Hugh Mackenzie is taking a break this week.
By Hugh Holland
The Emperor Has No Clothes originates from a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, in which a vain emperor is tricked by two swindlers who promise to make him a set of clothes that are invisible to anyone who is unfit for office or is stupid. In today’s context, the emperor is Donald Trump, and the swindlers are a few very selfish oil company billionaires.
As Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times, “The American people elected a man who is taking us to a future not of ‘America first,’ but of ‘America alone,’ and ‘Me first.’”
Trump is no better than Putin. Both are fighting the wrong battle with NO STRATEGY beyond winning. Both are delusional about humanity’s battle with climate change. If they win in the short-term, what have they won? They would have won a slightly bigger piece of a world that is quickly being torn apart by climate change. And they will have lost the respect of the entire world. And how many other casualties have they already incurred?
The USA already has the world’s highest insurance payments for severe climate events, and the world’s highest number of related insurance cancellations.
This chart shows that the impact of global warming on ocean temperatures, which drive global weather events, is now at its highest point ever. And it won’t stop there.
According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), during the 2024 US election, 123 Republican members of the 118th Congress identified as climate change deniers. These members collectively received over $52 million (averaging $422,000 each) from the fossil-fuel industry. Multiple reports show industry spending from $219 million to $450 million supporting Donald Trump and Republican candidates.
For about a century, U.S. federal law prohibited direct corporate donations to election candidates, and this is still technically true today. Based on investigative reporting, what changed after the Koch network’s lobbying push was not the ban itself, but the creation of massive loopholes (via Citizens United and related rulings) that allowed corporations to spend unlimited money independently to influence elections. This makes the U.S. far more permissive than other democracies, even though the original ban technically still exists.
Fossil fuels have been both a blessing and a curse. Since the 1800s, they powered extraordinary growth in industrialization, transportation, and global trade. But fossil fuels are also unevenly distributed, geopolitically volatile, and environmentally costly.
There are now two important reasons to reduce the use of fossil fuels: 1) to prevent fast-increasing climate change, and 2) to prevent energy shortages by replacing fossil fuels well before finite supplies are used up. Which reason is the most urgent?
Climate change is the more urgent reason. Climate impacts are unfolding right now, not in some distant future. The consequences — heatwaves, wildfires, floods, rising sea levels, ecosystem collapse —are accelerating on a timescale of years to decades. Every tonne of CO₂ added to the atmosphere worsens the problem and is largely irreversible.
We’re already past safe thresholds of warming, and the window to avoid the worst outcomes is rapidly closing. Feedback loops (melting ice, methane release, forest dieback) can make warming self-reinforcing. Delaying action now locks in centuries of consequences, because CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for a very long time. The damage is non-linear: each additional bit of warming causes disproportionately more harm.
Fossil fuels are finite, but the timeline for running out is measured in decades to centuries, depending on the resource. The world is unlikely to suddenly “run out”; instead, extraction becomes more expensive over time, with oil prices rising from $60/bbl (barrels) in 2025 to $120/bbl by 2050 with rapid electrification, to $300/bbl with slow electrification. The main risk is economic disruption, not planetary destabilization.
But climate change is a near-term planetary emergency that turns fossil fuel replacement into an urgent necessity. The energy solutions now available are technically and economically viable, but implementationis far too slow. Current pledges still put the world on track for ~2.4 to 2.7°C warming by 2050, far above the 1.5°C Paris target signed in 2015 by 195 countries. Places like China, Costa Rica, and the EU are now leading the world in a positive direction, but getting to Net-Zero by 2050 will require the 12 top-emission countries, including Canada, to more than double their efforts. Science has shown beyond any doubt that by 2050, humanity will be experiencing, at great cost, how critical each tenth of a degree of global warming is to our planet and our societies.
Hugh Holland is a retired engineering and manufacturing executive now living in Huntsville, Ontario.
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I’m not sure if this commentary is meant to inform, or if it’s just another Doppler rant against Trump. Let’s assume the main message is about climate change. I think climate change is a scam, and here’s the reasons.
The commentary talks about rising sea levels. If this is a concern, why are the millionaires still build luxury mansions by the ocean. Obama is a prime example of that. He’s obviously not worried about rising sea levels. The commentary talks about forest fires, yet the RCMP has confirmed that by far the majority of Canadian forest fires last year were man-made, made worse by poor forestry management. Nothing to do with climate change despite the message our government tries to have us believe. Here’s part of the problem. For 10 years our government has lied to us. They talked about electoral reform when they had no intention of doing it. They talked about a virus that came from a bat when in fact it was made in a lab. They talked about a vaccine that would stop us from getting covid, and stop us transmitting covid. Neither was true. They told us it was safe and effective. A lie. They old us the ‘science’ supported travel bans. Another lie. There were so many lies. The Liberal government has lied to us consistently for 10 years. They also captured the media, who dutifully regurgitated the government message. Nothing they say has any credibility. Now, we all witness how our skies are constantly being sprayed with who knows what, The government is endorsing geoengineering, cloud seeding and weather modification, and refusing to tell us why, what’s in the chemicals they are spraying and what effect it’s having on our environment. Did we get to vote on that? They re altering our weather, yet we’re all supposed to believe our unusual weather patterns are due to climate change. Sure they are. Our government has no credibility. None. So now, along comes Carney, a man obsessed with his green energy plan and we’re all supposed to believe what he says and be willingly pay for his self-serving agenda. We’ve had decades of gloomy catastrophic climate predictions. None have been true. It’s time to wake up.
Some of the following is based on a post from an Australian group. I’ve included it because it provides a very realistic view of this climate change scam.
‘In 2006, Al Gore stood before millions and painted a picture of catastrophe. Citing climate scientists, he warned the world that the Arctic ice cap could be completely gone in summer months as soon as 2014—maybe even 2013. His film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 2007, was even played in schools as some kind of mandatory conditioning program. Teachers dimmed the lights. Children watched glaciers cave into the sea and went home afraid to turn on lights, convinced their carbon footprint might tip the scale.
Governments reacted. Carbon taxes were introduced, renewable-energy mandates popped up everywhere, entire industries were restructured, and trading desks made billion-dollar bets on a future without Arctic ice.
2013 came. The ice remained. 2014 came. Still there.
No press conference. No acknowledgment. Just new predictions, new deadlines pushed further out.
It’s now 2026. Almost twenty years have passed since the grim prediction, and the Arctic isn’t ice-free. In fact, in 2024 it had 890,000 square kilometers more ice than in 2012. Now scientists explain it away: “ocean currents were weaker,” “natural variations,” “20% chance of this happening.” Always an explanation after the fact. Never accountability for the prediction before it. Gore’s net worth when he made the film? Around $2 million. Today? Over $300 million—climate consulting, green investment funds, speaking fees of $100,000+ per appearance. The failed predictions made him rich.
In June 2018, a teenage girl shared an article: “A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” Five years. That meant 2023.
Greta Thunberg was a relative nobody then. But the conveniently apocalyptic prediction became gospel. She addressed the UN, met world leaders, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize while governments accelerated green mandates.
2023 came. Humanity persisted.
And quietly, between March 7 and March 13, 2023, the original article (and references to the five-year claim) disappeared from the internet. No explanation. No accountability.
She was 15 when the claim went viral. But watch how quickly she learned the game. By 20, she was lecturing world leaders. By 21, she’d built a brand worth millions. The failed prediction didn’t hurt her; Time Magazine declared her Person of the Year in 2019.
This is the system teaching the next generation how it works.
But here’s the pattern you’re not supposed to notice
Elite authority makes catastrophic prediction. Media amplifies without question. Prediction demands immediate sacrifice from ordinary people. Society restructures; costs imposed on the working and middle class. Elites profit from the restructuring. Prediction fails. No consequences for elites. Same authorities make new predictions. Rinse, spin dry, repeat.
Every single time, the people who make the predictions get richer. Every single time, the people forced to comply get poorer. You can’t fire the UN climate panel. You can’t sue Al Gore for the money your pension fund lost by investing in green energy. But they can make another prediction tomorrow. And each time, you’ll be told: comply or face consequences. When they’re wrong, they face nothing.
The game is rigged They’ve discovered the perfect con: Make apocalyptic predictions. Demand sacrifice. Profit from the compliance. When the apocalypse doesn’t come, make a new prediction. The only people who ever pay are the ones who either complied or refused to comply.
This is about power maintaining itself—a class of people who have insulated themselves from consequences while ensuring everyone else absorbs maximum risk.
It’s time to stop playing along. This only works when everyone is complicit and doesn’t demand accountability.’
Our focus should not be on Trump, it should be on Carney and the climate change con he’s trying to pull on Canadians. Remember,, they’ve lied to us for years, it’s not suddenly different. The Emperor’s New Clothes is a poor analogy. A more appropriate line would be about Chicken Little Carney.