Canada is a rogue state on climate change policy
There is something disquieting about the way politics works today: fleeting threats that are visible cause raucous debates while long-term threats that are permanent and irreversible are ignored. This political failure of democracy has turned Canada into the equivalent of a rogue state when it comes to climate change policy.
To call the Harper government’s climate change inaction a “policy” would be a compliment. What Canada currently has in place are some regulations on cars and trucks and a ban on coal-fired plants. (The latter shepherded by the Ontario government, meaning Canada’s climate “policy” can be reduced to a single line.) The government boasts that Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions will be 130 megatonnes lower than if no action was taken — a meaningless comparison if there ever was one.
This short story of government failure might end here if Canada was trying to do something about climate change. Instead, the country is an international pariah. Among rich world countries, Canada is the largest per-capita emitter of GHGs, according to the World Resources Institute. The advocacy group Climate Action Network ranks Canada’s climate strategy as the fourth-worst in the world, ahead of only Iran, Kazakhstan, and Saudi Arabia. The secretary-general of the United Nations has publicly asked Ottawa to do more.
It is true that emissions decreased from 2005, but that was mostly due to the recession and technological advances. In reality, Ottawa will fail to meet the emission targets it pledged at the Copenhagen conference in 2009, just as it failed to meet the UN’s March 31 deadline to submit its emission targets ahead of the upcoming climate change conference in December. This global conference, to be held in Paris, will likely result in an internationally binding accord to follow up on Kyoto. It is the best chance the world has to address the impending climate disaster that awaits if current trends continue. Having met U.S. President Barack Obama’s Envoy for Climate Change, I am certain that Washington is taking the Paris negotiations very seriously. Canada, meanwhile, looks like it will show up to the Paris conference with almost nothing to offer but talking points, despite the fact that Canadians consume more energy per capita than Indians, Chinese or Americans. This is both a shame and a sham.
Once again, the story might end with the government’s inaction, but it does not. Instead, obfuscation and censorship are added for good measure. Ninety per cent of government scientists feel that they are not allowed to speak to the media about their research; almost as many fear retaliation if they do. If you are wondering why climate change reporting in Canada has been so vacuous over the last few years, it is because new rules put in place by Stephen Harper in 2007 limit what Environment Canada scientists can say. The position of National Science Advisor was eliminated in 2008. It should come as no surprise then that media coverage of climate change has been reduced by 80 per cent. If the brilliant government scientists working on this issue are muzzled, the public has little access to the very people it should be hearing from.
For years, the Conservative government line on climate change was that Ottawa would not act first. It seems now that Canada will act last. British Columbia has put in place a carbon tax, Quebec has a cap-and-trade system, Ontario announced a similar policy earlier this month, and Alberta has an imperfect but necessary regulatory scheme. The European Union has an ambitious emissions trading program and the United States and China signed a major climate accord last year. China is also piloting seven capand-trade programs, including one in Shanghai. The Conservative government could study these experiments and implement a national market-based solution but instead it opts for scare tactics where the term carbon tax is nearly synonymous with the Islamic State.
The effects of climate change will permanently damage wildlife, agriculture, oceans, coastal inhabitants, transportation systems, disease prevention efforts, food and water supplies, public health, and nearly every facet of modern life. The poor and disadvantaged will face the harshest consequences, both in rich countries and in developing ones. Climate change is not simply an environmental concern; it is a national security concern, which is precisely what the Pentagon now calls it.
But the generation that will have to live with a despoiled world is not Harper’s; it will be my generation, and generations yet unborn. So our non-policy here is not simply an economic or social failure — though it is certainly these things. It is also a moral failure of the worst kind.
There was one Canadian statesman who understood all of this. In Berlin in 2007, this statesman criticized his own country for “talking the talk but not walking the walk” on greenhouse gases. With startling clarity, he said “climate change is perhaps the biggest threat to confront the future of humanity today.” That statesman was Stephen Harper.
For the sake of our planet, and our children’s future, we should hold the prime minister to his own words.
Among rich world countries, Canada is the largest per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the World Resources Institute