No wonder voters are skeptical of politicians

Elected officials need to tone down the rhetoric on climate change

It’s a sorry state leading into the next federal election that most voters say they don’t believe politicians.

An Angus Reid poll this week found 64 per cent of respondents agreed most politicians can’t be trusted. I think one of the biggest reasons for this is politicians have become a source of polarization rather than consensus and solutions.

Take greenhouse gas emissions. I think most Canadians want to reduce emissions while protecting jobs and keeping energy bills reasonable. There are solutions to achieve all of these goals, but you have to cut through a lot of noise to hear them.

What started out as global warming became climate change. Climate change then became a climate emergency. Instead of natural disasters, floods and fires are now “climate disasters.” This week the United Nations declared we were on the cusp of climate apartheid, “where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.” I guess climate genocide comes next.

As the rhetoric gets more extreme, what we really need is a reality check. A new online web portal called the Climate Discussion Nexus came out with a “Crystal Ball Check” this week. It went back to 2001 and examined what politicians were telling us computer models said was going to happen.

Prediction: Canadian cities will experience longer and more intense heat waves.

Fact: Summertime daily highs have shown no discernible change.

Prediction: Heat waves will make air pollution worse.

Fact: Air pollution has been steadily declining.

Prediction: Sea levels on the northern coast of British Columbia will rise by up to 30 centimetres by 2050.

Fact: Sea levels have barely changed.

Prediction: Crop yields on the prairies will start declining due to increased droughts.

Fact: Canola and spring wheat production are both up by more than 60 per cent.

Prediction: There will be more frequent forest fires.

Fact: The number of forest fires has gone down.

So what do politicians do when they’ve been proven wrong? They make even more wild predictions and declare even greater urgency.

Fortunately, Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has come up with a balanced approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally without unduly punishing Canadians.

He would keep a carbon price on big emitters but eliminate the carbon tax on home heating and gasoline. That makes sense because it’s a lot easier for a large company to install emissions abatement technology to capture CO2 than it is for a middle-class homeowner to upgrade to electric heating or buy a Tesla.

He would hold Canadian companies to an increasingly high standard to adopt new emissions abatement technologies, then export those same technologies and cleaner fuels abroad. Contrary to what you might have heard from his opponents, we are allowed to do this under the Paris Agreement.

If China adopted carbon capture on just 100 of its 3,000 coal-fired electricity plants, it would offset half of Canada’s annual emissions.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna predictably panned the proposal — but here’s where it gets weird. In a national interview where she was being pressed to explain how her carbon tax would allow Canada to meet its Paris targets of reducing greenhouse gases by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, she admitted that the carbon tax would only get 20 per cent of the way there. The remaining 80 per cent reduction would come through — wait for it — developing and exporting new technology.

So the only difference between the Conservative plan and the Liberal plan is Scheer thinks 100 per cent of the reduction can come through technology and McKenna thinks only 80 per cent can be had that way. Put another way, the Liberal and Conservative plans are 80 per cent the same, and yet you’d never know it from all the yowling.

People don’t trust politicians? No kidding.