It’s time to flip the script on local weather motion.
The federal authorities has dropped at bear a formidable suite of local weather measures — for which it has by no means obtained sufficient credit score — however somewhat than wielding all this tough and noble work just like the political sword it ought to be, our Liberal leaders are parrying assault after assault from the Opposition.
There’s each motive to count on they’ll be parrying a complete lot extra on April 1 and afterwards.
However whereas the federal authorities is true to level out the financial effectivity of carbon pricing and the truth that most Canadians get more cash again than they pay, these are additionally defensive rebuttals. And in politics, the most effective defence actually is an offence.
It’s helpful to introduce some communications jargon right here. A sword difficulty is actually a subject you need to be speaking about since you consider you’re stronger on it than your opponent. Against this, a protect difficulty is one your opponent feels sturdy on — their sword difficulty — placing you on the defensive.
There isn’t a query that the Conservative Occasion of Canada is wielding the carbon tax as, nicely, an axe.
However the governing Liberals ought to spend much less time elevating their shields and extra time putting first. Hanging in opposition to the Opposition and sure provinces which have skirted their duty on local weather motion for too lengthy, merely letting the federal authorities do the work for them, solely to complain about carbon pricing for perceived political acquire.
Certainly, politics is the last word funhouse mirror: a grain of sand can turn out to be distorted right into a mountain and a mountain right into a speck on the glass.
So it has turn out to be with carbon pricing — a coverage that leaves most households higher off and is answerable for a minuscule 0.3 per cent of meals value will increase — and the true mountain that has someway retreated to the horizon: local weather motion. (By which I imply the myriad measures we’re taking to assist stop the best risk to our lifestyle. That little factor.)
What’s extra — and sadly ironic in all this — is that local weather change has by no means been extra current, extra actual and extra disastrous for Canadians from coast to coast, to coast.
Final yr was Canada’s worst wildfire season ever, ensuing within the full-scale evacuation of a capital metropolis, Yellowknife. Issues aren’t essentially trying up in 2024, as Alberta declared an early begin to the wildfire season in February.
In Ontario, the place excessive warmth days are anticipated to triple, the well being prices alone from final yr’s wildfires clocked in at an estimated $1.28 billion in a single week in only one province.
And in B.C., additionally no stranger to record-setting wildfires, the province’s wine and cherry industries are fearful a couple of “catastrophic” and “devastating” yr as a consequence of latest excessive climate occasions. Whereas on the alternative coast, Nova Scotia is recovering from $170 million in insured damages from final yr’s floods.
The summers are dangerous sufficient, however even our winters are more and more much less Canadian. Ottawa’s Rideau Canal was closed completely to skating in 2023 and was open simply 10 days this previous winter. It’s usually open January, February and typically March. An Ontarian I spoke with just lately talked about the pond by his home didn’t freeze over this yr.
What’s extra Canadian than a recreation of hockey within the nice open air?
Maybe the largest funhouse mirror distortion of all is the suggestion that clear power threatens our lifestyle as if driving an EV is absolutely so totally different from driving a gasoline automobile.
The truth is that local weather motion is, in fact, the one solution to shield our lifestyle — the pastimes we treasure, the experiences we grew up with and need to go right down to our youngsters. It’s additionally the one solution to construct a sustainable economic system and decrease power payments long run as we free ourselves from the risky geopolitics of fossil fuels.
This shouldn’t be a protect difficulty for the federal authorities.
After April 1, the true query on repeat ought to be: What would the Opposition and sure premiers do as an alternative, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rightly just lately requested?
How would they shield us from the environmental, financial and expensive impacts of local weather change?
How would they assist Canada sustain because the world transitions away from fossil fuels?
Silence ought to be a scandal.
This publish initially appeared within the Nationwide Observer.
