APPARENTLY POOR PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED DEVELOPMENT — FOR THEIR OWN GOOD.

cent of the global “power mix” by 2022, and its declining use in developed countries will be matched by its increased use in developing countries, where the IEA admits that coal offers cheap and reliable electricity to people who need it most. Indian coal-fired power generation is expected to grow almost four per cent a year through 2022.

McKenna appears to believe that poor people should not be permitted such development, but claims it is for their own good. She asserts that coal pollution leads to 800,000 premature deaths annually. Such precision invites skepticism, especially since the statistic comes from an organization called “Endcoal.” Nevertheless, 670,000 of those claimed deaths would occur in China, which is very conspicuously not a member of Ms. McKenna’s alliance. (It also doesn’t seem to want any economic, environmental or gender-sensitivity lectures from Canadian Liberals, as Justin Trudeau’s recent trip embarrassingly demonstrated.)

Meanwhile how many lives have been lengthened or saved because of coal-driven development? Seeing coal only as a killer is all-too-typical of the kind of single-entry bookkeeping that marks climate radicalism.

According to the World Health Organization, vastly more than 800,000 people a year die from cooking over open indoor fires. Coal-fired electricity — or efficient coke stoves — could certainly save many lives.

Minister McKenna peddles the tedious claim that corporations see killing fossil fuels as an investment opportunity in “clean growth.” She cites the California-based tech firm Salesforce, claiming that it had plans to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, but “through rigorous innovation has already reached its goal.” In fact, the company reached its goal simply by purchasing carbon credits, which hardly amounts to “rigorous innovation.”

Salesforce describes itself as a “customer relationship management company.” It doesn’t manufacture anything tangible, but it does use a lot of energy to provide computing power. Although it boasts of facilities decked with virtuous LED lighting and low-flow water fixtures, its data centres have trebled their energy use, and emissions, in the past two years. Their single largest power source is… coal.

Then there are Salesforce’s customers. They include giants of the internal-combustion engine: Toyota, snowmobilemaker Bombardier Recreational Products, aircraft maker Embraer, and motorcycle manufacturer Ducati. Even more intriguing, one of the Canadian companies that Salesforce trumpets as a client is Sun Life Financial. In her Globe article, McKenna cites a recent Friends of the Earth Canada report that seeks to name and shame Canadian companies investing in coal facilities overseas. One of the companies is Sun Life.

McKenna’s biggest fake statistic was that shutting down coal plants in Ontario had been responsible for the elimination of smog days in Toronto. In fact, the province itself cited the closures as only one factor, and a study for the Fraser Institute by Professor Ross McKitrick and Elmira Aliakbari found that they were a very minor one.

There has been controversy lately over “name calling” against McKenna. Why sink to that when a far more powerful weapon is fact checking? On that basis alone she richly deserves that lump of coal.