Time for government to take real action on carbon emissions
By Lethbridge Herald on September 20, 2024.
Editor:
The federal government recently announced a plan to reduce carbon emissions by phasing out heating oil in new buildings. While a welcome step, the time for half measures such as these is far behind us. We must decarbonize heating and cooling in every home.
Heat pumps are a proven technology that could cut our emissions while keeping Canadians safe and comfortable. They could replace furnaces that are reliant on heating oil or natural gas and air conditioners that are inefficient and costly. We need a universal program to put one in every home.
It’s time for our leaders to take real action that meets the urgency of the climate catastrophe. Helping homeowners and landlords cut their heating bills while propelling our communities into a clean energy future is a step our governments can take to ensure affordability and sustainability for Canadians. It’s time to ensure we have heat pumps for all, especially those that cannot afford the capital investment up front that will give them lower utility costs for a generation.
Tom Moffatt
Lethbridge
7-6
So we have moved on from wind and solar and electric car to the next parasitical subsidized “solution”. Geez you must be running out of things to buy to save the planet. So tell us, just what has been accomplished so far. Give us some tangible evidence that that band wagon you are on is doing something other than relieving people of their income. Years ago we were at 350 ppm and now after trillions we are at 420ppm. I know I know, How bad would it have been if we hadn’t spent the trillions. A mythical answer will do!!! You have to quit believing that the planet should be static and CO2 is the knob on the thermostat.
Trillions of dollars? Trillions? Your rampant hyperbole makes the rest of your point moot. If you don’t believe in man made global warming you are living in the 19th century.
No you are. Here is where hyperbole meets the facts.
Global climate finance approached USD 1.3 trillion on annual average in 2021/2022
Note that you use your own hyperbole (19 th century) without facts. Just insults.
Yup. 19th Century – Arrhenius hypothesises on climate change. So, in fact, you would have to be in the 19th century to be legitimately ignorant of the greenhouse effect. After this date, your denial is simply buffoonery.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/jun/30/climatechange.climatechangeenvironment2
Unfortunately here on the prairies it would be quite foolish to replace your existing heating system completely with a heat pump as they do not work in extremely cold conditions, most say below -20c for a reasonably priced setup, -30c for the most expensive systems. So you need backup, typically a natural gas furnace as most people use now or wood, heating oil, or propane etc. So the real question is, since they cost 10s of thousands of dollars and will have absolutely no impact on the global or local temperature is it worth the money. I’m on the fence personally, perhaps if you have also spent 10s of thousands of dollars on a solar/battery setup to power everything and are off grid maybe it makes sense.
Good points. The Herald used to run a column by SAGE – too bad they stopped – that was pretty informative. Their website has some articles on green building and heat pumps: http://sage-environment.org/?p=640
Thank you, SophieR, for referencing our website.
We have appreciated The Herald for the opportunity to present environmental issues. They have been good supporters of the public interest.
Our website has some other analyses of green biilding (based on an hourly weather database for Lethbridge) that may be of interest. The important takeaway is that the best solutions depend on regional climate – there are few universal solutions to our many, and converging, environmental challenges.
An electric furnace is a good backup & you rarely need to use your backup. Our furnace came on for about two weeks over the last winter, the rest of the time we ran the heat pump.
80% of the time politicians lie and the other 20% they don’t speak the truth. The enjoyable part of this debate is watching self righteous Liberals accuse Conservatives of no carbon strategy (which may or may not be a partial truthful) but then they add the zinger, that with no strategy, they are allowing more fires/catastrophies like Jasper?
Last I checked we contribute a TOTALLITY of 1.27% to Global GHGs. So if a politician were to speak the truth, he/she would have to say we are responsible for 1.27% of the Jasper fire. Suddenly the BS isn’t as effective is it?
Liberals everywhere have also “redefined weather” ! Now, instead of moving about the globe unfettered, you get EcoNuts telling us, our GHGs are actually causing the Catastrophies within Canada as if stationary and ever building!
So, if the BS would stop, I think it would make for a better conversation and a plan could be developed! Running around screaming the sky is falling when we support 1.27% of the sky sounds whacko to the sane among us!
So you are still falling for the BS that Canada is only responsible for the 1.27% when it’s a well known fact that Canadians per capita are one of highest polluters in the world? Why is that so hard for you Reformers to understand?
A very well abused argument! We are a resource country, we mine metals for the world. Any resource based country will always be a higher pollution country. So, stop using aluminum, steel, plstics, chemicals etc etc and we should be just fine….what, you can’t and the world won’t? Whoda thought!
Per capita! Our geography means cold cold winters and hot summers, we can’t change that, and so we need to heat and to cool just to stay alive unlike billions of others on the planet. The only number which matters to the earth is what we produce in total. Carbon Dioxide is not pollution either it is essential to life, obviously, without it plants do not grow, oxygen is not produced, everything dies.
We put in a heat pump here in Lethbridge when our AC unit broke down. It’s been working quite well, and it sure saved us a lot of money on our natural gas bill. Turns out it also uses less electricity than the air conditioner did, when using it for cooling in the summer.
would you be willing to share how much it cost to buy and have installed? just wondering how it compares to a/c that way…thank you
The current Herald poll has roughly half the voters believing humans have done all they can to mitigate climate change. Good effort, everyone!
And it’s great to see voting vs. science at work. I would guess the vote in the Crowsnest Pass on coal mining will diminish the scientific evaluation of the joint commission that deemed the potential air and water pollution not in the public interest.