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climate targets
Elizabeth May said "this is not a joke."
Yes, I made excuses. Why am I so willing to give the benefit of the doubt? It is because I know how critical it is to keep hope alive. I do not want to feed the bad wolf. Citizen engagement and faith in the system are essential ingredients for our survival. We cannot risk feeding cynicism.
What's next in the federal-provincial "climate wars," you might ask? Since last week's initial ruckus, the combatants have gone quiet. Despite this temporary armistice, something clearly needs to be done to reverse the harm done to federal-provincial relations, while still moving towards an early agreement on carbon.
How you feel about this decision depends on how you felt about the target was in the first place. The Harper target is a 30 per cent reduction in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2030. That works out to eliminating 208 million tons of carbon over the next 14 years. Is that ambitious? Maybe not, if you think Canada's goals should be judged by what our peers are doing.
But chicken and pork are A-OK.
For more than two decades, Mark Jaccard has been penning "report cards" about Canada's environmental track record. The results haven't been pretty. His annual evaluations were harnessed in the mid-2000s by Stephen Harper as arguments for why the Conservatives deserved a shot at governing the country. Jaccard's latest report card, released on October 6, concludes the Conservative Party has since "implemented virtually no policies that would materially reduce emissions" despite making significant emissions pledges for 2020 and 2050. Jaccard concludes the absence of such actions shows "they must have had no intention" of dealing with climate change.
