Two panics threaten freedom.

The avatars of the twin panics now sweeping the global policy sphere are swinging into high gear, cranking up the decibels of alarmism and the language of fear. “The outbreak remains out of control,” said United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres of the COVID-19 panic this week, setting the stage for the 75th UN General Assembly sessions that begin next Tuesday in New York. As for the climate panic, Guterres offered these comforting words: “The world is burning.”

Guterres, speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, went on to merge the two panics into a unified opportunity to expand state intervention throughout the global economy. Recovery from the global lockdown, he said, “must be aligned with the sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Recovery must be green. Subsidizing fossil fuels and bailing out polluting industries means locking in bad patterns for decades to come. Recovery must advance gender equality. And recovery requires effective multilateralism.”

The effort to merge the climate and COVID issues is not limited to the UN. At the OECD, which represents developed nations including Canada, secretary general Ángel Gurría said the recovery from COVID must be a green recovery. He released a new OECD “policy response” to COVID-19, which outlines how “countries can create opportunities for a green and inclusive economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. A green recovery will significantly enhance the resilience of economies and societies in the face of both the severe recession and accelerating environmental challenges.”

On Wednesday in Ottawa, the self- appointed Task Force for a Resilient Recovery — which is organized by a who’s who of high-level Canadian green activists, including Gerald Butts, Bruce Lourie and Stewart Elgie — issued a report calling on Ottawa to spend $55 billion over the next five years to push Canada into a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the COVID-19 panic has devastated the global economy and prompted a Us$9-trillion ($12-trillion) global government spending binge, climate activists are using the devastation as ideological and economic leverage for their pet

THE EFFORT TO MERGE THE CLIMATE AND COVID ISSUES IS NOT LIMITED TO THE UN.

policies and theories. On Wednesday, another activist cabal called on the Trudeau Liberals to use COVID-19 as a reason to kill the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Last week, the BP Energy Outlook, a widely followed global analysis of fossil fuel and other energy trends, took up the COVID-19 connection, warning among other things that a pandemic-induced “deglobalization” movement could severely impact energy exporting countries and drag global economic growth down six per cent by 2050 — the year the world is supposed to be free of carbon.

The BP outlook, however, was more enthusiastic about the potential for $250 carbon taxes and massive government investment in energy planning and management to “decarbonize” the world economy to meet the net-zero carbon emission objectives proposed in the Paris Agreement.

Running through the pileup of pandemic recovery advocacy for green regulation are calls for extreme fossil fuel reductions, carbon pricing, massive state intervention and regulations, adoption of the UN’S sustainable development goals and Mark Carney’s ESG initiative, which would force corporations (via financial market schemes) to adopt environmental, social and governance objectives as part of their corporate missions.

Meanwhile, the Covid-climate linkages continue. When Guterres said that the world is burning, he was riding on the claims that climate change is the main cause of the current wildfires on the West Coast of the United States, a claim stoked this week by Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden during a campaign speech touting his Green New Deal approach to rescuing America from President Donald Trump and COVID-19.

“Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West,” said Biden. “Floods are wiping out suburban neighbourhoods in the Midwest. Hurricanes are imperilling suburban life along our coast. If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburban neighbourhoods will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in super storms?”

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial, wildfires have many causes, including bad forestry practices and the mass movement of people into areas that are prone to fires. But none of this matters among climate panic advocates and political opportunists such as Joe Biden, who also sees his radical Green New Deal as a COVID-19 recovery platform.

In Canada, Gerald Butts, former top aide to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and now vice-chairman and senior adviser at Eurasia Group, a political advocacy organization, also played the wildfire card. During a virtual seminar on Wednesday with Mark Carney and others, Butts drew the fires into the skies over Ottawa. “I’m looking out my window here in Ottawa, Canada, and the sky is sort of a beigey pink colour because of wildfire smoke from biblical events of wildfires in California.”

Yet if the two panics are merged as planned by the UN and the global governance community, the resulting economic