Climate Change

Don Cockburn | Mar 17, 2021

Perhaps the Frontenac News feels obliged to present “both sides” of the issue of human-induced climate change, but why do so by publishing a letter like the one from Edward Kennedy in your issue of March 11? Mr. Kennedy complains of “misrepresentation” and then presents us with exaggerated statistics, from an unnamed “expert”, about the extent of the alternative enegy infrastructure required to bring carbon emissions to “net zero”. An exhaustive analysis by a team from Princeton University, led by Eric Larson, the university’s senior research engineer, paints a somewhat less alarming picture. The study concludes that the land area needed for the required expansion of wind and solar energy infrastructure is less than a quarter of the area cited by Mr. Kennedy. Further, in their analysis, the share of nuclear in the energy mix actually declines. 

Mr. Kennedy goes on to argue that Canada doesn’t need to do anything about climate change, because our forests absorb all the carbon we produce. This often repeated claim is simply false. For the last 15 years, due in large part to climate-related forest fires and insect infestations, Canada’s forests have emitted more carbon than they have absorbed. That’s according to the science and technology branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada.

“Net zero” by 2050 is certainly a massive undertaking, involving tradeoffs that we might all rather not have to make. Less drastic measures would now be needed, though, if action had been taken sooner to address a crisis we’ve seen coming for decades. The inordinate attention paid by the media to the “alternative facts” of people like Mr. Kennedy is partly to blame for this collective failure to act.

Don Cockburn