Wanted: Government ownership over the common good to achieve climate justice | Corporate Knights: By acknowledging that we cannot rely solely on pollution pricing to
tackle climate change, Canada’s federal political parties have all
signalled their readiness to take ownership over climate mitigation and
adaptation.

But taking responsibility means governments must establish a
comprehensive strategy for change that includes specific and measurable
goals. They must integrate those goals into objectives and leaders’
performance metrics. Of critical importance, they need to allocate
resources commensurate with the scale of the challenge they’re taking
on. And along the way, they must establish mechanisms for transparency
and accountability.

So what is holding governments back? First, let’s recognize that we
are talking about complex change, which is rarely easy. Governments are
often trying to find consensus among stakeholder groups with divergent
interests, and climate change is competing with a breadth of other
priorities that in the past have been seen as more urgent. Also, we are
still influenced by a neoliberal ideology that sees good government as
one that embraces the free market, not shapes it, as well as outdated
cost-benefit calculations that value economy over environment. More
generally, governments seem to be enacting climate mitigation measures
on one hand while investing in greenhouse-gas-emitting systems on the
other. Yes, we have $17.6 billion in new spending, but we continue to
invest in pipelines and subsidies to the oil and gas industry, and we
have failed to really reckon with the fact that we have an economic
system that is focused on driving infinite growth on a planet with
finite resources.

Wanted: Government ownership over the common good to achieve climate justice | Corporate Knights: By acknowledging that we cannot rely solely on pollution pricing to
tackle climate change, Canada’s federal political parties have all
signalled their readiness to take ownership over climate mitigation and
adaptation.But taking responsibility means governments must establish a
comprehensive strategy for change that includes specific and measurable
goals. They must integrate those goals into objectives and leaders’
performance metrics. Of critical importance, they need to allocate
resources commensurate with the scale of the challenge they’re taking
on. And along the way, they must establish mechanisms for transparency
and accountability.So what is holding governments back? First, let’s recognize that we
are talking about complex change, which is rarely easy. Governments are
often trying to find consensus among stakeholder groups with divergent
interests, and climate change is competing with a breadth of other
priorities that in the past have been seen as more urgent. Also, we are
still influenced by a neoliberal ideology that sees good government as
one that embraces the free market, not shapes it, as well as outdated
cost-benefit calculations that value economy over environment. More
generally, governments seem to be enacting climate mitigation measures
on one hand while investing in greenhouse-gas-emitting systems on the
other. Yes, we have $17.6 billion in new spending, but we continue to
invest in pipelines and subsidies to the oil and gas industry, and we
have failed to really reckon with the fact that we have an economic
system that is focused on driving infinite growth on a planet with
finite resources.Read More