Greens enjoy a moment in the sun
They might be disdained, but can’t be ignored
Canada’s Greens have never had it so good. The party now has two MPs elected under the Green banner, after Paul Manly won the Nanaimo—Ladysmith byelection earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the latest Nanos Research poll suggests national support for Elizabeth May’s party has broken through 10 per cent — the highest level in 15 years — with one in three voters prepared to consider voting Green.
By perseverance, the snail has reached the Ark. Many people would have given up on the Greens as a lost cause but May stuck it out and her party is now the political beneficiary of concerns in civil society about the rash of floods and forest fires across the country.
If an election were held tomorrow, it would likely see the Conservatives elect the most MPs — but it could see the Greens play an influential role in any coalition government.
May unveiled the Greens’ climate action plan Thursday, which makes an appropriate juncture to look at what the party would actually do were it able to wield influence in Ottawa.
The leader was clear that her party would never support any government that did not commit to attempting to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — which appears to rule out any deal with the Conservatives.
“We would never prop up any government not committed to serious climate action … 1.5 degrees is not negotiable,” she said.
May is seeking to replicate the late NDP leader Jack Layton’s success in portraying herself as the happy warrior who offers a sunny, solution-based approach. As Steven Pinker noted in his book Enlightenment Now, when it comes to existential threats like climate change or nuclear war, people are more likely to acknowledge a problem when they have reason to think it is solvable than when they are terrified into numbness and helplessness.
May acknowledged as much by calling the Green plan Mission: Possible.
But while she believes a concerted effort could ensure average temperatures do not reach the tipping point — what she calls “a self-accelerating, irreversible spiral” that could lead to possible extinction — the Green plan makes clear the status quo is not an option.
The 20-step plan would set stringent new emission targets that are twice as ambitious as those agreed to by the Liberals in Paris — 60 per cent greenhouse gas reductions from 2005 levels by 2030; zero emissions by 2050.
The Greens would maintain the existing carbon pricing regime and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. The electricity grid would be greened and modernized to remove any fossil fuel generation — May said Alberta’s coal-fired power plants produce the same amount of greenhouse gases as the oilsands.
All residential and commercial buildings would be retrofitted to be carbon neutral by 2030 using tax incentives for homeowners.
One measure that might win support across the political spectrum is the pledge to turn off the taps on oil imports, instead upgrading Canadian bitumen into gas, diesel, propane and other products to supply the domestic market. “The market is here. We have 700,000 barrels a day being delivered to eastern Canada (from overseas) and we have a divisive battle over a pipeline that doesn’t make any economic sense — the Trans Mountain expansion — that would see 590,000 barrels a day of raw bitumen shipped to other countries. But if we had upgraders working with refineries in Alberta, it would create more jobs,” she said. “Shipping refined products is not the same environmental threat as shipping dilbit (diluted bitumen).”
When asked about the impact on the oilsands, May was unapologetic. “We will leave oil in the ground — there will be no new fossil fuel development,” she said.
That policy could exacerbate national unity strains but May says she thinks the opposite will happen. “This is something to pull us together. We’re saying to Albertans, ‘we’re not out to get your sector and we’ll use your oil as long as we’re using oil …. But we can’t pretend we’re in a status quo world where significant changes aren’t coming.”
May said Canada needs to be on war footing — just as it was during the Second World War. The Green plan requires “all hands on deck”, she said, engaging municipalities and communities across the country to plant trees, install solar panels and retrofit buildings.
She said the first thing she would do as prime minister would be to form “an inner cabinet — a war cabinet” made up of members from other parties. “Climate change is not an environmental issue, it’s a massive security threat that requires taking bold action. We need to get rid of the politics,” she said.
As such the Greens would cancel the purchase of the next generation of fighter jets and buy more water bombers to protect communities from forest fires.
The Mission: Possible document is broad brushstrokes stuff. The party will submit its election platform to the Parliamentary Budget Officer for review. May said a fully-costed plan will balance the federal books “faster than other parties.” “This is not pie in the sky stuff,” she said.
Many Canadians will take issue with that assessment. But while the Greens may be disdained, they can no longer be ignored. You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the political wind is blowing.
We will leave oil in the ground — there will be no new fossil fuel development. — Elizabeth May