Flying Blind Into the Storm

Just a few weeks ago, the Trump regime was threatening us with a tariff war over the smoke billowing from the burning boreal forest. Now it appears that tariff peace might be achieved through the shared belief of the Trump and Carney administrations that more pipelines are the answer.

Such a strategy will massively increase carbon in the atmosphere and hence cause more burning.

It’s just another day in the time of the great derangement.

In Canada, such mega-projects are being hailed as “nation-building” exercises. But with the world burning to the ground around us, it is time to ask the hard question —what kind of nation are we trying to build?

This summer has reminded us, yet again, that Canada is very vulnerable to the unprecedented climate threat facing the planet.

Climate fires are having devastating impacts in the northern boreal forests. Thousands of people have fled their homes. Choking smoke is impacting large parts of the continent. But similar fires are ravaging the globe, from the Savannahs of Africa to the rainforests to the wine-growing regions of France.

Over 370 million hectares of land in over 80 countries have burned this year — that is an area larger than Spain, France and Germany combined. A wounded earth doesn’t just rebound from such devastation.

The smoke will sicken people around the globe and kill thousands. The soot will fall on the melting glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica, creating a feedback loop of further warming and melting.

In Europe, over 16,000 people have died this summer from heat-related illnesses and farmers are now talking about food shortages from the relentless drought and fire.

In Southern Asia, catastrophic heat waves hit early and haven’t let up. In South Korea, potatoes are literally cooking in the fields.

All of this is happening on the eve of a planetary meteorological upheaval known as the Super El Niño, which some scientists fear will be the most catastrophic weather event in history.

A similar event in 1878 caused the death of upwards of 3% of the global population.

I have written about the potential for this earth-upending weather transformation in a recent Substack.

Nobody in government, any government, seems to notice that we are on the verge of a major upheaval. Nobody is preparing us for what comes next.

The Trump administration has cut all funding for weather monitoring in the Arctic, where rapidly changing climate instability is unfolding. And just as the super El Niño was starting to form, the White House pulled out its ocean sensors and fired the scientists.

In Canada, we see a less drastic but equally worrying trend.

As part of cost-cutting measures, the Carney government has been firing hundreds of scientists at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). These are the people who do long-term research on climate impacts, monitor severe weather dangers, and track impacts from industrial pollution.

Rather than preparing for what is coming, we seem determined to shut out the bad news at our doorstep.

Nowhere is this more noticeable than in the walk-away from our global commitment to Net Zero.

Just a few years ago, the government and industry were abuzz with meeting our global commitment to decarbonize through the Net Zero 2050 plan.

Since the election of the Carney government, Net Zero 2050 has all but disappeared from government rhetoric. We are being told that the Prime Minister has adopted a more “pragmatic” approach, balancing environmental objectives with economic need.

Given the threats from Trump and how Danielle Smith is using the oil lobby to undermine Canada’s sovereignty, such pragmatism has a place.

Some might argue that, in focusing on building a strong economy in the case of the American threat, he is following Clinton’s adage that “It’s the economy, stupid”

But given the catastrophic headlines of climate instability, I would argue that the real mantra must be “It’s the planet, stupid.”

Pragmatism in this dangerous time requires more than meeting with lobbyists from the oil patch. Government policy must be informed by the expertise and knowledge of climate scientists and environmental researchers.

Yet this past June, Parliament heard from members of the federal advisory council on Net Zero who said the government has completely shut them out of planning.

Climate scientist Simon Donner and environmental advocate Catherine Abreu testified in Ottawa that the new government has sidelined the council’s work.

Abreu testified,

“The shredding of environmental policy that this government has undertaken means that Canada is now on track to violate its own law and to fail to attain net-zero emissions by 2050.”

Meeting Net Zero by 2050 was always an iffy proposition. I spent my last four years in parliament pushing, haranguing, and trying to work with the government to put credible policies in place to lower Canada’s massive greenhouse gas emissions.

When I was at committee, we heard from Canada’s Environment Minister, Gerry DeMarco, who expressed his frustration that Canada was the worst country in the G7 for failing to get serious about the rising levels of emissions. He said that in terms of government action we were going “from failure to failure.”

Part of the problem was the massive $34 billion in public money used to build the TMX pipeline. Under PM Trudeau, production in the heavily polluting oil sands had doubled over what it had been under Stephen Harper.

Trudeau had hoped he could square the circle by establishing regulations and pricing to push the big polluters to reduce. But the oil lobby had no intention of playing along. They drove the false myth that Trudeau was out to destroy the oil industry. Premier Danielle Smith used this to drive wedges against Canada and push the separatist agenda.

Carney doesn’t plan to make the same mistake of alienating the oil lobby. He has promised to build another pipeline, which is likely to cost $100 billion in ‘taxpayers’ money (there is no private-sector interest in pushing this plan forward). Will a possible revival of Keystone XL replace this West Coast pipeline? It’s too early to say.

But the rollback of clean energy regulations is already having an impact.

Carney’s first move as PM was to cancel consumer carbon pricing. But the much bigger impact came when he lowered obligations for big polluters on the industrial carbon tax. This wiped out the possibility of ever getting to Net Zero.

On top of that, he lowered obligations to tackle the planet-killer methane and rolled back the clean energy regs. Even support to encourage people to get off gas guzzlers and move to EVs has been slashed by the Carney government.

The government has made vague promises about offsetting the increase in emissions, pumping billions of public money into unproven carbon capture programs. Industry has been touting this scheme for years without putting any serious money into it because the technology continues to underperform massively.

Net Zero 2050 was always a long shot.

The optimists will tell me to trust the government and that we still have 24 years to meet our objectives. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we don’t have 24 years.

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