I am Groot

You make it seem as though it were a relatively simple matter to buy something that isn't from China. In many categories, it's extremely difficult. I've tried. Whether it's shoes or sound bars you find one after another after another that would be perfect and then discover they're from China and have to keep looking. You need to have both excess time and excess money to afford the luxury of avoiding Chinese products. I mean, even most of the ingredients that go into our prescription and other drugs come from China. That's where the drugs themselves aren't manufactured there.

Interesting topic. Or it would be if anyone was talking about it instead of hurling abuse at each other over interest rates and coffee. With regard to electricity costs we can see Ontario as a guide there. The Liberals, under Trudeau mentor Gerry Butts, went all-in on green energy and doubled energy rates. The Trudeau plan is not going to increase energy costs 'slightly' but 'massively'. The Conference Board of Canada has pegged the cost at transforming the electric grid in the short period Trudeau has allowed at approximately $1.7 trillion. Someone has to pay for that. With regard to taxing 'the rich', Canada taxes the 'well off', not the rich. Our highest tax bracket is higher than that of the Americans and begins to apply at less than half the salary. And then there's the point of all this. The reason why we should all make sacrifices and let our economy deteriorate. That's so Trudeau can stand on a podium, hands on hips, head back, smirk in place, while the climate crowd rains accolades on his head. Anyone who images there is any other purpose to it doesn't understand either science or economics. Or, for that matter, basic arithmetic.

I'll just pop this little item in here to show how terrified authorities are of running afoul of the trans lobby. So terrified they basically won't enforce orders on pedophiles to stay away from children if they claim they're 'trans'. https://reduxx.info/exclusive-trans-woman-confronted-by-mother-in-swimming-pool-locker-room-is-a-convicted-pedophile/

We are told climate change is a crisis, and that there is an “overwhelming scientific consensus.” “It’s a manufactured consensus,” climate scientist Judith Curry tells me. She says scientists have an incentive to exaggerate risk to pursue “fame and fortune.” She knows about that because she once spread alarm about climate change. https://nypost.com/2023/08/09/climate-scientist-admits-the-overwhelming-consensus-is-manufactured/?utm_source=reddit.com

Canada absolutely can't build more housing without more immigrants! Immigrants are building these houses! Which, if it were true (Hint: it's not) would mean we have to bring in ever more immigrants in order to build the houses needed by ever more immigrants! But of course, it's not actually true. We're bringing in virtually NO skilled tradesmen. https://globalnews.ca/news/9890682/housing-shortage-canada-immigration-targets/

On the other hand, at least when you stick a needle in them you don't have to worry about them being allowed out to maybe do it again. https://www.ckom.com/2023/08/08/violent-offenders-day-parole-extended-due-to-good-behaviour/

Another perspective on carbon emissions... In a forest-rich large underpopulated country like Canada, there are 318 billion trees that use 7.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide as food each year. Canadians release 545 million tons of carbon dioxide each year from fossil-fuel burning, smelting and cement manufacture. Canada is already at net zero. Canadians pay tax for the carbon dioxide they release. https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/06/earth-is-already-at-net-zero/

This is coming from a guy who fumed and fulminated and repeatedly demanded an apology after I made a statement of common knowledge and said 'you know this'. And when I laughed at him put me on ignore! ?

These days it appears to be a kind of derisive, dismissive insult from someone who believes himself vastly superior to those he or she is arguing with. Usually used by those who are quite liberal in their thinking toward those who are - not.

Willing to bet he voted Liberal in just about every election since he was born - except a few where he voted NDP.

No, it actually isn't. The places where it's happening are places that have given up on strong policing and harsh sentences like Canada, the US and UK. Riiight. Those silly conservatives! They don't really care about crime or injustice! Because everything is perfect in a Liberal world! They're just nitpicking! Just doing it to have something to complain about. Why, everyone knows life is perfect in Trudeau's Canada.

And this is why there will not be any lowering of carbon emissions in our lifetimes. Too many of those behind the effort are as or more interested in social and economic equality for developing countries as they are in actual carbon reductions. They love deals like the Paris Accords because all the work has to be done by the evil West, which must also pay hundreds of billions to the developing world to do nothing. In essence, these agreements are nothing but big economic redistribution schemes under the guise of global warming.

The excuses given by Miller and his predecessors are all nonsense. We have no overall labour shortage except among low-skilled workers, according to Stats Canada. And even that is largely a result of employers not feeling the need to raise wages or make any accommodations for what they continue to claim are scarce human resources. If they were really having trouble they'd be doing something about it other than bribing Liberal cabinet ministers to keep raising immigration and foreign worker numbers. We're bringing in millions of third-world people to do low-skilled jobs that AI is soon going to largely eliminate. What do we do with them then? Carry them on welfare for the rest of their lives? Most of our violent criminals are already immigrants or their kids. How much worse do the Liberals want the crime rate to get anyway?

Crime continues to rise, especially violent crime, under the weepy hand-wringing supervision of the Liberal Party. Most of it is coming from repeat offenders who ought to be spending long periods of time in prison but who walk the streets thanks to the Trudeau government's bleeding heart policies. Despite every provincial premier and every police chief begging them to change their ridiculous soft as butter policies the Trudeau Liberals continue to embrace a hug-a-thug approach to crime. They keep making it harder for legal gun owners even as shootings double under their watch. Why? Simple. Most of the violent criminals are not white. The idea of putting lots of non-white people in prison horrifies Trudeau and his liberal acolytes. They've softened sentencing, bail and parole for everyone, but especially for anyone who can claim to be 'oppressed' by 'systemic racism'. Thus the people who are most violent get the lowest sentences. Laws which 'disproportionately impact people of color' (ie, laws where a hugely disproportionate number of those arrested and convicted aren't white) are looked at from the perspective of people who see all statistical inequality between racial/cultural groups as nothing more than the byproduct of racism. There is, after all, no room for personal responsibility in the Liberal worldview, especially if you can claim membership in a protected identity group. Whichever way you frame it, Canada is facing a crime wave that is unlike anything in its recent history. While there have been bloodier years in Canada’s past, the country has never quite encountered violence that has been so anarchic, so ubiquitous, and so easily preventable. In the words of Chief McFee, “without question, we are at a crossroads in Canada.” The violence is “not an anomaly being experienced by a few metropolitan communities.” https://archive.li/xoQBU

Always good to hear from a representative of the 'woke'.

Everyone assumed those silly college kids indoctrinated with identity politics would change once they got out into the real world and came up against the harsh realities of an unforgiving corporate world. Instead, it was the corporate world that adjusted to THEM. How did Disney get in so much trouble in Florida? Some of its younger staff protested and demanded they take a stand. So they did. Costing the company a fortune. Whether it's Bud light or Nike, or publishing houses that now don't dare publish anything that hasn't been thoroughly screened by sensitivity readers, the corporate world has bowed to the loud twitter mob, terrified of their wrath. Some of them, in fact, have joined that mob, probably because they feel more secure if they can pretend to be among it than worrying about facing it. You had shrieking, sobbing employees demanding big publishers refuse to publish books by Jordan Peterson and JK Rowling. And rather than firing them the publishers sympathized with them! They still published the books, though, but that's because they were by Peterson and Rowling. Tons of other books by lesser names have been dumped because the politics of publishers is now hard left. It's the same in media. Creative types have always leaned left. Now they lean even more, whether it's those who approve new TV shows and movies, or advertising. I mean, Disney, which has already had a string of expensive duds this year, is coming out with a live-action Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. But Snow White isn't white, she has no interest in being saved by a prince, and there are no dwarves... I'm betting this will be another bomb. Their stock has dropped from $187 to $86 but they keep making these politically correct identity politics shows...

Oh, of course, it has! There have been a number of periods in Earth's history when the artic was entirely ice-free. And temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period were several degrees hotter than now. Humans are a very adaptable species. We'll figure it out eventually. Yes. But we're looking at a long timespan anyway. Nothing we do now will be detectable for forty years or so. It takes that long to have a noticeable impact on something as massive as the climate. And there's no way we're not going to continue to increase global CO2 emissions for at least the next twenty or thirty years regardless of what Canada does.

You need to stop paying attention to the climate hysterics. Earth is never going to be that hot, or even too hot for humans to comfortably live on. As for contributing to the condition, well, I'm game if everyone else is. So far over 150 of the countries on Earth have said "Nahhh" to reducing their emissions. Which renders it a pointless exercise. Eventually, we'll have nuclear fusion and that should start eliminating fossil fuels as power sources.

I don't know, Oh Unwise One. But what I do know is that whatever happens, we'll be better able to handle it with a robust economy and money in the bank than sputtering along deep in debt.

Came across this just now. There's been a lot of reports about how climate change is behind all our fires, not to mention everything else. No one seems to say why, though. It hasn't been a particularly hot summer where I am, and apparently, it hasn't been all that hot elsewhere in Canada either.

I don't recall ridiculing anything. I will certainly point out how pointless it is to spend massive amounts of money to no gain, however. Apparently, you don't know of anything we can do that will actually make a difference either. You just want to spend the money on pretending we're doing so.

Sure we do. We adapt to more drought in certain areas, more fires in others, higher tides, stronger storms. Perhaps, in the far future. But so far no one has come up with anything we actually CAN do. Spending literally trillions of dollars to lower our already low CO2 emissions isn't going to make a damn bit of difference to global warming while hundreds of coal mines are going up around the world. All it will do is make us too poor to spend the money needed to adapt. Our environment isn't going to be destroyed. It will still be quite liveable. Just not in certain areas.

I don't know. Adaptation has the benefit that it actually works and that it will actually help you and your organization whereas reducing carbon emissions produces no noticeable benefit.