When I was a kid, David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things ran an episode on the decimation of the Amazon rainforest that filled me with wonder and a burning need to do something. That imprint has never left me.
I recently watched Suzuki and his wife Tara – a force in her own right – perform a play called What You Won’t Do for Love. It made me cry and laugh in equal measure. During the Q&A, Suzuki lamented that the environmental movement has failed to move the needle on climate because we haven’t changed minds. That landed like a thunderbolt. Because he’s right – and wrong – at the same time.
Here’s what I mean. We have actually solved some of the most wicked environmental problems in history. The synthetic pesticide DDT was collapsing bird populations and poisoning ecosystems up the food chain – bald eagles were nearly gone. Acid rain was killing lakes and stripping forests across eastern North America. The ozone hole was opening the door to mass skin cancer. Leaded gasoline was robbing children of IQ points on a civilizational scale. All largely solved, or on the path to it.
What did these victories have in common? Two things: viable substitute technology and visceral stakes that people could feel in their bones. Your kids getting skin cancer at the beach. Your cottage lake dying and losing all its fish. These weren’t abstractions. They were urgent, personal and proximate.
Climate has been stuck in abstraction. The environmental movement got captured by end-of-world framing and forgot about people preoccupied with the end of the month. And unlike DDT or acid rain – where results came in years – the environmental payoff from cutting greenhouse gases won’t be felt for decades.
Which is why we need to draw a straight line to affordability. EVs, heat pumps and green power can cut household energy bills in half, putting thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working families. That’s not a climate argument; that’s a kitchen table argument, and it’s the one that wins.
England’s Zack Polanski gets this instinctively. Since becoming Green Party leader last September, he’s coined himself an “eco-populist,” sent a plumber to talk about cutting energy bills instead of saving the planet, and won a by-election in a Manchester riding the Greens had ranked 127th on their target list. The party now has more than 200,000 members and is polling ahead of Labour in some surveys. The insight isn’t complicated: people will vote green when green means cheaper.
The Global South is leapfrogging the rich world, driven by the logic Polanski is embracing in England.
– Toby Heaps, publisher and CEO, Corporate Knights
There is a powerful constituency that doesn’t want you to know about this. Oil and gas companies made US $4 trillion in profit in 2022, double their recent average, according to the International Energy Agency. If the Strait of Hormuz stays disrupted, we’re heading back there fast. The winners are the world’s three biggest oil producers: the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia. Everyone on the wrong side of that trade – the majority of the planet – pays.
Now look at who’s actually leading on EVs and renewable energy. It’s not latte-sipping liberals in rich countries. Nine of the top 10 fastest-growing EV markets are outside the rich country OECD club. Eight of 10 in renewable-energy growth. Nepal (76% of new sales are EVs), Ethiopia (60%), Vietnam, Pakistan – which imported 17 gigawatts of solar panels in a single year because electricity prices were crushing people and solar was saving them money – are all moving fast. Not for climate reasons. For economic survival reasons. The Global South is leapfrogging the rich world, driven by the logic Polanski is embracing in England.
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In the United States, gas prices have jumped from $2.85 before the military buildup on January 23 to $4.06 a gallon (as of April 24), according to the American Automobile Association – costing the average American an extra $20 a week and driving Trump’s economic approval to record lows, below even Biden’s worst numbers.
For Canada and Alberta, Norway is the most instructive example. Also a major oil exporter, Norway plows its petroleum profits into a sovereign wealth fund now north of US $2 trillion. But like a good drug dealer, Norway doesn’t touch its own product – 92% of new vehicles sold are electric, and 99% of its electricity is renewable.
Kermit said it’s not easy being green. He was a great frog. But anyone who still believes that message is buying into a fraud.
Toby Heaps is co-founder and publisher of Corporate Knights.
