Canada lags behind U.S. in climate change battle

While Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna trolls the U.S. at the United Nations climate summit in Bonn, figures released at the summit show compared to the U.S., Canada is the climate laggard.

According to the 2017 Global Carbon Budget, compiled by 76 scientists from 57 research institutions in 15 countries and published in three scientific journals, the U.S. has outperformed Canada in reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change for almost 30 years.

Between 1990 and 2016, U.S. emissions rose by an average of 0.2 per cent annually, dropping by 2.1 per cent in 2016.

Canada’s rose by an average of 0.8 per cent annually from 1990 to 2016, dropping by 1.2 per cent in 2016, Justin Trudeau’s first full year in power.

The U.S., vilified as the only country to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, is also one of 22 countries cited by the Carbon Project for having lowered emissions over the past decade, while growing its economy. Canada’s isn’t even on the list.

U.S emissions in 2017, Donald Trump’s first full year in office, are expected to drop 0.4 per cent, slower than previous years, mainly due to a rise in coal consumption caused by a spike in the price of natural gas.

While there’s no 2017 estimate for Canada, from 2014 to 2016, which includes more than a year of the Trudeau government, our emissions dropped 0.9 per cent, or by an average of 0.3 per cent annually, lower than the 0.4 per cent the U.S. is expected to achieve this year.

Since 1990, the U.S. has outperformed Canada through the Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama and Trump administrations, meaning 12 years of Republican and 16 years of Democratic presidents.

That compares to 28 years of Mulroney, Chretien, Martin, Harper and Trudeau — divided almost evenly between Conservative and Liberal governments.

The U.S. outperformed Canada while rejecting the UN’s Kyoto climate accord, which Jean Chretien signed in 1997, even though the Liberals knew they couldn’t achieve its targets, before Stephen Harper withdrew from Kyoto as unworkable in 2011.

The U.S. outperformed Canada without imposing a carbon price on its citizens, which the Trudeau government announced last year.

The U.S. outperformed Canada while building, during the Barack Obama administration alone, as Obama boasted in 2012, enough new gas and oil pipelines to more than encircle the Earth, while Canada struggled to get pipelines approved, including the Keystone XL, which Obama vetoed and Trump revived.

The reason the U.S. has been far more successful at cutting emissions than Canada is that Americans treat energy security as an economic issue, not an opportunity to engage in virtue-signalling, which is pretty much all Trudeau and McKenna do.

Unlike Chretien, the Clinton administration, even with global warming guru Al Gore as vicepresident, refused to implement Kyoto because it made no demands on developing nations like China, responsible for 28 per cent of global emissions, and where, from 1990 to 2016, emissions rose by an average of 6.3 per cent annually.

When the Americans were able to free up domestic reserves of cheaper, cleaner-burning natural gas through fracking, they rapidly cut back on coal-fired electricity, leading to huge reductions in U.S. emissions.

In Canada, provincial governments are banning fracking, displaying our tendency to cut our own economic throats, while proclaiming our virtue to the world, while the rest of the world plays us for suckers.