrary.
The terror designation, plus the many other sanctions imposed by Trump and continued by Biden, are no small potatoes. Ed Augustin wrote at Drop Site (10/1/24) that
the terror designation, together with more than 200 sanctions enacted against the island since Obama left office, has pulped the Cuban economy by cutting revenue to the struggling Cuban state…. The combined annual cost of the Trump/Biden sanctions, [economists] say, amounts to billions of dollars a year.
Augustin argued that the economic warfare regime is a root cause of the rolling blackouts, water shortages and mass emigration that have plagued Cuba in recent years. Even imports that are ostensibly exempt from sanctions, like medication, are caught in the dragnet as multinational companies scramble to cut ties with the island. Banks are so reluctant to run afoul of US sanctions, Augustin wrote, “that often, even when the state can find the money to buy, and a provider willing to sell, there’s simply no way of making the payment.”
Cuba’s pariah status as a SSoT has put a stranglehold on its economy, and its government’s ability to administer public services. However, US restrictions on Cuba are almost never mentioned in US coverage, and reporting on the recent blackouts is no exception.
Cash-strapped Communists
Reuters (10/10/19): “Tougher US sanctions against Cuba have led international banks to avoid transactions involving the island, while prospective overseas investors put plans on hold.”
Coverage has emphasized the inability of Cuba’s government to pay for necessary fuel imports. The New York Times (10/19/24) reported “the strapped Communist government could barely afford” to pay for fuel. Elsewhere, the Times (10/18/24) claimed “a severe economic crisis and the cash crunch it produced made it harder for Cuba to pay for those fuel imports.”
The Washington Post (10/18/24) made broadly similar arguments, chalking the blackouts up to “a shortage of imported oil and the cash-strapped government’s insufficient maintenance of the creaky grid.”
The “cash crunch” referenced by the Times is not just the result of an abstract economic crisis, as is implied. Instead, it is a direct effect of US sanctions on financial institutions. During the Obama administration, European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, were fined to the tune of over $10 billion for transacting with Cuba (Jacobin, 3/27/22). Even before Cuba was choked further as a result of their SSoT designation, reporting by Reuters (10/10/19) showed the extent to which banks were terminating operations with Cuba and Cuban entities:
Many Western banks have long refused Cuba-related business for fear of running afoul of US sanctions and facing hefty fines.… Panama’s Multibank shut down numerous Cuba-related accounts this year and European banks are restricting clients associated with Cuba to their own nationals, if that.…
Businessmen and diplomats said large French banks, including Societe Generale, no longer want anything to do with Cuba, and some are stopping payments to pensioners living on the Caribbean island.… For the first time in years, the island has had problems financing the upcoming sugar harvest. Various joint venture projects, from golf resorts to alternative energy, are finding it nearly impossible to obtain private credit.
This de-risking by financial institutions manufactures a cash-scarce economy. Cuba’s inability to procure cash for imports is not a function of financial mismanagement, or a lack of credit-worthiness. Instead, it is a deliberate effect of American foreign policy. By omitting the actions of the most powerful government on earth, mainstream coverage allows only that only Cuban failures could be the cause of a shortage of cash.
‘Terrorism’ cuts off tourism
Britain’s ambassador to Cuba told the Telegraph (11/6/23), “Those who come are profoundly shocked at what the SSOT designation is doing to the people here.”
Cuba has historically used tourism as a way of bringing money into the economy, but lately the Cuban tourism industry has been severely depressed. The explanation employed by corporate media for the decline of this industry is to blame the extended effects of the pandemic recession (New York Times, 10/19/24; Washington Post, 10/18/24).
This explanation, however, is incomplete. Cuba has indeed had a lackluster rebound in their tourism industry, but the Times and the Post fail to explain why Cuba has faltered while other Caribbean islands have more than re-achieved their pre-pandemic tourist numbers.
Travelers from Britain, Australia, Japan and 37 other countries do not need to procure a visa for travel to the United States. Instead, they can use ESTA, an electronic visa waiver. This greatly reduces the cost and the annoyance of obtaining permission to visit the US. However, since Cuba’s 2021 listing as a SSoT, any visit to the country by an ESTA passport-holder revokes the visa waiver, for life (Telegraph, 11/6/23). In other words, any Brit (or Kiwi, or Korean, and so on) who visits Cuba must, for the rest of their lives, visit a US embassy and pay $180 before being able to enter the United States. US policy, not a Covid hangover, is hamstringing any possibility of a resurgence in tourism to Cuba.
Blame game
During Cuba’s most recent energy crisis, the New York Times published three stories describing the blackouts. Two of these stories mention the US blockade only as something that the Cuban government blames for the crisis.
The New York Times (10/21/24) presented the idea that the US is punishing Cuba’s economy as a Communist allegation: “The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration.”
The headline on the Times website (10/21/24) read: “A Nationwide Blackout, Now a Hurricane. How Much Can Cuba Endure?” The paper was right to report on the humanitarian crisis ongoing in Cuba, but it chose to downplay the most important root cause: the decades-long US blockade on Cuba’s economy and its people.
That same story described Cuba as “a Communist country long accustomed to shortages of all kinds and spotty electrical service.” Why is the country so used to shortages? Eleven paragraphs later, the Times gave an explanation, or at least, Cuba’s explanation:
The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration, which severely restricts the Cuban government’s cash flow. The US Department of the Treasury blocks tankers that have delivered oil to Cuba, which drives up the island’s fuel costs, because Cuba has a limited pool of suppliers available to it.
Earlier coverage by the Times (10/18/24) similarly couched the effects of the blockade as merely a claim by Cuba. The Washington Post (10/22/24) also situated the blockade as something that “the Cuban government and its allies blame” for the ongoing crisis.
To report that Cuban officials blame the US sanctions for the energy crisis is a bit like reporting that fishermen blame the moon for the rising tide. It is of course factual that US trade restrictions–which affect not just US businesses, but also multinational businesses based in other countries–are a blunt weapon, with impact against not just a government, but an entire people.
At the very least, it is incumbent upon journalists to do at least minimal investigation and explanation of the facts concerning the subject of their reporting. None of the coverage in either major paper bothered to investigate whether this was a fair explanation, or even to report generally the effects a 60-year blockade might have on an economy.
Brief—and buried
“Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors,” the New York Times (10/19/24) reported; 18 paragraphs later, the story gets around to mentioning US sanctions.
On October 19, the Times gave its most complete explanation of the relationship between the US sanctions regime and the Cuban blackouts:
Cuba’s economy enjoyed a brief honeymoon with the United States during the Obama administration, which sought to normalize relations after decades of hostility, while keeping a longstanding economic embargo in place. President Donald J. Trump reversed course, leading to renewed restrictions on tourism, visas, remittances, investments and commerce.
This explanation can be found in the 31st paragraph of the 37-paragraph story. Only once the Times has painted a picture of all the ways the Communist government has gone wrong can there be a brief mention of the role of US sanctions. And how brief it is; the Times chose not to detail the extent of blockade against Cuba, nor how Cuba was wrongfully placed on the SSoT list, nor the failure of Biden to reevaluate Cuba’s status as he promised on the campaign trail.
Describing the US starvation of Cuba’s economy in abstract terms like “economic crisis” provides cover for deliberate policy decisions by the US government. By reporting on the embargo only as something that the Cuban government claims, it is easy for readers to dismiss that explanation as simply a Communist excuse. Instead of asking why the United States is choosing to enforce a crippling sanctions regime on another country, outlets like the New York Times find it easier to repeat the line that Cuba’s government has only itself to blame for its problems.
FAIR’s work is sustained by our generous contributors, who allow us to remain independent. Donate today to be a part of this important mission.
