Grits just have to outrun Tories
When it comes to climate change, the federal Liberals are like the guy who delivers the punch line in the old joke about two men chased by a bear.
In case you need a refresher, it goes something like this: Two guys are walking in the woods when they happen upon an agitated bear. The bear sees them and immediately gives chase. As they run for their lives, one guy says to the other, “We can’t outrun this bear.” The other guy — the Liberal in this little allegory — replies, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.”
A critical advantage for the Liberals in this election is that on climate change they only have to outrun the Conservatives and that doesn’t require much speed.
Tuesday, they trotted out their other political advantage on the climate file, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who somehow manages to retain her credibility despite the government’s rather lacklustre overall performance on climate change.
McKenna committed Canada — or rather, Canada with a re-elected Liberal government — to carbon neutrality by 2050. That means whatever amount of carbon is emitted in Canada, must be offset by carbon captured in forests, wildness areas, carbon sinks or through carbon sequestration.
Carbon neutrality by 2050 is one of the critical targets UN Secretary General António Guterres wanted nations to sign on to at the UN’s climate action summit earlier this week. Canada would join 65 other nations and the European Union who’ve made the pledge.
McKenna said the Liberals would strike an expert panel on climate change and, with the panel’s advice, legislate ambitious new greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction targets. Legislated targets are a necessary defence, she said, against Conservatives who want to undo the progress Canada has made fighting climate change and who would take the country backward, to higher GHG emissions.
A number of independent observers have noted Canada’s GHG emissions have increased during the past four years, under a Liberal government, but McKenna deflects that criticism by pointing to 50-plus measures in the Liberal government’s Clean Canada plan which, the Liberals say, will pay off over time.
With the climate summit in the news, along with Greta Thunberg’s emotional dressing down of world leaders for their lack of action, the Liberals recognized it was important to get a stake in the ground on the issue sooner rather than later.
That they turned to McKenna to drive home that stake suggests they understand that their leader’s credibility on the issue is less than stellar, although later Tuesday Justin Trudeau did take up the climate change cause, and he too focused on differentiating the Liberals’ record and plans with those of the Conservatives.
The NDP and the Green Party have already unveiled their climate change plans, and in both cases they are more aggressive than anything the Liberal government produced or, until Tuesday’s commitment to carbon neutrality, proposed.
But the Liberals don’t intend to compete with either of those parties over who has the best climate change plan. Indeed, when the Liberals talk about striking the right balance between environmental necessity and economic possibility, they are making veiled references to the Green and NDP climate plans, which Liberals portray as too radical and a threat to the economy.
The Liberals are quite happy to be caught in the middle of the great climate debate. The Conservatives are over on their right, offering next to nothing except hope that the world can somehow invent its way out of the climate crisis. Although the Conservatives don’t regard climate change as a crisis and voted against a motion in the Commons declaring it as such.
And to the Liberals’ left are the Greens and NDP with climate plans the Liberals will characterize as too much too fast for the Canadian economy to bear.
That said, the Liberal commitment to carbon neutrality by 2050 is a necessary step in reestablishing their place in the climate change battle.
In the leaders’ debates coming in October, Trudeau will be caught between the more radical climate proposals of the Greens and the NDP, and the Conservatives’ old saw about axing the carbon tax without offering much by way of an alternative.
The Liberals like their positioning in the climate debate because they believe they are where most Canadians feel comfortable. That’s with a government that claims to be fighting the good fight against climate change, without inflicting much pain on the people.
... with Greta Thunberg’s emotional dressing down of world leaders for their lack of action, the Liberals recognized it was important to get a stake in the ground on the issue sooner rather than later.