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No Matter Which Way You Look at It, Carney Has Abandoned Climate
For the first few months of Mark Carney’s prime ministerial tenure, Canada’s climate community of advocacy groups, think tanks, journalists, and scientists held their judgement—and their breath. A former United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance was now running the country; surely, that was a good thing. But the moment he took office, he stopped talking about emissions. Where was this going, exactly?
Give him a minute, the thinking went. Consider the political landscape. Canadians elected Carney to confront United States president Donald Trump, not climate change, and fair enough. If rising temperatures were a malignant tumour, America’s sudden hostility was a speeding bullet. First things first.
And so, we got our first clue (or was it a red flag?): the Building Canada Act, which raced through Parliament’s spring session to become law within two months of Carney’s victory. The act envisioned a self-reliant Canada building its way out of US dependence. Industrial megaprojects “in the national interest” would be sped to fruition through a Major Projects Office.
From a climate perspective, it all resembled a national Rorschach blot taking shape before our eyes: those who wanted to believe in Climate Carney could focus on the wind power, nuclear, and critical mineral projects, among the first announced in September; others beheld fossil fuel expansion, in the form of increasing liquified natural gas (LNG) exports, and the rising drumbeat of an oil pipeline to British Columbia’s north coast. That pattern was repeated in November, when Carney announced the second tranche of major projects.
Confusing, yes, but not yet terribly surprising. Carney had been promising to make Canada an “energy superpower in both clean and conventional [i.e., fossil fuel] energy” since the campaign trail in April. He put it in the Speech from the Throne. But what did that mean for emissions—the currency of climate policy? Was the investment into carbon-free energy somehow supposed to atone for a simultaneous expansion of the fossil fuel sector? Was carbon capture going to save the day? Or might emissions reductions in other parts of the economy—housing, say, or transportation—make up for increased production in the oil patch?
These questions got a partial answer in the “climate competitiveness strategy” buried in Carney’s November budget. We learned then that Carney was placing all his climate chips on two bets: the industrial carbon price (which charges large-emitting industries for their carbon emissions) and methane regulations (aimed at reducing methane emissions from oil and gas production by 75 percent, relative to 2012 levels).
This strategy produced a lot of groans in the climate community; so many other elements of Canada’s climate policy were being abandoned. Billions in cuts to various climate programs, from the federal tree-planting program to the Greener Homes Grant. The federal electric vehicles mandate remained paused. Instead of cash for clean energy, the budget dangled tax incentives—for fossil fuels and renewables alike.
Even so, enough people spoke up for the new climate policy that the collective jury remained hung. Clamping down on methane emissions (which are almost thirty times more potent than carbon dioxide) would have a major impact. An aggressive industrial carbon price is a powerful climate policy—the EU’s version of it has cut emissions from power plants and industry almost in half since it launched in 2005. Convincing Ottawa to get serious about these two regulations has been a top priority among climate advocates for years.
Even Green Party of Canada leader Elizabeth May came around, giving Carney’s budget her reluctant vote on November 17. She did so because Carney had promised her, and Canadians, that very day that Canada “will respect our Paris commitments for climate change and we are determined to achieve them.” How, exactly, remained unclear. But a promise is a promise, right?
May’s agonized support—you could see her struggling with her conscience throughout the press conference when she announced her vote—seemed to capture the spirit of the climate community. “The Liberals can’t count on me voting confidence in the government again without delivering on the words I heard,” she said, and so, on the inside, did many of us.
But less than two weeks later, on November 27, Ottawa’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta shattered all remaining benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t a final straw so much as a cannonball, fired straight into the body of climate science. Ten days after winning the confidence of the House, he lost ours.
Steven Guilbeault, the Liberal Party’s long-time climate flag-bearer, instantly resigned from cabinet. May said she’d made the wrong decision on the budget vote. Groups that had cautiously supported Carney’s climate strategy, like the Pembina Institute and the Canadian Climate Institute, reversed their position. Two of Canada’s most prominent climate advocates, Simon Donner and Catherine Abreu, quit the federal Net-Zero Advisory Body with scathing words of protest. “There is no question the hard-won downward trend in Canadian greenhouse gas emissions will be reversed by the current government,” wrote Abreu in her resignation letter. “Canada will fail its international commitment to reduce emissions 40–45 percent by 2030 by such a large margin that meeting the 2035 milestone is highly unlikely. There is no getting to net-zero by 2050 if these milestones are missed.”
That MOU crystalized Carney’s new political alignment: he wasn’t just pretending to appease the oil patch, as many had suspected or hoped. He genuinely wanted that million-barrel-per-day oil pipeline to BC’s coast and was committing the full resources of the federal government to get it built. According to the MOU, that pipeline’s emissions will be countered by the Pathways Alliance carbon capture project, whose fate is now tied to the pipeline. As the document states, “the two projects . . . are mutually dependent.”
But according to Pathways’ own numbers, the project would capture less than one-tenth of the carbon this new pipeline will unleash. It’s the perfect illustration of carbon capture’s moral hazard: by explicitly tying it to increased oil production, carbon capture literally increases emissions.
It beggars belief to suppose Carney doesn’t know all this. Yet he’s adopted phrases like “decarbonized oil” to suggest otherwise, as part of the sales pitch. That kind of language cuts deeper than any policy betrayal. It’s one thing to make compromises in times of national crisis; this twisting of math and meaning verges on disinformation.
At least now we know: Carney isn’t playing climate chess. There will be no effort to constrain Canada’s fossil fuel production, by far the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions for country and planet alike. The question is no longer what he’s doing, but why? Why, that is, did Carney trade the support of climate progressives for that of the oil patch? Money is one answer, no doubt. But politics are another.
Canadians are getting used to tariffs and Trump, whose “fifty-first state” talk has faded away. Carney can’t rely on his anti-Trump status to win the next election. Conservatives won over 41 percent of the vote in April—that’s often enough to form a majority government in any normal election, which could come at any time. And depressing as it is from a climate perspective, polling suggests that a majority of Canadians do support a new pipeline. That includes British Columbians.
By signing pipeline deals, promoting LNG, and cultivating an unprecedented friendship with Alberta, Carney has painted the federal opposition into a corner. Two Conservative members of Parliament have crossed the floor to join the Liberals. The two most powerful Conservative premiers—Alberta’s Danielle Smith and Ontario’s Doug Ford—now have a better relationship with Carney than they do with the federal Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre.
The MOU cemented this state of affairs. A Leger poll, conducted over the three days following its release, put Liberals well ahead of Conservatives: 43 to 36 percent. Carney’s personal performance had a 51 percent approval rating compared to Poilievre’s 31 percent. Canadians seemingly just aren’t as worried about climate change as they used to be—or maybe they’re just more afraid of other things. Or are they just tired of being scared?
Whatever it is, Carney’s success presents a lesson for everyone: the man never looks concerned. His positivity and confidence are contagious. When he first took office, many wondered if he understood politics as well as economics. Turns out, he understands them all too well.
With thanks to the Trottier Foundation for helping The Walrus publish writing on climate change and the environment.
The post No Matter Which Way You Look at It, Carney Has Abandoned Climate first appeared on The Walrus.
Unpublished Newswire
Comments
He has. And, while it may be temporary in order to keep Alberta onside, the way in which he has done it, the complete disrespect shown to First Nations and environmentalists will have a long lasting effect.
It would have been easy to engage us in a discussion around sustainable production of these new nation building projects. We all want to be apart of it. But not like this. Not when they are being put forward in the same way a corrupt land developer pushes through their dirty deals at city hall.
What bothers me most about “How” this is being done, is the obvious corruption involved. It just reeks.