We need climate leadership, not vague promises

Mayor Watson must back up his talk, says Mitchell Beer. If Mayor Jim Watson and Ottawa city council had funded their signature light-rail project the way they committed to their Energy Evolution transition plan just before the holiday, they’d have made a bold, ambitious decision to retire OC Transpo’s last horse and buggy by 2025. And they would have put off the vote to fund replacement vehicles until the next term of council.

During budget deliberations late last year, Watson and the council majority allotted $500,000 — a pathetic 56 cents per Ottawa resident, with no dedicated staff — to begin implementing Energy Evolution, a set of nearly three dozen prioritized action items to begin making good on the city’s climate and energy commitments.

On the final day of the budget debate, the city treasurer magically discovered another $10 million to fund essential programs for this year. But the mayor and council still couldn’t find the desperately needed dollars to put Ottawa in the growing league of cities investing in a low-carbon future.

A budget is the most revealing policy document any public body produces, the acid test for its true intentions. By that measure, city council managed a treacherous retreat in the last days of the old year: It betrayed a community already seeing the effects of climate change and turned its back on Ottawa’s next big employment generator, all the while claiming Energy Evolution was a priority for this term.

If there’s one defining characteristic of Jim Watson’s tenure as mayor, it is his burning desire to be seen as a leader in all things. To seize that mantle on this most important of issues, he must recognize the urgency of the climate crisis and the unstoppable momentum behind affordable, low-carbon opportunities:

A hot, parched California went through a devastating series of winter wildfires in December, just months after a near-record hurricane season tore through Houston, Florida and the Caribbean Islands. All the while, 20 million face starvation in the Horn of Africa.

There’s mounting evidence the deep freeze covering Ottawa and much of Canada can be traced to the effects of climate change.

Renewable energy, energy storage and electric vehicle technologies are ready for prime time today. Alberta set a record late last year for the lowest-priced electricity purchase in Canada, buying wind power that will be cheaper than a new gas plant. The Ottawa Renewable Energy Co-op is starting four new projects that will double its community solar capacity in two years.

The mayor and council point to other programs that can deliver energy and climate benefits. They have a point. Ottawa could progress by leaps and bounds — on emissions reduction, public health, economic development, social equity and more — if every decision and budget were filtered through a climate lens.

But those one-off programs won’t turn the city’s spin into substance without the connective tissue. That would mean a properly funded and staffed climate and energy office now, not in some vague, distant future. It would integrate the overall effort, track progress against an ambitious carbon reduction goal, and report to citizens every few months, as nearly four dozen mayors recently promised, not every four years, as Ottawa is doing.

Citizens in Ottawa have been waiting patiently and asking politely for a coherent climate and energy plan for more than a decade. We keep hearing it’s a priority. Year after year, the budget tells a different story. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion we’re being played.

If the mayor has any concern for his legacy in office, he might ponder the massive failure he is permitting on his watch. Particularly when many of us know he can do better.

I lived in Capital Ward when we first elected Jim Watson to council, and I remember him as a fighter — not a flame-thrower, but a solid, effective civic representative who stood up for his constituents. He didn’t enter politics to come out on the wrong side of his generation’s biggest, most all-encompassing challenge.

City council managed a treacherous retreat in the last days of the old year