“Climate change is a challenge that demands ambition…but ambition needs to be matched with action and accountability,” commented CBC News after Prime Minister Trudeau announced Canada’s new commitment to reduce emissions by 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2030 during the Biden climate summit in April.
Yet Another Climate Target
This latest new “bold” target will play very well going into a likely fall election but one can be very suspicious that it’s just another piece of the progressive climate veneer that masks the Trudeau government’s pro-fossil-fuel agenda. The Trudeau climate formula has been very successful in convincing Canadian voters that Canada is an international climate leader—71% of Canadians want Canada to be a climate leader and think we already are.
Canada has never met any of its previous climate targets over the last three decades. And according to the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO), this sad trend will continue. Our 2030 Paris targets are simply out of reach according to the PBO.
Parliamentary Budget Office Warning
The National Observer reports that “Canada will not meet its 2030 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets without dramatically scaling up new technologies that the Parliamentary Budget Office warns could be “prohibitively expensive” in a sobering new report.”
It will take “extraordinary measures” to hit Canada’s 2030 GHG reduction targets, says the @PBO_DPB.
We say: well, these are “extraordinary times” so buck up.#cdnpoli #StopTMX https://t.co/oClhyN7Xz8
— North Vancouver Greens (@NorthVan_Greens) June 24, 2021
“We can’t get to 2030 without addressing the elephant in the room, which is (that) oil and gas emissions grew 87 per cent from 1990 to 2019, and it’s currently the largest and fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases in Canada,” said NDP Member of Parliament Taylor Bachrach in response to the PBO report.
A climate plan that includes ongoing support for the expansion of fossil fuels cannot be taken seriously. Under the output-based carbon pricing system, the oil and gas sector will see 80% of its emissions exempt from paying the carbon tax next year, decreasing to 66% by 2030. Exempting the very industry which is causing the climate crisis is ludicrous.
Read the full National Observer article here.
Beware Justin Trudeau. Until he speaks and acts like we’re in a damn emergency, and until he declares that Canada is at war on the climate crisis, do not believe any of his posturing on climate.
For the Trudeau government, setting climate targets is like making a New Year’s resolution. How many of us have done this only to continue the same behaviour that led to the resolution in the first place.
