Best climate action is political competence

The way for politicians to address climate change is not to tell us they are addressing climate change, but to do their jobs competently.

What politicians from the federal and provincial governments to Toronto council describe as climate change initiatives today, are what used to be known as capital spending on infrastructure.

Incompetent spending on infrastructure, built for political reasons rather than practical ones, all damage our environment.

Especially so when they come in late and over budget, as these projects routinely do, which increases greenhouse gas emissions and reduces the government’s fiscal capacity to respond to what used to be called not climate change, but weather damage.

Such fiascos harm our environment far beyond any good Toronto council’s $6.7-million climate-action plan will do.

One of the root problems is that politicians routinely confuse climate and weather, as all three levels of government did last month when they announced $1.2 billion in public funding to make the Toronto Port Lands more resilient to “climate change” and “global warming.” (They used both terms.)

The real problem in Toronto — and across the country — is that our politicians have traditionally underfunded the maintenance and repair of public infrastructure — including roads, bridges and public transit — failing to keep them resilient in the face of weather damage and use.

Take, for example, Toronto’s ancient water lines and sewer mains, which all started leaking and blowing up at the same time.

This isn’t about “climate change” — or more specifically, the difference in damage that would have occurred because of manmade climate change, as opposed to natural climate change.

It’s about decades of politicians who announced new infrastructure projects to win votes, and then ignored the fact they had to be properly repaired and maintained once they were completed to protect them from weather damage and natural wear and tear.

If, in announcing its “climate action plan,” council is finally acknowledging that it is pointless to vote in favour of $33 billion of unfunded capital projects, as it already has, and that going forward such projects must be carefully prioritized, built on time and on budget and properly maintained once built, then $6.7 million starting in 2018 will be a small price to pay.

But if it leads to just another city bureaucracy that talks about climate change without improving how capital projects are carried out in Toronto, then it’s just more of our money down the drain.