Canada Swearing off CARBON is like Charlie Sheen Swearing off SEX !

The rollicking sitcom known as “Canada’s Carbon Policies” keeps unfolding into ever more hilarious plot lines and comedy twists. Here’s the basic premise of this made-in-Canada series: How long can a nation continue to pump out carbon emissions while claiming to be leading the world in carbon reduction?

You gotta admit it’s a laugher of a story line. Think of Two and a Half Men, with Charlie Sheen playing a character who claims to be swearing off sex while simultaneously jumping into bed with every woman he meets. That’s the hilarious contradiction at the core of Canada’s Carbon Policies, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau playing the lead national role. It's crazy !!!

A typical laugh line from Trudeau’s last weeks news conference announcing the approval of two pipelines came when he talked about “protecting the environment for future generations while creating good jobs and opportunity as we build the transition off fossil fuels and into a renewable future.” This was followed by these rib-tickling bits from Environment Minister Catherine McKenna: “You don’t transition overnight. We’re not

going to be off fossil fuels overnight …We are doing this together and we’re moving to a low carbon future together because it’s the right thing to do. This demonstrates our commitment to both the environment and the economy.”

Canada’s Carbon Policies, our official national sitcom of the 21^st century, Canada is swearing off sex, but to get to that state of environmental well-being, perhaps some time around 2030 or 2050, we need to have a lot more sex today. Great stuff. Many teenagers have tried the same thing over the years. New pipelines and increased fossil fuel exports will increase our ability to reduce fossil fuel use in future.

You can’t work this kind of comic situation into shape without tightly related secondary plot lines that include characters from Canada’s provinces, and what a boffo cast of double-talking performers we have across this great land. From British Columbia to Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, the walk-on laugh getters come fast and furious.

Take Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. In an interview with CBC, she said that to get off carbon-emitting oil and gas in future “we need to finance that transition” with more oil and gas production today. But don’t worry about the long term because Alberta has set an annual carbon-emission ceiling of 100 megatonnes for the oilsands. To help the oilsands and Albertans meet their carbon-reduction targets, the province plans to impose a $50-a-tonne carbon tax.

Notley plans to explain her carbon-abstinence-with-more- pipelines policy to British Columbia Premier Christy Clark (photo below right). That should be funny. Her objective, she said, is “to say to those people who link the pipeline to the issue of climate change and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions that in fact our climate change

leadership plan has very effectively de-linked those issues.”

Will Christy Clark and British Columbians fall for this line? Come to think of it, why not? If it means more sex today with a firm commitment to cut back sometime around 2050 — when many of us will be dead— what the hell.

Meanwhile, there’s a truly entertaining sub-plot taking place in Ontario. The province’s climate change minister is Glen Murray, a former mayor of Winnipeg. In Wednesday’s episode of Canada’s Carbon Policies, Murray had to respond to a report from Ontario’s auditor general, played wonderfully by Bonnie Lysyk. She said the province’s cap-and-trade carbon price regime was a laugh-riot of double-counting — $8 billion in costs to taxpayers, maybe $2.2 billion disappearing to Quebec and California — dubious government claims of emission reductions, and unrealistic or unsubstantiated assumptions about electricity pricing and other issues.

Murray’s role was to stand before everybody and, with a dead-pan delivery of his lines, act as if the auditor general’s report had totally misunderstood Ontario’s proposed carbon-trading regime. “I would like to thank the auditor general for her report,” said Murray. He hit the comic lines perfectly as he said that other reports suggest the AG was off her rocker and had failed to grasp the full grand beauty of the province’s climate change program.

It was classic Murray. In response to the AG’s statement that up to $2.2 billion will be paid by Ontario taxpayers to Quebec and California to reward them for their carbon-reduction credits, Murray said “ministry officials do not expect this figure to rise to $2.2 billion.” But Murray didn’t say what the figure would be. Instead, like a good comic, he changed the subject. “The ministry’s expert modeling showed investments in households and businesses would grow Ontario’s economy while emissions targets are met.”

The plot gets even more rib-jabbingly funny with the arrival of climate fanatic David Suzuki. He swoops in, with his trademark trimmed beard and designer glasses, with a great line. “Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau he can’t be a climate leader, say he’s protecting oceans, and build pipelines at the same time.” What Suzuki wants is immediate abstinence so Canada can stagnant and the citizens-be-damned.

Nobody else on Canada’s Carbon Policies sitcom is ready to take up the Suzuki challenge, making it a good bet that the series is assured a long, long run.

The Way I See It.......it will be a while till this double-talking bunch of twits gets their story straight and in the mean time Canadians must wonder why they voted in such a PC pussy like Julian, especially after his over-the-top praise for that Cuban murderer, Castro.