Earlier this summer, managing editor Mark Mann caught up with McKenna to find out what she thinks about Canada’s current trajectory for climate policy and the energy transition.

Mark Mann: I want to get a pulse check with you on where you think Canadians are at with climate change and climate policy.

Catherine McKenna: Look, 80% of people around the world actually care about climate. But when you’re faced with Trump, there’s one issue and it’s Trump. The thing we need more from leaders right now is to make the direct link between affordability and climate. Right now, regular people go to the pump and it’s terrible, and this is directly linked to the fact that their vehicle relies on gas. They are directly impacted. That is the affordability crisis. It’s housing, too, and other things, but a lot of it is our dependency on gas to fuel our cars and oil and gas to heat our homes. So those prices fluctuate and people are the ones who are hurt. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies are making massive profits, apparently, because of the Iran war. Affordability is an oil and gas issue, and the energy transition is the best way to protect Canadians and to lower their costs with solutions that are cheaper and better. We need to see policies that actually support getting people off oil and gas. Heat pumps are better. EVs are better, but we need cheaper EVs. We need to be able to have solar we can put on the grid, and we need to push our utilities to allow this. It’s time for leaders to make the connections so that Canadians understand the opportunity in the short, medium and long term to make the transition.

MM: Yeah, there’s the energy transition and then there’s emissions reductions. And Carney’s whole strategy has been that we should run, not walk, to the oil and gas industry to find emissions reductions. What do you think of that approach?

CM: I mean, the problem with the oil and gas industry is that all they’ve done is increase emissions. They made all these promises when I was minister and they broke all of them. Our emissions now continue to rise, and they continue to demand subsidies. They give their profits back to their fat-cat CEOs and their largely U.S.-based shareholders. We’re not winning, we’re subsidizing the problem, and we’re not helping people. We should not be beholden to large oil and gas companies, because it’s not helping regular people.

MM: Are you worried that there’s going to be a big fossil-fuel infrastructure investment that is going to be shoehorned into the nation-building agenda, and that we’re going to be locked in with the risk of a major stranded asset?

CM: I think the stranded asset risk is real. We also have unfunded liabilities that are massive: tailings, abandoned wells. I work globally. No one is saying, “I can’t wait for Canadian LNG.” That is a myth. I approved [a liquefied natural gas] project that didn’t go ahead a long time ago because of the risk associated.

I think there is no one in their right mind who would invest in a pipeline, given the projections for fossil fuels. Mark Carney knows this. But I think a lot of folks on Bay Street, when I talk to them — I’m not sure that they’re having the same conversation that people are globally. I don’t think they understand how transformative it has been. The uptake of EVs is huge and you have countries now saying they are only going to sell EVs, or they’re not going to allow, you know, new gas hookups in homes because it’s too much of a risk. We are diluted in a way because we’re a fossil-fuels-producing country. Other countries are starting to leapfrog because there are better solutions. If we could get basic EVs here in Canada, people would choose them because it would be cheaper both in terms of the purchase price but also in terms of maintenance and you’re not using gas.

I want Canada always to win, and I worry that we’re not going to win. We make it seem like we can’t do things because of the affordability crisis or we can’t care about climate. The energy transition is happening. Do we want to get with the program and lead? We’re very fortunate in Canada to have a lot of clean electricity. We’re very fortunate to have a talented workforce, to have critical minerals. But you’ve got to make the investment now and recognize that Donald Trump at one point will not be around as president. But the climate process is accelerating and the solutions are better, and we’re pulling ourselves back.

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MM: We’re now gearing up for a new struggle over whether LNG should qualify as a transition fuel. What’s your take?

CM: New natural gas should not be considered green in a green taxonomy. If you look globally, that’s not a thing. We won’t be taken seriously. I get that oil and gas companies would really love that. It doesn’t mean, by the way, that you can’t invest in natural gas. It just means it doesn’t fit under the category of green.

MM: So you wouldn’t say an investment in LNG should be completely off the table?

CM: If you want to invest in LNG, you’d better be looking at the markets and the projections. If you had LNG now, sure, but in the future you’re going to have a stranded asset. The problem is they get to privatize the profits and socialize the risks. Right now, we already know that unfunded liabilities in Alberta around the oil sands is bonkers. And then layered on that, we’re going to have unfunded liabilities if we continue building new fossil-fuel infrastructure.

The oil and gas companies have to clean up their act if they want a hope of continuing. These are the richest companies, largely U.S.-owned. Why should Canadians give their hard-earned tax dollars to these folks when they have massive profits that they could be reinvesting? I have called for a windfall tax like we’ve seen in the U.K. and other places because they are making so much off of this war, while Canadians can’t pay for gas. For Canadians, the heating costs of their homes have gone up exponentially. There’s not that much the government can do unless they’re actually going to take money for these windfall profits off of the Iran war. These companies are making money off of an illegal war against Ukraine and now the Iran war; those profits should be reinvested in a way that supports Canadians, not given back to your largely U.S.-based shareholders.

MM: What role should China have in Canada’s energy transition?

CM: That’s kind of weird. I don’t want China to have a role in Canada’s energy transition. I think that we have to figure out trade, and how trade and climate can go together. These are not easy decisions. We’ve seen Mark Carney open up the market to a small percentage of Chinese EVs. The reality is that people are going to decide based on price. That’s how it works. The EVs they’re producing are just a lot cheaper. Yes, there’s been some subsidies, but they’re also producing some of the models that are really basic. If our auto manufacturers want to compete, then they should be producing EVs that are really basic, not expensive EVs. I’m not an auto manufacturer, but it seems pretty clear this is where it’s going.

MM: You built a global network of women leading on climate. How is that network bringing its influence to bear on Canadian climate policy?

CM: These are women that are sitting at the table, whether they’re at the boardroom table or they’re at the negotiating table or in the council chambers or they’re in universities or they’re young women who are activists who are on the streets. These are women who are often speaking up, and it is hard. What I realized when I was minister is that sometimes I was the only person at the table raising climate change, and I knew some people would be like, “Oh, is that woman going to bring up climate again?” Of course, every time I talked about climate, I was actually talking about the economy. I’d be like, “Yeah, damn right I’m going to talk about climate.” Once I knew that other women in similar positions in Canada and around the world were talking to climate, it made me feel stronger and better able to just stand up for the right thing.

Women are two and a half times more likely to talk about climate change. They are two and a half times more likely to act on climate change. If you have a woman on board, it’s more likely to disclose emissions. That is a theory of change that has real evidence behind it. So we need to empower those women.

We bring an agenda. In Canada, we wrote a letter that was signed by hundreds of women to security regulators, saying you need to require disclosure of climate risks. That’s a basic principle. We need to be more sophisticated in how we understand this. I am on the board of the Singapore sovereign wealth fund. I work with financial institutions in Europe. They’re working on this. They understand there’s a risk and an opportunity and an obligation to shareholders. Women are pushing the envelope, and we’re trying to bring that voice and make it stronger.

MM: Are you going to go back into politics?

CM: Nope. But I will help other people.

The post Catherine McKenna wants Canada to get smarter about climate and affordability appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The contours of that new plan have been slow in coming, but after the government’s first year and a half in office, some details are now evident.

Here are five explicit Carney climate-related commitments:

1. “A carbon market that actually works”:

This has been a core part of the Carney government’s memorandum of understanding with Alberta, and it remains a work in progress. Industrial carbon pricing can reduce substantial emissions at minimal cost. However, as multiple analyses from the Canadian Climate Institute have shown, the changes made to Alberta’s industrial carbon market are simply not sufficient to put the system on firm footing nationally. In fact, the price of carbon credits in Alberta has actually declined since the MOU was signed. Industrial carbon pricing needed fixing when Carney took office, and it still needs fixing now.

2. “75% electric vehicle adoption rate” and 90% by 2040:

This is among the more specific and important of the prime minister’s statements. In the press conference launching his new strategy to transform Canada’s auto sector, he said the government would strengthen vehicle emissions standards to achieve “the equivalent emissions reductions of a 75% EV adoption rate,” with a 2040 goal of 90%. Unfortunately, in proceeding to repeal the existing EV policy and delaying the implementation of the new one, the government has made its job more difficult, and what has been revealed thus far of the new federal standard does not appear sufficiently effective.

3. Turning Canada into a “clean and conventional” energy superpower:

This phrase has appeared across government communications products. The prime minister’s “Forward Guidance” video even set a goal to “build clean energy on a scale that would astound even Sir Adam Beck,” a reference to the Ontario politician and early advocate of hydropower on the Niagara River. But while the conventional part of this equation is clear – and backed by billions of dollars in public money – the clean part is less so. The recent clean-energy announcement between the federal government, Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador is important progress, but more of the same is needed right across the country to deliver on the objective.

4. “Made-in-Canada sustainable investment guidelines”:

This was one of the core climate commitments in Budget 2025: a pledge from the Carney government to support the development of made-in-Canada sustainable investment guidelines which will be published in 2027, and to explore the development of a sustainable bond framework to be aligned. The federal government tapped the Canadian Climate Institute and Business Future Pathways to develop the guidelines collaboratively. In July, we published our first draft report, proposing a framework for action.

5. “Achieve net-zero emissions by 2050”:

This commitment from the prime minister is one that was baked into the text of the final MOU agreement with Alberta and reiterated elsewhere. Ultimately, if it is to have any credibility, it needs to be backed up by sufficient policy action to get Canada on track. At the moment, we are not.

Add it all up and you get a list of policy promises that have the potential to improve people’s lives, electrify the economy and reduce national emissions. As much of the country continues to feel the impacts of yet another dangerous wildfire season driven by climate change, the urgency to act is clear.

Since Carney’s election, the climate focus has been on where his government stood with respect to Trudeau-era policies. With Parliament set to return, this will now shift to whether the Carney government is living up to its own explicit goals.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute.

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In early August, President Donald Trump’s State Department posted a five-minute film on social media. The clip details what the U.S. foreign policy office calls one of the “boldest diplomatic statements in American history” – the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine was a response to the threat of recolonization of the Americas by European powers. The then-youthful United States, keen to see off this threat, declared that the western hemisphere would be free of imperial conquest. This doctrine later developed into a broad statement that the United States was “practically sovereign” in the region.

The era of European empires has waned. But, as the State Department’s video makes clear, Trump’s administration is unabashed about declaring itself dominant over its Latin neighbours. What is at the heart of this resurgence of 19th-century foreign policy?

China has been quietly gaining ground in Latin America for decades, establishing itself as the region’s second-largest trading partner and top creditor. Chinese companies are behind lithium mines in Chile and Argentina and megaports in Peru, while China’s government is pushing a transcontinental railway to link it all together.

Both China and the United States aim to be energy powerhouses, and the resulting clash over Latin America indicates two different approaches. Chinese companies have invested in lithium and other minerals central to the energy transition. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s ousting of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro in January was nakedly linked to the country’s bountiful oil reserves.

The kidnapping of a sitting head of state may be seen as a warning to Latin America: the United States is still the sovereign here. But is that still true? And could U.S. strong-arming push Latin America away, and into the arms of Chinese investors?

The ‘Donroe’ doctrine

The White House national security strategy, published in November 2025, establishes a desire for a western hemisphere “free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.” Unveiling the document last year, Trump told the world’s press that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again.” He cited the Monroe Doctrine directly, attaching a “Trump corollary” for the 21st century – a so-called Donroe Doctrine.

“The [Monroe] Doctrine has found its latest champion in Donald Trump,” says the U.S. ambassador to Panama, Kevin Marino Cabrera, who narrates the State Department video. It is fitting that he was chosen to deliver Trump’s message. Ever since Panama achieved independence from Colombia in 1903, the United States has retained a strong hold over its politics. Until 1999, it even retained sovereignty over a buffer zone on either side of the Panama canal.

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In 1997, the Hong Kong company CK Hutchison won contracts to manage the ports at either end of the nautical thoroughfare. This year, those contracts became the centre of a political firestorm after Panama’s supreme court ruled them unconstitutional. Trump had previously claimed that China was “operating” the canal.

Such pressure has been building across the continent. In June, Chile scrapped plans to link its coast to Shanghai via an undersea cable to enable data traffic, after the United States raised concerns that the cables could also have a military function.

In Argentina, a dispute broke out this August after the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires threatened to revoke U.S. visas for executives of an Argentine electricity company, after they brokered a deal with the Chinese company Huawei. This was despite President Javier Milei being one of Trump’s strongest Latin American cheerleaders and ideologically aligned with the White House.

Trump’s aggressive foreign policy has been a step change to that of his recent predecessors. Margaret Myers, managing director of John Hopkins University’s Institute for America, China, and the Future of Global Affairs, says the narrative during President Barack Obama’s  administration was that anything that benefitted Latin America was good for the United States.

This softer approach, which enabled Chinese investment in South and Central America to proliferate, has been consigned to history as far as Trump is concerned. “You don’t hear that narrative anymore,” Myers says. “Now the narrative is that China will take advantage, and if you engage too much there will be negative implications.”

The Chinese offer

China has reacted angrily to the stream of diplomatic rapprochements and threats coming from the Trump White House. In August, China’s ambassador to Chile, Niu Qingbao, accused the United States of “coercive diplomacy” and “showing no regard for sovereignty.”

Chinese government officials have also argued that China’s overseas development model is based on cooperation and mutual benefit, and on strengthening partnerships between countries of the Global South. The word “cooperation” is used 174 times in its most recent Latin America policy document.

The country’s companies – many linked to, if not backed by, the state – have provided financing for a range of important infrastructure, the most notable of which is the port of Chancay, 80 kilometres north of the Peruvian capital Lima. The Chinese shipping conglomerate COSCO owns a 60% stake.

Alice Hill, a former White House energy adviser and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says China’s success has been based on acting as a reliable partner, as a contrast to Trump: “It’s a little like a marriage. If your trusted partner has cheated on you, it’s hard to overcome. We [the United States] and our word hasn’t proven reliable. We cut off aid and we’ve disparaged our allies.”

How is the region responding?

As the international relations analyst Fernanda Magnotta pointed out in a recent post for Americas Quarterly, such aggressive use of U.S. pressure makes alternative partners more appealing, not less. It also underlines the idea that taking sides is futile: “By trying to make Latin America choose, Washington will teach its governments why they should never have to.”

Brazil and the United States have come to diplomatic loggerheads as the former approaches its election in October. Earlier this month, the visa of Brazil’s ambassador to Washington was revoked.

Meanwhile, the case of Argentina suggests that countries are driven more by necessity than ideological purity when it comes to taking geopolitical sides. As much as Milei might like to strike up an unbreakable friendship with the U.S. president, economic realities in his country have led him to extend a multimillion-dollar currency swap with China.

New diplomatic ties with China are forming all the time. Just last week, Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa met his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Beijing as part of a state visit.

‘The transition is being made in China’

An important factor is that only China currently has the technology and expertise when it comes to energy transition technologies. And as major producers of the critical minerals that underpin those technologies, from lithium and copper to nickel and cobalt, Latin American countries have little choice but to export to China. In 2025, Chile sold more than half of its copper to China and 70% of its lithium.

Gustavo Pinheiro, an analyst at the energy think tank E3G, says this transition is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for Latin American development. “The transition is being made in China; it’s being made in technology,” he adds. The United States, meanwhile, has “doubled down” on fossil fuels, according to Hill.

And it is not just at the government level that U.S. aggression is pushing the region away. Polling published in July by the Pew Research Center suggests that views of China are now more positive in the region than views of the United States; people are more likely to say that the United States interferes in other countries’ affairs.

Pinheiro points out that there is a long history of U.S. aggression, which is well understood in the region: “The U.S. has 200 years of a terrible track record as an ally. They have proven again and again how unreliable [they are].”

If Trump believes he can bully his allies into submission, it appears that in Latin America he may be mistaken.

Sam Meadows is Dialogue Earth’s Latin America editor based in London. Prior to joining in 2025, he worked as an environmental reporter in Colombia and Argentina, writing for media outlets including The Guardian, New Lines Magazine, Mongabay and Climate Home News. 

The post How the U.S. push for supremacy in Latin America could benefit China appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In April, 57 countries representing about one-third of global gross domestic product held the first-ever conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels (TAFF) in Santa Marta, the Colombian port city. Participants in the initiative, now dubbed the Santa Marta process, included subnational governments, nongovernmental organizations, scientists, trade unions, Indigenous Peoples and other groups. For many of them and other event observers, the meeting was historic.

“For three decades, global climate negotiations have focused on managing emissions while really ignoring the root cause: the unchecked proliferation of oil, coal and gas extraction,” says Tzeporah Berman, British Columbia–based founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. “Santa Marta was the first time that countries were convening to have a conversation not just about whether fossil-fuel phaseout needed to happen, but how to do it.”

The conference, co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, was convened as a “complementary space” to the annual United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (known colloquially as COP), not a replacement for it. The focus was not on negotiations or developing new targets, but rather on identifying practical steps to help countries transition away from fossil fuels, centring on three themes: reducing economic dependence on fossil fuels, transforming supply and demand, and advancing international cooperation and climate diplomacy.

Only the beginning

The decision to stage the Santa Marta conference was announced at the end of the COP30 conference in Belém, Brazil, last November, after a push to include a TAFF roadmap in the COP30 outcome text was derailed by oil-producing countries. To patch that rift, Brazil’s COP30 presidency promised to prepare a fossil-fuel transition road map to present at COP31 this fall in Turkey. That road map is expected to draw heavily on the findings and recommendations in the final Santa Marta conference report, which was released on June 23 at the Global Energy Transition and Electrification Summit in London, part of London Climate Action Week. “Dialogues [during the conference] were open and constructive, and countries spoke honestly about the challenges they face,” the report states. “It is this ‘spirit of Santa Marta’ that energizes the work ahead.”

Indeed, this is only the beginning for the Santa Marta process. A second TAFF conference is already scheduled for 2027, to be hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland. Between now and then, groups of countries will be striving to make progress on three work streams that were created and launched in Santa Marta, as follows:

1. To help countries develop national and regional plans to move away from fossil fuels
2. To develop ways to align trade policies to support decarbonization
3. To transform financial architecture to unlock finance and investment required for the transition

“What happens between now and the second conference is really important,” Berman says. “There are a number of gatherings of different coalitions of countries who are coalescing around the different issues trying to start to put flesh on the bones of some of those ideas and agreements. I expect more concrete processes and formalizing of those processes will come out of Tuvalu.”

A second track for climate diplomacy

Wesley Morgan, research associate at the Institute for Climate Risk and Response, University of New South Wales, Sydney, expressed some of the optimism associated with the new process in a recent article.

“Climate diplomacy now runs at two speeds,” Morgan wrote, in a conference recap published in The Conversation. “The first speed is that of the UN climate talks, which are slower and anchored in consensus . . . But what the Santa Marta conference shows is the existence of a second, much faster speed available to any country wanting to rapidly move to end the use of fossil fuels.”

The range of countries that the hosts invited to Santa Marta also played a big part in ensuring that this effort got off the ground successfully. While some oil producers, like Canada, Norway and Brazil, were there, none of the Middle East petrostates were invited, nor were the United States, Russia, China or India.

With no vested interests watering down the discussions, Berman says, participants could talk openly not just about reducing fossil fuel demand but also about phasing out its production and use. “One of the ministers said to me, ‘I feel so freed, all the conversations are so creative,’” she says. “And I heard that similar refrain from scientists, from academics, from many people coming out of the workshops and the dialogues. [Instead of] arguing about whether not this needs to happen, they were in a space where they were actually creating ideas of how to plan for it to happen. And it’s a conversation that is long overdue.”

This shift even extended to subnational participants, like C40 Cities and the Under2 Coalition, Berman adds. “This year, in part as a result of the Santa Marta process, C40 and Under2 Coalition have made fossil-fuel phaseout a priority within their own programs,” she says. “They’re both developing handbooks and tool kits for states and cities on what their role is going to be in escalating fossil-fuel phaseout.” Previously, she says, they focused mainly on renewables and emissions reductions, avoiding the more “controversial” matter of constraining fossil-fuel production.

While Santa Marta organizers couldn’t have known it last fall, the tone and takeaways at the conference were also influenced by the concurrent war in Iran, the logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, and their impact on energy supply and economic security. “It really changed the conversation from being one that was solely about climate change to being a recognition that fossil-fuel phaseout would lead to greater stability, both political and economic,” Berman says. “I think it’s fair to say we’re now having a conversation about how to replace supply and how to reduce supply in a way that has never happened before.”

Building political weight

According to an article by Natalie Jones and Paola Yanguas Parra, policy advisers at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), what happened at Santa Marta is significant because it demonstrated that the political weight behind the transition is growing. Yet how much or how quickly those new conversations and the willingness to take on the topic of reducing fossil-fuel supply find their into the COP process remains to be seen.

To those hoping for a quick win, the IISD’s Jones and Yanguas Parra caution against trying to insert the work streams recently launched at Santa Marta into formal Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating text too quickly. In that forum, they write, “pressure to accommodate the most resistant parties tends to dilute rather than advance ambition. Santa Marta’s energy comes precisely from operating outside that dynamic.”

Berman sees a similar parallel in the historical precedent of other successful initiatives that started outside the diplomatic process, such as the Ottawa Treaty (the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention). It relied on “a kind of ‘build it and they will come’ model,” she says and was introduced into the formal UN system only once support levels and proposed solutions were robust and hard to resist.

“That gradual accumulation of political weight,” Jones and Yanguas Parra conclude, “is precisely how the Santa Marta process was designed to work.”

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But what if the projects Carney is fast-tracking will not actually make Canada stronger? Most of the energy-related projects of national interest currently on the table for billions in taxpayer subsidies and other support would see Canada further expanding fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Many of these are likely to be terrible investments, further entrenching our economy with inefficient and declining energy platforms – at the exact moment when technological advances are driving many global buyers to rapidly shift their energy systems in the other direction.

Instead of propping up sunsetting industries, we think Canada needs a hard pivot. Our organization Adamant spent this spring working with many smart partners on a vision built around saying “yes”: yes to large-scale, transformative, distributed energy megaprojects. If these projects are supported in the same way as fossil fuel and nuclear megaprojects, they would deliver more jobs, more economic independence and help with affordability – all with less market risk and far less pollution.

Here are five clean megaprojects that are worth building a nation around.

Triple our clean-energy capacity

Imagine paying the equivalent of 25 cents a litre to fill your tank. Imagine your heating bill dropping by half because your heat pump runs on cheap, clean electricity. Imagine hundreds of thousands of new jobs in every part of the country, while Canadian entrepreneurs and factories win global contracts because their products are made with clean power.

All of that is possible, but only if Canada builds enough clean electricity to make it happen. The Public Policy Forum notes that Canada’s power output will need to be two to three times larger by 2050 than it is today and that we need to build more electricity infrastructure in the next 25 years than we built in the previous 100.

Carney’s grid plan announced in May is a good start, but the vision should be more ambitious, it should happen faster, and it should go all-in on clean. First Nations are already showing the way. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Alberta owns three solar farms. Henvey Inlet Wind is a massive project on Georgian Bay, generating enough power for a quarter-million Ontarians. Almost all of B.C. Hydro’s recent clean-power proponents are Indigenous co-owned. Let’s keep going.

Get serious about energy efficiency

Energy efficiency could be Canada’s most cost-effective economic lever. Building efficiency into our aging buildings and homes would cut energy costs by more than 60% and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Every dollar invested in energy efficiency produces $4 to $7 in gross domestic product growth, a productivity multiplier larger than virtually any other infrastructure investment category.

With two-thirds of Canadian buildings built before 2000, transforming residential and commercial heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems is a big undertaking, yes, and will require an integrated approach. But the payoffs are immediate.

The results will be worth it, driving down energy bills while creating up to 200,000 jobs in all areas of the country. Good, local jobs that are tariff- and AI-proof. The question is whether Canada is ready to treat energy-saving innovations as the nation-building priorities they are.

Wire Canada together

Canada has some of the world’s best wind, solar and hydropower resources, and huge geothermal potential. The problem is that these resources are spread across provinces that don’t have the transmission lines to share them.

Right now, more than 80% of Canada’s electricity trade flows south to the newly unreliable United States, while our own provinces barely trade with each other. This weakens grid reliability and saps local economies.

Wire the country together with new transmission lines and the payoff is real: doubling the B.C.–Alberta connection alone is projected to return nearly $6 for every dollar spent. Nationally, upgrading the grid would create tens of thousands of jobs. The Ontario East–West Tie, a single 450-kilometre line, generated 2,600 person-years of work and more than $200 million in economic benefit, with Indigenous workers making up more than half the crew.

Revolutionize the housing industry

The scale of our housing crisis demands big new ideas. The government’s Build Canada Homes initiative tinkers around the edges, delivering only 26,000 homes over five years, a sliver of the half a million we need every year just to regain some margin of affordability. Here’s something that will: a massive smart-modular-homes industry built right here in Canada.

Canadian workers in regional factories could build 150,000 energy-efficient modular homes per year by 2050. These high-quality, high-tech homes manufactured in worker-friendly conditions are faster and cheaper to build and offer residents permanently low utility bills thanks to innovative energy-efficient technologies – also made in Canada. We could create up to 100,000 jobs and significant affordability benefits for people locked out of today’s broken housing markets.

Fanciful? Sweden already did it in the 1960s, building a million homes in 10 years and turning prefabrication into a national industry that still works today. Japan has produced an average of 150,000 units of modular housing per year since 1995. Why not Canada?

Unlock Canada’s geothermal bedrock

Geothermal is the biggest clean-energy opportunity that most Canadians have never even heard of. We sometimes forget that the earth under our feet is an infinite source of energy. Canada produces today only enough geothermal energy to power a small town, while Europe runs more than 150 geothermal power plants that already supply electricity to 11 million people. That’s on top of another 400 district energy systems that provide direct heating and cooling.

If low-cost, always-on energy isn’t enticing enough, geothermal uses virtually the same drilling skills and equipment as the oil and gas sector. As the technology advances, it is opening up what the International Energy Agency predicts could be a $3.5-trillion industry. Act boldly and Canada could be a global leader in geothermal energy – both as a low-emissions domestic energy source and a booming global technology export industry.

With our abundant clean natural resources, highly educated population and advanced economy, Canada has significant advantages in the global energy transition. Instead of doubling down on the dirty and inefficient energy systems the world is rapidly leaving behind, why not build Canada better? These clean, distributed energy projects will provide more jobs, save Canadians money and align us with the direction the rest of the world is fast pursuing.

Excited? Read our full project plans on the Build Canada Better section of the Adamant website and sign up to use your voice to advocate for better choices from our governments.

Jason Mogus is the chair of Adamant, a new public policy organization promoting smarter economic choices for Canada. Tyee Bridge is a journalist and researcher and a coauthor of the net-zero scenario report Jobs for Today. 

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“To see all these young folks from all around the world working together in a shared way, with shared objectives and passion,” he says today, “it really shaped the course of my life.”

Another turning point for Guilbeault unfolded this spring in Ottawa, as the well-known and controversial former environment minister took a bow from federal politics, marking a clear split from the Mark Carney government on environmental and energy policies.

On May 27, Guilbeault, 56, announced his retirement as a member of Parliament, a few months after resigning from Carney’s cabinet. It capped off a heady and influential four years at the helm of one of the most sensitive government portfolios in the country. He served as minister of environment and climate change from 2021 to 2025, with stints as minister of heritage, minister of Canadian identity and culture and minister responsible for official languages before and after.

Upon his announcement, environmental groups heralded his integrity and work, with the David Suzuki Foundation celebrating his “vital contribution to the fight against climate change” and Environmental Defence calling on more MPs to “publicly reject the government’s assault on climate, nature and Canada’s economic and social future.”

“If I had to do it all again, I would,” Guilbeault says of his political career, on a recent morning bike commute from his home in Montreal. “I would fight for the same policies.”

For the first time in recent memory, he has “no plans” – aside from going on a voyage to the Arctic with the non-profit Students on Ice, alongside 40 Canadian youth. He is staying on as MP for a few more weeks to complete projects in his urban Montreal riding of Laurier–Sainte-Marie, such as a youth theatre and a new hub for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

“I have greatly enjoyed politics. It’s very demanding,” he says, acknowledging the stark challenges from growing populism, online hate and the harmful effects of social media. “The political arena . . . has become more difficult, but it’s also incredibly rewarding.”

At its annual gala on June 24, 2026, Corporate Knights recognized Guilbeault with its Award of Distinction, an honour that has previously gone to Ken Dryden, Tom Mulcair, Kathy Bardswick and Vicky Sharpe, among others.

Politics with conviction

Guilbeault’s list of achievements is long. Born in rural Quebec, he co-founded Équiterre, an acclaimed Quebec-based non-profit environmental and sustainable agricultural organization in 1993 (originally known as Action for Solidarity, Equality, Environment and Development). He worked as an environmental activist for many years, notably with Greenpeace, and engaged in direct actions designed to strike a nerve and raise awareness. In 2001, he scaled the CN Tower with fellow Greenpeace activist Chris Holden to unfurl a banner that read “Canada and Bush – climate killers” as a way to criticize a lack of government action on the Kyoto Protocol. He was subsequently arrested and convicted of mischief.

It was that brand of conviction that drew the attention of Justin Trudeau, who recruited him to his Liberal ranks. In a recent podcast with political strategist David Herle, Guilbeault described how the then-prime minister introduced his environment minister to former U.S. president Joe Biden – as a “real activist” who had been arrested four times. Trudeau, he said, was looking for someone who would bring a “jolt” to the environment file. And in many ways, that’s what Guilbeault did.

As a Liberal, he has been steadfast in his convictions, defending and expanding the Trudeau policy of carbon pricing, publishing Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations, draft regulations capping oil and gas pollution, single-use plastic prohibitions, and 2035 emissions targets. He was a leading voice brokering the landmark Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity agreement in which 196 countries agreed to restore at least 30% of degraded terrestrial, inland-water, and coastal and marine ecosystems.

“We’ve shown that using public policy you can have an impact. For the first time in our history, emissions were going down while the economy was going up,” he says.

Navigating criticism

But Guilbeault was a target for the Conservative Party – which linked some of his policies to his “radical” past – and particularly for Canadians furious over carbon pricing. “There are things I would do differently,” he says. “I think we were very slow to respond to the anti-carbon-tax campaign from the Conservatives.”

He also navigated fierce criticism from environmentalists when he approved the Bay du Nord deep-sea offshore oil project off the coast of Newfoundland in 2022, which the government said met strict environmental standards but which environmentalists said exposed “Canada’s climate hypocrisy.” Modelling showed that Canada was making progress but falling short of hitting its 2030 emissions targets while Guilbeault was environment minister, and it has slipped further behind under the current government.

Guilbeault has made no secret of his view that the Carney government is headed in the wrong direction on climate policies. He first resigned from cabinet last year in protest of a memorandum of understanding Carney signed with Alberta that paves the way for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast. Environmental groups have criticized the MOU for key concessions to the oil-producing province that lower federal targets for the price on carbon. “We need an effective carbon-pricing system,” Guilbeault says. “With the agreement we’ve signed with Alberta, we’ve just delayed by 10 years the implementation of carbon pricing.”

He understands the pressure of tariffs from the United States and the wider shifting geopolitical landscape, but some fundamentals will not change, he says: “We can try to ignore climate change, [but] climate change won’t ignore us. We’ll likely have the mother of all El Niños coming up in the coming months, wreaking havoc in North America [and] around the world. We’re seeing Pakistan with more than 59°C daytime temperatures.”

Climate change has already displaced tens of thousands of Canadians, he points out – a far greater toll than other geopolitical challenges. “Unfortunately, you don’t hear anyone in the government talk about this.”

He says the tools are in place for better action, such as the national adaptation strategy that maps out what needs to be done for Canadians to be better prepared for climate change. “Where are we with the implementation of that?” he asks.

A ‘radical pragmatist’

Mark Calzavara, a prominent environmental campaigner in Canada, says he understands why Guilbeault decided to quit. The pair have known each other for decades, hatching numerous Greenpeace campaigns, including one that saw Guilbeault climb onto a massive piece of bitumen-refining equipment during a freezing Alberta winter, to stall it from being driven from Edmonton to the oil sands. “Nobody was calling in on our side,” Calzavara recalls of the talk-show interviews Guilbeault did at the time. “They were all ‘I hope you guys get shot, or somebody should take you out.’ Steven was remarkable, under difficult conditions, to talk to people and meet them where they’re at.”

While Guilbeault “did as good or better a job as anyone” as environment minister, Calzavara says that his tenure shows the limits of what is possible within the political system. “The power is so centralized in the prime minister’s office, and if the prime minister is not a fan of the ideas you’re promoting, you go backwards.”

For his part, Guilbeault still holds on to a descriptor offered by a friend many years ago that he is “a radical pragmatist.”

Still, the Conservatives continued their criticism as he exited the political arena. During Guilbeault’s departure announcement in the House of Commons in May, Conservative Calgary MP Shuvaloy Majumdar offered a restrained nod to his “deep convictions” while stressing that “his policies caused so much hardship for so many families across this country.”

Bloc Québécois Patrick Bonin, MP for the riding of Repentigny, called him “by far the best environment minister that this country has ever known” during that same farewell session. And Guilbeault’s friend Elizabeth May, former leader of the Green Party, said it was an honour to work with him. “Courage should be respected, regardless of views,” she said in Parliament, her voice cracking. “What we are dealing with is a crisis.”

Of that, there should be little doubt. But like any effective politician, Guilbeault chooses to focus on the positives and the progress that has been made, and on a record of activism and improbabilities that can inspire hope.

“If [you] told 25-year-old Steven Guilbeault who was at COP1 in Berlin,” he says, having reached his destination and parked his bike, that “one day he would be environment minister of a G7 country, working with others to achieve all those things, I’m not sure he would have believed you.”

Natalie Alcoba is a Buenos Aires-based journalist and senior editor at Corporate Knights.

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There really is something quite equanimous in the way Garcetti talks about the deep political rift in the United States over low-carbon energy. Garcetti currently serves as chief ambassador for global climate diplomacy at C40 Cities, an international network of nearly 100 mayors committed to advancing climate action. He served as the group’s chair from 2019 to 2021, during the last part of his nine-year tenure as L.A.’s top official.

Garcetti is on a mission to remind the world that President Donald Trump doesn’t have the last word on the state of climate action in the United States, nor is he the most reliable authority. If you pay attention only to the current administration, you’re missing the bigger story about where climate adaptation and mitigation are headed in the world’s largest economy, Garcetti says.

We spoke with Garcetti about the power of cities and states to implement the green transition, how climate communications are evolving, and why Washington can’t stop the low-carbon economy.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

MARK MANN: Are you building a parallel order of climate diplomacy?

ERIC GARCETTI: Look, we know that things like a pandemic and disease and certainly climate, these things don’t care where we draw borders between cities or countries. It demands a diplomacy that also doesn’t ignore borders but works across them, and that’s really what we’re doing.

MM: You’re here at the Montreal Climate Summit with Gina McCarthy, chair of the America Is All In coalition and former climate adviser to President Biden, who argues that Trump’s power to stymie climate action is exaggerated. I’ve noticed it in the media, that sometimes Trump’s attacks are much more amply covered than the rebuttals. What’s going on there?

EG: Well, go to your business model: what generates clicks is conflict. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what generates clicks; what matters is what generates electricity in a sustainable way. Wind might be controversial in one project off the coast, but meanwhile, take Texas. It’s a very conservative political state right now, run by Republicans, and they’re decarbonizing the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in America, primarily with wind and solar. Maybe they don’t brag about it because it doesn’t fit their politics, but they’re not stopping.

MM: Do you take a page and talk less about climate?

EG: Yeah, not because of Trump, but because I think “climate” is an abstract word for many people. Climate literally means weather. It doesn’t have a value to it. Climate isn’t environmentalism or green, and those things, while they were good early on, were too segregated. You felt very special if you were a green activist or if you worked on environmental issues, when it requires a billion people to be incorporating sustainable values.

I like talking about jobs, health and safety. And in the face of extreme weather and climate change, we have communities that don’t feel safe because of floods and fires and everything else. The economy is rapidly changing, and so responding to what’s happening requires us to retrain people and to generate jobs through the work that needs to be done.

MM: What’s the best evidence, in your view, that climate action is still winning in the United States? That the momentum is still there?

EG: Sometimes there are setbacks that reduce the acceleration, but there’s nothing that’s reversing the direction. You read headlines and you think, “Oh, people are going backwards.” No. Coal plants are still being shut down, even if the president is trying to save a handful of them over the wishes of the actual power companies that own them. We are seeing the more conservative states – like, 70% of the new [low-carbon power] installation was done in Texas, Ohio and Florida, all run by Republican governors.

California continues that. Los Angeles, the largest municipal utility, is still on path to be at 97% carbon-free power in four years – it’s so exciting to even say that – and 100% by 2035. Transportation investments are continuing. The number-one car sold in California is still an electric car.

It’s hard to find a measure where we are moving backwards. When you look at capital flows, too, there’s never been more deals at a better price than right now. When I talk to investors, they’re like, “Maybe we don’t talk about it as loudly, but in some ways all that shouting coming out of Washington has helped us find even better deals.” Everybody knows it’s the cheapest way to get power. It’s the best way to move forward with transportation. It’s the healthiest thing to do for communities. We struggle to find evidence against it, [despite] what the White House claims.

MM: Do you think energy is shifting to the local level? Is there any sense that the centre of gravity is moving away from federal politics?

EG: No, I don’t think many people ever cared what Washington was doing, even when they might be pro–climate action. I mean, there have been moments, like when Joe Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act. That was huge. It was the biggest piece of environmental legislation ever passed by any nation. But they also knew that if you could add up all the local and state money spent, it would dwarf [the IRA]. We’re the ones who maintain sewer systems, who do private investment, build houses. We invest and build our transportation networks. In America, most spending on climate-related sectors is done at the sub-national level. I think anybody who has been active has always known that’s where the fight is.

MM: In Canada, cities can be disempowered relative to the provinces. Often there’s a dynamic where politicians at the provincial level gain more power from rural voters than from urban voters. I’m wondering how powerful cities really are?

EG: It’s different from state to state, but in the United States, big cities have tremendous power, whether it’s formal or informal. Even if you’re a drop of blue in a red state, the state leaders know they need to have a Houston work, or Atlanta work or Nashville work. There’s often political conflict, but when it comes to spending money and getting things done, it’s the same voters and the same people who are demanding answers.

I also think that urban–rural divide is disappearing a little bit based on some issues. For instance, data centres are being built in the most rural areas and the most urban areas. And people are like, “Whoa, why are my energy bills going up 20% in a year? What is the impact of having this around me? How are we actually generating that electricity?” Folks who might not have in the past cared about whether it was coal or gas are suddenly questioning, “Do I really want that, just to help an AI system develop?” In urban areas, they’re finding new coalitions between people.

The majority of people really do live now in urban areas in America, overwhelmingly. Depending on how you measure it, up to 80% of Americans live in cities. So that is allowing cities to hit above their weight class, even if they don’t have the formal power. They really have the influence, even sometimes when they’re led by people from a different party.

MM: I don’t know if people are still talking about “abundance” as much, but I’m curious if you think that’s the type of shift that we need?

EG: I’m not a huge fan of the word “abundance,” because what does that mean? It’s another one of these academic-sounding words. But making shit easier to get done: yes.

There are some basics we should never, ever sacrifice. But we’ve put so many boulders in our backpack, it’s so slow to move. For instance, imagine a New York subway system getting built in this day and age. It would take 100 years to build that, and it would cost a trillion dollars.

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I’ve become simultaneously more progressive and libertarian as I age. Libertarian, like, get the hell out of the way. Get the basics covered, but let people do stuff because there’s a crisis. And more progressive: make sure it has a conscience. Don’t just let bad design and capital flow in however it wants. But if you let capital flow in in a predictable way, there are smart ways to be both progressive and caring, but also a little bit more libertarian and less regulatory.

MM: Do U.S. mayors who engage in the C40 or in other types of sub-national climate diplomacy face threat or pushback from the federal government?

EG: Yeah, when they’re not focused on something else, like wars in the Middle East or going after our immigrants. It’s somewhere in that agenda. It’s not frequent, and it’s not a friendly partnership, but [Washington doesn’t have] a lot of tools. They can’t tell Los Angeles “You can’t create renewable energy for your energy mix.” They can’t write our building code. They can’t tell us where to invest our transportation dollars.

There are moments when federal funds would be useful, and can help accelerate the greening of our ports, the building of more public transportation, the environmental-justice issues of restoring communities cut up by bad infrastructure decisions, and that’s frustrating at times.

But no, I think that there are bigger targets that they have their attention on. And we actually welcome collaboration with them. If you can get past some of the fixations they have, whether it’s offshore wind or this, that and the other, there are opportunities for America to be strong and have jobs the same way that Prime Minister Carney is talking about. This is the age of more national sovereignty, reshoring jobs. I’d love for us to be talking about in the United States, as Canada is doing, really being one of the green manufacturing hubs that can export to the world. Don’t cede that to China, as marvellous a job as they’ve done. They shouldn’t be creating every future car. We should have Canadians and Americans that build cars, but it’s probably not going to be an internal combustion engine 20 years from now. So we’re going to lose a decade by winding away all those subsidies. And we’re going to be behind the eight ball for a long time.

Mark Mann is the managing editor of Corporate Knights. He lives in Montreal. 

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The couple took the plunge and bought the 12-acre property, armed with the proceeds from the sale of the studio and a guiding philosophy: “We wanted to create a place where people could simplify.”  

Today, the Anupaya Cabin Co. is a well-tended wildernes retreat with eight renovated cabins and spectacular views of the towering Laurentian Mountains and surrounding forests. The couple seeded an apple orchard, planted vegetable and herb gardens, and built a chicken coop.  

As many as 5,000 guests come every year for the usual reasons: to escape the daily grind, paddle the river and hike through the woods. But they also undertake tasks that many vacationers might find unappealing: removing invasive plant species, collecting eggs, helping harvest crops. Visitors are encouraged to replenish and revitalize the land, a new approach to destination travel known as regenerative tourism. 

Like sustainable tourism, regenerative tourism aims to minimize the industry’s negative impact from environmental damage as well as the social toll on local communities from over-crowding. But where sustainable tourism mainly guards against resource depletion, regenerative travel seeks to actively restore and regenerate ecosystems, cultures and local economies. 

The Journal of Responsible Tourism Management notes that regenerative tourism often emphasizes opportunities to heal tourist destinations. 

British Columbia’s Maple Leaf Adventures, which offers small-scale expedition cruises to the Gulf Islands, the Great Bear Rainforest and southeast Alaska, recently revived its “marine debris removal initiative,” an effort to clean up the accumulation of marine debris along B.C.’s remote coastline. In 2024 alone, approximately 32.5 tonnes of debris was collected. The haul included fishing gear, nets, rope, polystyrene floats, plastic bottles and more. Coastal care is now integrated into Maple Leaf expeditions and guests on the tours join in the beach clean-ups. 

Tourism is big business 

Although the travel industry has seen a decline in business of late, prior to the pandemic, tourism was one of the world’s largest sectors, accounting for nearly 10.3% of all jobs (333 million) and 10.3% of global gross domestic product (US$9.6 trillion) as reported by the World Travel & Tourism Council. 

Conventional tourism is based on an economic model of increasing visitor numbers, which becomes self-defeating when the size of the crowd exceeds the coping capacity of the infrastructure and community. With its emphasis on reversing the environmental and socio-economic toll of visitors, regenerative tourism has a lot of appeal for locals.  

Not everyone is convinced, however. Writing for Bloomberg News, Amanda Little flagged the industry’s heavy reliance on carbon-intensive air travel and concluded that the sector has a very long road to “transition from being less-bad to becoming that essential meaning of regenerative, which is to ‘bring forth again.’” 

As a newcomer to the travel business, regenerative tourism is especially susceptible to greenwashing. Third-party certification helps mitigate against misleading marketing, although the labels range from rigorous to not so much. The respected U.S.-based non-profit Global Sustainable Tourism Council, however, has established global standards for sustainable travel and tourism, which are the result of a worldwide effort to develop a common language about sustainability in tourism. 

Anupaya received certification from GreenStep, a sustainable travel consultancy that offers certification services. The process was rigorous, MacLaggan says. It took six months to achieve silver certification (the second-highest level), and GreenStep audits certified businesses every two years. Adhering to those standards is no joke, she says: “It’s really challenging.” But, she adds, “When we saw this place, we knew instantly we would do anything to be able to steward this land.” 

Victoria Foote is a writer and editor who specializes in clean energy and climate.

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In January, Mark Carney told the crowd at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting that the middle powers, like Canada, have the capacity to build a new world order and that allies will need to diversify to hedge against uncertainty. For Canada, the government is partly betting on a lower-carbon economy to meet this middle-power moment. The federal government’s climate competitiveness strategy aims to leverage clean technology and the nation’s abundant natural resources to boost Canada’s economy and position itself as a climate leader.

Though there are federal actions that have undercut this ambition, such as continued oil and gas subsidies, and evidence that curbing emissions in Canada has stalled, the economic case for climate action in Canada is strong. Some 66% of investments in Canadian oil and gas infrastructure are at risk of becoming stranded, according to a 2025 report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Canadian pension giant La Caisse saw investments in renewable energy tripled between 2017 and 2025, from $9 billion to $27.4 billion. Jobs within the environmental and clean technologies sector have grown faster compared to the broader economy for three years straight, according to a 2026 Statistics Canada study.

It’s against this backdrop that Toronto Climate Week (TOCW) 2026 will bring together innovators, business leaders, policymakers, researchers, artists and community members from all over the world. The second annual week-long event, from June 1 to 7, aims to showcase local and Canadian innovations while connecting to global opportunities, all while tapping into the discourse around the future of the global sustainable economy.

“I think Canada has a major opportunity right now to shape the global conversation around the clean-energy transition, and how the benefits of that transition to green energy can be an economic benefit for Canada,” says Kate Johnson, regional director for North America at C40 Cities, a global network of mayors from major cities working on climate action.

Cities lead on climate

Johnson, who is attending the Toronto event, has seen several climate action weeks pop up around the world. In some ways, that’s no surprise: “[Cities are] really the first responders,” she says, when it comes to climate change impacts, which intersect with rising energy bills and housing costs. Cities want to respond holistically to these overlapping crises, but it’s challenging, she says. Cities in the C40 network share resources and clout, and they’re making the case that it’s smart to use climate-smart solutions to address broader concerns.

Toronto Climate Week is “a really great opportunity just to get a pulse of what’s happening, not just in Toronto, but in Canada more broadly,” Johnson says. The event is expected to attract around 10,000 attendees to more than 200 scheduled events across the city. On the agenda are things like carbon solutions, the circular economy, cleantech and environmental justice.

Carbon focus

One of the flagship events, Carbon Solutions: Canada’s Competitive Advantage, will look at several carbon-removal and -management solutions in Canada and global markets. Carbon removal is forecast to be a US$1.2-trillion industry by 2050, according to a 2023 McKinsey report. With 20% of the world’s fresh water, 347 million hectares of boreal forest, 62.2 million hectares of farmland, more than 240,000 kilometres of coastline and an abundance of nature, Canada has ample opportunities to leverage its resources to help support climate action – and a lot to protect, too. Several companies have already started to look to Canada’s landscapes to sequester carbon.

Brady Paron, senior vice president of carbon market partnerships at Mast, a reforestation company working on restoring landscapes after wildfires, will be on a panel at the carbon-solutions flagship event. Mast takes trees that were killed in wildfires and buries them deep underground to prevent the wood from further decomposing and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. To fund wildfire cleanup and landscape restoration expenses, Mast sells carbon credits to companies.

So far, there has been only a pilot project in Montana, but Canada is on Mast’s radar. “We see there’s a huge opportunity for biomass burial projects in Canada, given that we’ve got tons of forests in Canada,” Paron says, “and we’re unfortunately also seeing increasing wildfires here as well.” Paron is Canadian and based in Toronto but works for a U.S.-based company. He says this hybridity affords him a useful lens for TOCW: it’s not just about highlighting the incredible innovation in Canada, but also showcasing solutions to the entire world. “Canada can be a superpower for this moving forward.”

Sequestration strategy

Undo, a U.K.-registered company, has also focused on carbon sequestration projects in Canada. Working with farmers in Ontario, Undo offers enhanced rock weathering, a method that crushes abundant silicate rocks into a powder, through carbon credits sold to companies. The crushed rock both captures carbon from the atmosphere and can improve soil health, creating a win-win for the climate and farmers.

Peggy Sue Deaven, general manager for Canada at Undo, thinks that climate-solution companies like Undo need to showcase that they can make just as much business sense as the conventional big emitters. “We are a robust, competitive, for-profit, eat-your-heart-out [business], and we do good things.” Deaven, who will also be on a panel during the flagship TOCW carbon-solutions event, adds that climate solutions is an area where Canada can already own its leadership status in the world and that there are solutions that make economic sense.

With an existential threat like climate change, it’s important to connect with others, Deaven argues. “The soaring potential for folk to come together audaciously and to think what’s next, how are we pulse-checking with one another – that kind of community coming together is exceptional,” she says. “Toronto’s such a hub for innovation, so it does bring out the best in folk there.”

Corporate Knights is a media sponsor of Toronto Climate Week. This article was produced independently by the Corporate Knights editorial team, and Toronto Climate Week did not review or approve the content prior to publication.

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The C40 is one fairly robust example of subnational climate diplomacy, but it’s not the only one. The U.S. Climate Alliance, a league of more than 20 blue states, partners informally with European Union institutions and member states. The conjoined California-Quebec cap-and-trade market, which has been operating for about 12 years, shows how regional governments on different sides of a national border can create carbon markets. Earlier this year, in fact, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, went one step further and pushed his state’s climate diplomacy all the way across the Atlantic, inking a memorandum of understanding with the United Kingdom’s Labour government to support decarbonization efforts, promote resilience, exchange technical expertise and “engage in mutually beneficial economic and innovation activities through increased research and academic cooperation.”

News of California’s deal with Westminster attracted, predictably, the ire of President Donald Trump, who first belittled Newsom and then stated that it is “inappropriate” for the United Kingdom to be dealing with a climate-minded governor. After all, the U.S. government’s national policy on climate change and the energy transition tacks in precisely the opposition direction, as evidenced by billions in stalled or cancelled clean-energy subsidies (although some offshore wind received reprieves in the courts), the declawing of the Environmental Protection Agency and the administration’s seemingly inexhaustible support for coal.

This latest clash between Trump and Newsom – hardly the first and unlikely the last – raises a tricky question: if international affairs is the natural purview of national governments, should subnational entities – states, regions, even cities – have the latitude to go their own way, especially when the climate stakes are so stark?

During Trump’s first term, the White House went to court to kill the California-Quebec cap-and-trade market, citing a provision in the U.S. Constitution that grants Washington the exclusive right to conduct international diplomacy unless Congress provides an exemption. But the Trump administration’s resulting lawsuit didn’t survive regime change, and the Biden administration dropped the case in 2021. A year later, Biden signed a law formalizing the role of subnational diplomacy, and even set up a dedicated division within the State Department, complete with its very own “special representative for city and state diplomacy.” That gesture, unsurprisingly, did not survive into Trump’s second term.

The case for a transatlantic framework

So now what? “In the absence of federal-level commitment and in the presence of federal contestation of climate change and energy security policy,” says Jakob Wiedekind, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “it is clear that we are looking for other channels and avenues to cooperate across the Atlantic . . . This is not the first time we had to do that [because] American positions and climate change policy have fluctuated.”

In a recent article in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Wiedekind laid out the case for creating what he dubs a “Transatlantic Subnational Resilience Framework” that could help sustain international dialogue on climate change and renewable energy in a period when Washington is very much not in the mood to engage, especially with the European Union.

The EU, of course, has plenty of its own experience with subnational diplomacy and what Wiedekind calls “multi-level governance.” For example, he cites the diverse ways in which EU member states sought to wean themselves off Russian natural gas after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with a heavy emphasis on renewables. That exercise, dubbed REPowerEU, originated with directives from the European Commission but “allowed member states specifically and regional actors to share expertise on how that would be done,” he says, adding there could be other such top-down/bottom-up efforts to confront issues such as the wildfires and flooding that have swept through much of Western Europe and the United States in recent years.

Wiedekind argues that a transatlantic framework for subnational climate diplomacy could work in a similarly flexible and decentralized way, through regular meetings, leveraging commercialized clean technologies, and shared commitments to achieve resilience goals. Wiedekind, however, stresses that any such group should not become part of the annual conference of the parties (COP) that have joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which, he says, has become too politicized.

Indeed, the whole point of the exercise Wiedekind envisions is to depoliticize those international conversations as much as possible so they don’t become a target. He also contends that shifting the focus to climate-adjacent topics like wildfires, flooding and profitable clean-energy ventures could evolve into a strategy for engaging state-level Republican lawmakers who might otherwise steer clear of climate policy per se.

Such ideas reveal both the desperation and opportunities of a moment when the world’s most powerful government has become consumed by climate denial. No matter how hard it tries, the Trump administration can project its philosophy only so far. Other nations and other jurisdictions are resisting. The resulting conversations around collaboration and work-arounds offer evidence, however slight, that climate diplomacy will persist until this storm passes.

John Lorinc is a Toronto journalist who writes about cities, climate and business.

The post U.S. states and cities are building a parallel system for climate diplomacy appeared first on Corporate Knights.