Climate change and a Canadian opportunity
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2025 (241 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
It should now be abundantly clear — although to anyone paying attention it has been clear for some time — that action to combat climate change has dropped off the public agenda. Not that it was previously much more than smoke and mirrors; governments making inadequate promises that they then failed to keep.
The U.S. was fighting a phoney war on climate change under former president Joe Biden’s administration, during which America became the world leader in oil production. Under President Donald Trump even this phoney war is over. His energy secretary is an oil “fracker”; Trump will throw federal lands wide open to oil and gas exploration and development; he has “requested” OPEC to reduce oil prices; and the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate change agreement (a mere gesture since the agreement has resulted in minimal progress). God bless America.
The UN-led COP process, after 29 tries, continues to assemble tens of thousands of earnest tourists from 190 countries, to come to consensus on nothing meaningful.
COP 28 made the startling announcement that we should phase out fossil fuels sometime.
COP 29 advanced the premise that developed countries, having caused climate change, should compensate less developed countries. The result — a few billions in funding that would have to be in the several trillions to result in any significant effect on climate change. Getting meaningful consensus among 190 countries, many of which depend on oil and gas revenues, was always a futile exercise. Time to move on.
With the advent of Trump, the financial community’s long-running climate change charade has come to an abrupt end. Of course we always knew that wealth has no moral compass but the unseemly rush by major U.S. and Canadian financial institutions to exit the Net Zero Banking Alliance seems to offend even that sector’s own loose ethical standards.
The contagion knows no borders. Consider the two frontrunners for the federal Liberal leadership and to be Canada’s next prime minister, (at least for a while). One will largely eliminate her government’s carbon tax (partially axe the tax). The other — read his book — would harness private wealth, much of it earned from activities that are causing climate change, to profitably support actions to combat climate change; a virtuous circle. His rallying of the financial sector hasn’t yet been a resounding success. Meanwhile the leader of the official Opposition and presumptive prime minister is no climate-change activist and has been running for several months on axing the tax. And then there’s Alberta — read Premier Danielle Smith — who will facilitate the search for new sources of coal!
What’s to be done? Well, the next four years with the most powerful country on earth in the hands of a president who is an apparent mercantilist — mercantilism is an economic theory popular in the 18th century that viewed international trade as a zero-sum game — and who believes climate change is a hoax, look bleak. Situation hopeless but not serious.
What we are doing now is not working. We have already passed the Paris Agreement target of a 1.5-degree global temperature increase. June atmospheric CO2 level exceeded 425 ppm (450ppm is considered potentially catastrophic). World CO2 emissions in 2023 exceeded 52 billion tonnes. World oil consumption exceeds 97 million barrels a day down from the pre-COVID high of 100 million, the gap being largely filled by increased consumption of natural gas. If this is jarring, it ought to be.
The Trump presidency may, paradoxically, open some doors to new thinking. His promise to enrich Americans at everyone else’s expense, weaponizing the tariff, will inevitably lead countries, including Canada to reconsider their international alignments. While the U.S. is abandoning traditional diplomacy in favour of threats and the strong arm — what some might call gangsterism — it may well revive everywhere else.
Perhaps Canada can resume the international role it once had, an honest broker bringing together coalitions to achieve worthwhile ends — like the international agreements on land mines, and ozone depleting substances — rather than being a yes-man for U.S. foreign policy (which incidentally seems to have bought us absolutely nothing).
Let’s face it, the COP process will not produce anything remotely commensurate to the challenge of climate change. Meaningful action will have to be led by a coalition of the big economies — China, India, the European Union and four years from now the U.S.
Canada, in the necessary process of realigning its own foreign policy, can play a pivotal role in assembling this coalition.
The next four years will see a temporary, last gasp resurrection of King Carbon. It will also see a marked acceleration of the already apparent effects of climate change. With a further four years of neglect we may well have to turn to geo-engineering in our desperation. In any case it will require a global effort that can only be realized through the leadership of the big players.
If our next prime minister is a leader rather than a politician, perhaps we can again punch above our weight internationally. The times demand it.
Norman Brandson is the former deputy minister of the Manitoba departments of environment, conservation and water stewardship.