More Evidence That Folks Are Not Concerned About Global Warming -- January 16, 2019; BC Has Fallen Off The Rails When It Comes To Controlling Carbon Emissions; Geico Rock Award Nominee For 2019

When talking about the environment, one doesn't often see the phrase, "... has fallen off the rails." 

From oilprice:

The carbon footprint of British Columbia is growing and has been growing for the last eight years despite a strong environmentalist lobby.

The Global and Mail quotes a spokesman for the Ministry of Environment as saying British Columbia has fallen off the rails leading to the achievement of its carbon emission reduction target for 2030.

The reason for this failure has, however, nothing to do with the oil industry as such. It’s simply a question of more people driving more cars. [Well, that sort of has something to do with the oil industry.]

“We’re still living in a fossil-fuel-based economy, and we’ve experienced economic and population growth,” the Globe and Mail quoted a Simon Fraser University researcher, Mark Jaccard, as saying. “More people are driving more cars, and unless we make a significant leap towards electric vehicles, these emissions will continue to rise.”

British Columbia had a target of cutting carbon emissions by 33 percent from 2007 levels to 2020. However, the new figures reveal the province has only succeeded in cutting emissions by 2.2 percent from 2007 levels, which means the 2020 target will be pretty much unattainable unless a radical change in driving habits takes place.

Of course, it could have been much worse. Imagine if BC had actually allowed all those pipelines.

One wonders if all those faux environmentalists driving to their protest sites needed more cars? 

First nominee for the Geico Rock Award for 2019: Mark Jaccard for noting that "we are still living in a fossil-fuel-based economy."

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A Really, Really Important Question

We just spent close to ten days in the Los Alamos area of northeastern New Mexico. We saw the video on the Los Alamos laboratory. They are doing some great work there, but a lot of it certainly seemed to be "make work" projects to ensure that the US has a stable of nuclear engineers going forward.

Oilprice has an op-ed today asking whether the US can keep its nuclear industry afloat? That's a very, very good question. In addition, there's this article: France may be attempting the impossible: replacing its aging nuclear power plants with inefficient, costly, and non-dispatchable solar/wind energy projects. What will France do when (not "if") this does not work out? They will end up doing what Germany is doing: burn more coal (and wood chips from South Carolina, USA).

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Millennials Challenged

 This was a link over at Drudge today.

Suggestion: unplug the Amazon product. There is a YouTube video that has instructions on how to unplug an electrical appliance.

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Be Afraid, Very Afraid

From the poll:

Though just one-in-three voters have a favorable opinion of freshman Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, if she were old enough to run for president in 2020, she’d give President Trump a run for his money.