By Robert Girouard
As war rages in the Middle East and Ukraine, as missiles and drones claim new victims every day, and as the global order is threatened—with all the attendant consequences of human misery—a strange persistence haunts the comfy living rooms of certain remote corners of the West, tucked away warmly and safely from the turmoil. A segment of our elite, obsessed with the quest for carbon neutrality, seems indeed incapable of lookng away from its Excel spreadsheets to contemplate the human drama unfolding before its eyes.
In an article titled “When War Drives Up GHG Emissions” recently published in Montreal-based La Presse Plus, journalist Éric-Pierre Champagne poses the question that seemingly haunts climate alarmists: “Do armed conflicts like those in Iran, Ukraine, or Gaza drive up global greenhouse gas emissions? But is this pollution significant or marginal? In short, does war hinder our efforts to reach carbon neutrality?” In this scholarly exposé, where numerous experts are consulted, there is not a single word regarding the economic and human costs engendered by these conflicts; only carbon accounting holds any importance.
There is something deeply disconcerting, if not morally suspect, about seeing experts ponder the “carbon footprint” of an invasion or a bombardment. This attitude reveals an unprecedented derailment of reason: the elevation of a technical indicator—the CO2 molecule—to the rank of an absolute divinity, before which every other reality, even the most atrocious, must bow.
Morality demands a hierarchy of urgencies. Yet, the ideology of carbon neutrality operates a flattening of all values. How have we reached this stage of emotional anesthesia, where the survival of a nation or the agony of a civilian population is passed through the filter of greenhouse gas accounting? Prioritizing “net-zero” while the world tips into geopolitical brutality is not foresight; it is a form of narcissism totally disconnected from geopolitical realities and human suffering. It is the stubbornness of one who, seeing their house burning and their family trapped, worries about whether the fire trucks are electric.
War should be a wake-up call. It should remind us that heat, electricity, and the capacity for self-defense are not negotiable options in the name of climate virtue, but the very foundations of civilization. Even Germany, a champion of the energy transition, did not hesitate to reopen its coal mines to avoid freezing in winter, having suddenly rediscovered, through pain, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Those who continue to place decarbonization above basic security and human dignity demonstrate a lack of morality hidden behind the shroud of “science.” By refusing to see that peace and freedom are the prerequisites for any environmental policy, they condemn societies to helplessness.
The senseless quest for carbon neutrality at any cost, disconnected from the needs of ordinary people, has become an ideological drift that blinds us. It is time to denounce this indecency. A ton of carbon avoided will never be worth a life saved. A world freed from fossil fuels but enslaved or destroyed by violence is not progress; it is an ecological cemetery. True reason consists in admitting that there are realities greater, more urgent, and more sacred than the planet’s thermostat. War forces us to look horror in the face. Let us at least have the decency not to ask for its carbon footprint.
Sounds like one Bill Maher would have come up with.
Maybe this is themselves working out whether making war on someone to enforce carbon limits can give themselves what they want – or just make it worse?
Carbon morality – just as disgusting as many other inventions by those wanting ultimate power and pretending it’s ethics.
But I hope not.
Funny they keep using Carbon when CO2 is not C.
You fail to understand: our destruction is the goal. There is no morality involved.
You mean like those dystopian films and books (I refuse to call them sci-fi) of a devastated future, where the elites and/or rich bubble themselves off from the suffering of the world?
It’s the definition of a fanatic.
No. Reality does.
Eric-Pierre Champagne also worries about the impact on the Earth’s climate of a revival of Venezuela’s oil industry.
The nominal GDP per capita of Venezuela is currently around $3,000 (IMF via Wiki).
The aptly named Monsieur Champagne is of course Canadian where the nominal GDP per capita is currently around $58,000.
Canada’s largest single export category overwhelmingly (26%) is ‘mineral fuels, oils and distillation products’.
Go figure.
Champagne has definitely popped his cork. 🙂
Hey, that’s because there is a lot of CO2 in Champagne ! Cheers!
And if it were not for the Liberals, and their leftist allies in the media, Canada could be exporting a lot more oil/gas/minerals. Even if Canada had enabled higher exports, we know that the pollution standards would be significantly higher than almost every other exporter.
Professor Ian Plimer points out that people breathe in 0.04% CO2 and breathe out 4% CO2. If climate crazies are so worried about the war, there is an obvious solution for them. As for the Donald, keep getting those tankers through the Straits of Hormuz. The Australian government has been totally derelict in planning for any form of disaster and are now running around like headless chooks, trying to find someone, anyone to blame except for themselves. Technically Australia remains a democracy except we are now being running by bureaucrats who have even less clue and are possible more incompetent than our politicians and that takes effort to be so bad.
Climate Alarmists are Indifferent to reality and evidence……
So how much did the two “gulf wars,” the Afganistan, and the Ukrainian conflicts change the CO2 measured on Mauna Loa? What was that? Oh, not even a blip?
Evidence? we don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!
The main TV news in New Zealand is running a story tonight that the last eleven years have been the hottest in earth’s history but not sure where the story eminated from, Any ideas anyone? Also ice at its lowest level ever.
That these carrots do not think of lives lost and worse indicates their mental state.
Trump could stop ALL this in a day, but he won’t. He is wholly epsteinisruled.
We’re all Epsteined out, man. The lefties have been trying to use Epstein to “get Trump” for months. And, do you think that Trump could stop everything in a day? He could stop the bombings, but the killings of political dissidents would continue and ferociously increase. What then?
Or they accelerate society toward NetZero. No people means NetZero has been achieved.
Iran is hell bent on achieving NetZero for the USA. Isn’t that what a lot of people in the US voted for and still want. Trump is only taking out Iranian clerics. The clerics want to annihilate all US citizens. Surely the latter gets closer to NetZero than what Trump is aiming for.
Australia has shifted its climate guru into the role of fossil fuel guru in charge of finding fuel supply. Surely it is easier for her to just stop agriculture and transport and claim NetZero victory. Just bought the goal posts closer. What is not to like about that.
Trump seems to be taking out the odd school along with the Iranian clerics.
So the Iranian clerics are in on taking out the odd school too? Thanks for that.
So what Trump ran around and bombed a school and some Iranian clerics?
You might want to clarify exactly what you are claiming because Trump clearly did none of those things.
So you ignorantly assume it was planned. You also ignorantly fail to understand that unfortunate things happen in wars that were not planned. Perhaps you should point your hatred towards the mullahs who have been screaming to destroy Israel and America – but you won’t with your TDS and fear of the new Satan, CO2.
This has been debunked a zillion times, it wasn’t a US cruise missile — it was a Russian/Soviet device fired off by the mullahocracy.
I heard it was a US attack that was based on bad intel. That doesn’t mean it was done on purpose. But apparently there are people who think war should be perfect only on one side.
The video shows a missile impacting from a steep angle, unlike a cruise. Position of the fins gave away its origin.
But wait, it gets worse. Climate Change is causing more wars, releasing even more evil Carbon, causing more Climate Change, and round and round we go, with the result being Total Planetary Destruction. We’re doomed I tells ya, doomed.
I have my beer and popcorn ready for the closing act.
When you’re so fixated on one thing that nothing else matters, that’s when you’re in a cult.
A lady in line at the bank on Saturday state in clear, unambiguous terms, the MAGA is a cult.
I was under the impression that MAGA was an idea, a policy.
When and where can I attend a meeting of this “cult?”
Unbelievably crass.
What is wrong with these Climate Zealots? Are they mad? Are they completely divorced from humanity?
Yes.
Valid points, except the goal is to implement The Population Bomb limits and that means a lot of people have to die and we should turn a blind eye to that program.
It is not my goal and I oppose it.
It is because they think that banning “carbon” is the main and best tool to effect The Revolution (and soak the rich) and that is the most important thing to them, all else is just too bad as leftists do not care.
Very nice. I can’t wrap my head around the other side. They are loaded with wealth, power, academics, science, education and still they chase fairy tales. It gives all of the above a black eye.