Canada’s new government must show courage on climate

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By David Suzuki

It’s easy as an environmentalist to be cynical about new governments. Many of us had great hope when the Liberals under Justin Trudeau formed government for the first time in 2015. The party had made strong climate commitments and Trudeau appointed smart cabinet ministers with environmental credibility.

Then, partly to appease Alberta (which seems impossible without committing to disastrous climate disruption), the government bought a pipeline expansion project in 2018 with our money! The original price tag of $4.5 billion ballooned to more than $34 billion on completion in 2024, and initial bitumen transport and revenue projections have since been lowered.

Despite implementing some robust environmental policies, the government continued to subsidize the fossil fuel industry and support increased fracked gas development.

Newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election night promise to “build Canada into an energy superpower in both clean and conventional energy” at least acknowledges that “energy” doesn’t only apply to outdated fossil fuels — but pipeline and fossil fuel expansion flies in the face of the growing climate crisis.

By all accounts, Carney knows this — and has for a long time. More than 10 years ago, as Bank of England governor, he told a World Bank seminar that keeping the world from exceeding the 2 C threshold of global heating means the “vast majority of reserves are unburnable.”

Later, in a speech at insurance brokerage Lloyds of London, Carney said that “the catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors — imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix.”

He added, “In other words, once climate change becomes a defining issue for financial stability, it may already be too late.”

As author and environmental activist Bill McKibben points out, “The man who said those clear and bold words now finds himself leading a nation hard hit by climate change: Canada has a front row seat [on] the melt of the Arctic, which is the fastest-heating part of the earth; it has watched its boreal forests burn like never before in recent years.”

McKibben notes that Carney “also finds himself leading a nation that contains Alberta, whose vast pool of tarsands makes its one of the biggest carbon deposits on planet earth.”

With the United States administration burning up climate and environmental policies and setting the country on a collision course with climate and economic catastrophe, Canada has an opportunity to show leadership on the global stage. But it will take courage and imagination.

The coal, oil and gas industries, along with media, “astroturf” and political supporters, have convinced a sizable number of people in Canada and worldwide that climate change isn’t a big issue and that fossil fuels will be necessary for a long time. They’ve disingenuously touted fracked gas as a climate solution and promoted largely unproven, expensive technologies such as carbon capture and storage as a way to keep their dying, polluting industry alive.

Never mind that renewable energy with storage is now far more cost-effective and efficient than fossil fuel or nuclear power. The unstoppable shift to cleaner energy also results in cleaner, land, water and air and unshackles us from volatile and increasingly expensive fossil fuel markets.

Canada can increase energy independence by taking advantage of our abundant renewable energy resources and by improving the electricity grid to support clean energy and interprovincial transmission. We can reduce our reliance on the U.S., a country that appears to be slipping into unreliable insanity and disregard for facts.

We can’t forget those who have made good livings in the fossil fuel industry (although the companies themselves, with increasing automation and greater benefits to CEOs and shareholders, don’t seem to value their workers much). Ensuring that industry workers have opportunities for skills upgrading and good employment is crucial, but so is redesigning economic systems so that success isn’t measured by profit at all costs.

We need better, less destructive ways to conduct our lives. Prime Minister Carney is smart and has the knowledge of climate and economics to make a real difference, for Canada and the world. Will he have the courage and insight to steer us to a saner path? Let’s hope so.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington.

Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.