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. 

The post U.S. climate action isn’t stopping appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That’s a real disappointment, to say the least. Industrial carbon pricing is Canada’s most consequential climate policy for cutting emissions and keeping costs low, but it needs serious reform. And while the memorandum makes slight improvements to the existing system in Alberta, the deal misses the mark by a long shot when it comes to living up to the policy’s potential, and it will have knock-on effects across the country as the changes are applied in other provinces. For the moment, it puts Canada off path in terms of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

We’ll be talking about changes to electricity and industrial carbon-pricing policy for many months to come. But there’s another moment upcoming that deserves some greater public and media scrutiny: the imminent release of the federal government’s new vehicle emissions standards, the outline of which was announced by the prime minister back in February.

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At that event, Mark Carney made a clear commitment to achieve “the equivalent emissions reductions of a 75% electric vehicle adoption rate” by 2035. Our team at the Canadian Climate Institute will be watching closely to ensure that the details of the policy package give us the tools to reach this outcome.

Some analysts have already concluded that the policy will fall short.

The Pembina Institute, for instance, has modelled the government’s vehicle emissions limit for 2035 – measured in grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per mile – and found that it is not strong enough to achieve the 75% EV sales target. Clean Energy Canada has outlined a number of additional design features that will be critical for the new standard to meet in order to achieve the government’s goals. That includes questions around speed of implementation, applying a single standard across all vehicle sizes, and limiting compliance flexibilities that can undermine the policy’s integrity and reduce its emissions impact.

This is an important test for the Carney government, and not just because transportation decarbonization is critically important. This is really the first new climate policy the Carney government has announced. Every other policy it inherited from the previous Trudeau government and has either eliminated (like the consumer carbon tax) or retained in a changed form (like industrial carbon pricing and methane regulation). The new approach to passenger vehicles is a new goal clearly outlined by the prime minister himself. For the sake of its credibility generally, it behooves the government to ensure there’s a tight relationship between its expressed goal and policy detail sufficiently ambitious to get there.

This is not just a matter of reducing emissions. It’s also about ensuring that Canada keeps pace with the rest of the world and is positioned properly to succeed economically in this new age dominated by electric technologies.

Last year, nearly 100 countries broke EV sales records, according to the latest from the International Energy Agency. Globally, one in every four cars sold on the market was electric in 2025.

In China – the largest auto market in the world and the main destination of Alberta crude exports through British Columbia – nearly 55% of new cars were electric in 2025. This past April, that number reached upwards of 60%. That level of uptake is driven by superior technology and cost: 70% of battery electric cars sold in China last year were cheaper than the average conventional car.

All of this is affecting global demand for oil. In 2025, EVs displaced between 1.7 million to 2.3 million barrels of oil per day. That could more than double by 2030 to 5.3 million barrels per day, according to BloombergNEF.

These are massive disruptions to global energy markets led by rapid technology changes that are now unstoppable. They threaten to radically alter the future of the auto sector and oil production in Canada. Simply put, Canadians can’t afford to be left behind.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

The post Canada’s next big climate policy moment: new federal vehicle regulations appeared first on Corporate Knights.

That coral bleaching is an old story obscures the fact that it is also a new story. First reported in the early 1980s and then extensively in the 2000s and 2010s as mass bleaching events became more common, the tragedy of tropical reef habitats being drained of their kaleidoscopic beauty has long been a familiar trope in the climate-change narrative. But the situation changed during the last El Niño phase, between 2023 and 2025, when prolonged heat stress afflicted 84% of the world’s coral reef area, of which half didn’t survive, according to estimates by Carlos Duarte, a leading marine scientist.

“We’re in a new reality whereby we can now say that we’ve passed the first major climate tipping point, which is the coral reefs,” said Steve Smith, a research fellow at the Global Systems Institute, in an interview with CBS News. Smith is one of the co-authors of an October 2025 report by the University of Exeter that found that warm-water corals – where 830,000 species live, and upon which 33% of marine life depends – are the first planetary-scale system to enter irreversible decline. The latest mass bleaching event came soon after the previous one, from 2014 to 2017. “They don’t have time to recover,” says Marinez Scherer, who served as special envoy for the ocean at the COP30 climate conference in Brazil, in an interview. “The water is staying far too warm for them to survive.”

Scientists are horrified. “We’re talking about an extraordinary, catastrophic collapse,” Oliver Steeds, director of the species cataloguing initiative Ocean Census, said at a summit in Montreal in March. He called the coral dieback “an apocalyptic situation that is happening in our oceans.”

The start of the heat wave that killed off so many warm-water coral reefs coincided with another grim milestone: 2023 was the year the planet first sailed past the critical threshold of 1.5°C of global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that crossing this marker probably means losing between 70% and 90% of tropical shallow water coral reefs, which are the vast majority of the world’s reef ecosystems. Go up to 2°C of warming and we’re facing 99% die-off. The world is currently on track for about 2.6°C by the end of the century, and fossil fuel emissions have not stopped rising.

While warming is generally measured as an average across decades, many scientists consider “overshoot” to no longer be a risk but rather a fact. We may still be at the gate, but we now live in the land beyond 1.5°C, where coral disappearance is but one of multiple cascading transformations – melting polar ice sheets, disruption to North Atlantic Ocean circulation, the dieback of the Amazon – that can no longer be considered merely theoretical.

“We know that scientists have told us that [overshoot] territory exposes us to potential non-linear trajectories of climate change,” said Ricken Patel, founder of the global online campaigning network Avaaz, speaking on the Outrage + Optimism podcast. Patel’s focus has shifted from pressuring governments to keep warming below 1.5°C to preparing for more catastrophic tipping points, because, he said, we are unlikely to avoid them: “I haven’t met anyone who said that we’re on track. Not a single person.”

The truth is that 1.5°C is not the magic number when corals start to wobble into irreversible decline. That was likely 1.2°C of warming, which we started to traverse about a decade ago.

But 1.5°C has been freighted with significance since it became the main reference point in international climate policy following the Paris Agreement, the climate accord agreed to by 195 countries in 2015. (The United States has since dropped out – twice.) At the time, the signatories set a goal to limit warming to well below 2°C but committed only to “pursuing efforts” to stay below 1.5°C. Even so, 1.5°C became one of the central pillars of global climate governance, particularly as the science coalesced around that marker as the real upper boundary for what’s relatively manageable.

“It’s a limit. It’s a ceiling. It’s a maximum temperature level,” Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who led the UN climate talks at COP21, has said. “It’s not a target.”

Whatever it is, it’s not happening, and the climate movement is still working out how to adjust to that fact. Some are calling for a reckoning, as climate action weathers a prolonged period of political hostility and public disaffection, with climate coverage down 35% across major U.S. networks in 2025. But even missed, 1.5°C won’t be killed, because it still retains its scientific significance and legal status. In short, we’ll have to get back to it in the future. But can the movement keep rallying around its most glaring failure?

A movement in crisis

The story of human-caused climate change follows three interconnecting pathways: what the science says, how it’s received, and what we’re doing about it. But it’s the science that runs down the middle, laying the track for the others to follow.

When the greenhouse effect was discovered in the mid-1800s, it did not take long for scientists to recognize that fossil fuel pollution would build up in the atmosphere and heat the earth. Through research and observation spanning disciplines and decades, the theory was validated and its impacts described and anticipated. But as the picture crystalized and the imperative to stop burning fossil fuels became apparent, the response split into two distinct dynamics.

On one track, applied scientists recognized the reality of the impending climate crisis and began to innovate. They invented solutions, started companies – many failed, some succeeded – and ultimately spawned whole new industries that are now pillars of the economic landscape. Wider society, too, reflexively accepted the science, but this response was hijacked by oil and gas companies, who spent billions on misinformation, greenwashing, legal attacks and lobbying. And so the climate crisis became, on one side, a technical challenge and an economic opportunity, and on the other, an actual “climate fight” between environmental campaigners and the incumbent industry, with scientists decidedly in one corner and policymakers trying to play both sides.

Stopping climate change has always been popular, but consensus around appropriate and effective climate action has been dazzlingly hard to produce. That impasse has never felt more stark. Humanity’s civilizational story of encountering existential peril and making a hard switch to a new energy system feels, on a bad day, like one of failure and defeat. Just ask David Suzuki. The famed environmentalist said in an interview with iPolitics last summer that it’s “too late” and that “we have lost the fight against climate change.”

Consider the evidence. There’s the spectacle of President Donald Trump swinging his golden wrecking ball through U.S. climate policy, obliterating environmental protections and stamping out climate science – and apparently without much opposition. There’s an ascendant cultural movement that derides and attacks climate ambitions, and anti-green political parties poised to seize power in Europe, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. There’s the sad scene of countries and corporations quietly shedding the goals they proclaimed only four or five years ago. And then there’s the annual Conference of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, shuffling from petrostate to petrostate, yielding less and less.

Arlo Brady, CEO of Freuds Group, a London-based PR agency with a history of supporting climate and sustainability campaigns, said in October that the movement “has lost the battle for hearts and minds.” Accepting that fact “paves the way for the adoption of a new approach, but only if we treat this as a learning moment,” Brady told a crowd at a taped recording for the Overshoot podcast, a documentary series by Laurie Laybourn about the implications of transgressing 1.5°C.

Brady decries the lack of “populist narratives for climate action” and warns that the environmental movement’s staple response of “outrage and turning up the volume” won’t work anymore. He argues that “the jargon and the ideology and the groupthink has gotten in the way” and that the sustainability movement should rally around the idea “that people might be able to live better lives.”

In that vein, BloombergNEF’s Michael Liebreich launched a manifesto for a “Pragmatic Climate Reset” in the fall, accusing climate campaigners of being tribalistic, elitist and unrealistic about the costs and challenges of a rapid transition. The movement’s main mistake, he says, was pinning policy to 1.5°C and net‑zero‑by‑2050 as non‑negotiable absolutes, despite the unlikelihood of achieving them. “It’s time to put the decade of 1.5°C behind us,” he wrote, and aim instead for “the hard 2°C target that lies at the heart of the Paris Agreement.”

But 1.5°C isn’t something we can quit like a bad habit. “The primary temperature goal is 1.5°C and not 2°C degrees,” climate lawyer Harj Narulla says in an interview. “In an overshoot scenario, that legal standard does not change. All that changes is that the factual emissions reduction pathway shifts and becomes more difficult, [because] we need to have more removals.”

Narulla was among the litigators who brought evidence and legal arguments before the International Court of Justice for its advisory opinion on states’ climate obligations, delivered last summer. That opinion, he says, effectively locked 1.5°C in as the legal standard for warming. Even in an overshoot world, the bar does not move; it simply means that states must bend temperatures back down through much faster cuts and large‑scale carbon removal. Equipped with the ICJ’s opinion, litigation is pouring more heat on fossil fuel production and methane emissions, he argues, because courts are starting to treat them as incompatible with getting back to 1.5°C.

Beyond fossil-fuel economics

Political scientist Jessica Green is ahead of the curve. She’s been pushing for a reckoning over the fundamental flaws in global climate governance for years, and she, too, argues for a pragmatic turn. But in her definition, pragmatism doesn’t mean softening ambition, but rather to use existing institutions to pull the props out from under the oil and gas industry. Her book Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them (Princeton, 2025) makes the case that climate governance has leaned too heavily on voluntary targets and carbon pricing and not nearly enough on industrial policy and confronting corporate power. She calls for “ditching the fiction that markets alone will deliver decarbonization” and instead using the state to plan and build the clean‑energy economy.

There’s an irony to the accusations and hand-wringing in the climate movement growing noisiest at precisely the moment when the energy transition has reached transformative momentum and scale. Global investment in renewables now roughly doubles spending on oil and gas, and electrified technologies are growing much faster than their fossil fuel alternatives in areas like transportation and heating. The oil price shock precipitated by the Iran war will create a lot of pain – and underscore the incentives for switching to renewables and electrification.

“We’re now at a point where clean technologies are cheaper and better for most uses,” says Chris Severson‑Baker, executive director of the Pembina Institute think tank in Canada, “but they still struggle to proliferate in regulatory environments built for fossil fuels.” He argues that climate advocates should focus less on “demonizing fossil fuels” and more on helping policymakers align climate goals with a positive vision of the future economy, showing how cleaner systems mean jobs, security and lower long‑term costs.

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But in the rush to find solutions and successes, climate campaigners are sorely at risk of failing to get credit where credit is due. None of the economic momentum we see now would exist without the many decades of effort by citizens, litigators and campaigners to force governments and markets to take climate seriously in the first place. They shouldn’t be discounted, either, as they are continually gaining economic allies among insurers, investment managers and wealth funds.

For Carlos Duarte, who leads the G20’s Coral Research & Development Accelerator Platform, the biggest challenge is defeatism. We already have a toolbox of imperfect but workable interventions that could keep reefs alive if we deploy them at scale. He estimates that about US$68 billion – roughly the cost of a major harbour or airport – would be enough to safeguard reefs for future generations, creating millions of jobs in the process, so long as we also keep phasing down fossil fuels. Most of that money would go to restoration rather than rescue, which he says “shows that conserving is a lot more cost‑efficient than having to repair when the damage is done.”

In the wider climate crisis, cost efficiency may be swiftly retreating, but ambition need not be. This is a story with many chapters left to be written.

Mark Mann is the managing editor of Corporate Knights. He’s based in Montreal.

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The year started and ended with considerable uncertainty, but for different reasons. On the front end of the year, this was due to the federal election, where – depending on the outcome – a wholesale dismantling of Canada’s policy architecture was a real possibility.

But after a come-from-behind victory by Mark Carney’s Liberals, it became clear that the question ahead was a different one: what will Canada’s climate-policy approach include and how effective will it be at reducing emissions and supporting competitiveness in an era of disruption spawned by Donald Trump?

As the year comes to a close, we have a better idea of what some of that is likely to include: stronger industrial carbon pricing, stronger methane rules for oil and gas, finalized clean-electricity tax incentives, a climate investment taxonomy, support for critical minerals and more. But a fair number of these policy wins are still marked with ongoing uncertainty, including some of the most impactful on the list such as industrial carbon pricing.

Earlier in the year, my colleagues and I at the Canadian Climate Institute outlined a handful of top priorities the government could focus on to make meaningful policy progress. This was especially important given that our research showed that Canada was not going to be able to reach its 2030 emissions target and needed a course correction. That finding was confirmed this week by the federal government’s progress report on its climate plan.

Of the six policies we originally identified to get the country on the path to progress, three remain unfinished or uncertain.

Canada needs fast action on its new climate competitiveness strategy

The government has committed to strengthening industrial carbon pricing, but the details here will make or break this policy. Getting it right is especially important in light of the recent  memorandum of understanding with Alberta, which pushes any clarity on this out to April of next year.

The MOU agreement is vague on specific outcomes: it agrees to increase the minimum carbon credit price to $130 per tonne of emissions – roughly six times the current level – but it doesn’t define a timeline. To be credible, both governments need to agree that this price should be reached by 2030.

Already we’ve seen worrying signs. The ink was barely dry on the MOU when the Alberta government went tinkering with their carbon-pricing system to further weaken it, just one week after the signing.

On a more positive note, the federal government finalized stronger methane rules for the oil and gas sector. Action on methane is a no-brainer, representing some of the lowest-cost actions available. The feds and Alberta need to agree to an effective equivalency agreement to ensure that the level of reduction committed to by the federal government – 72% by 2030 – is achieved. But this is generally good policy news.

On clean electricity, the federal government is currently implementing its long-promised investment tax credits in legislation, which should be passed early next year. And while the government appeared to reaffirm its commitment to the Clean Electricity Regulations, the MOU again undermined that with a carve-out for Alberta.

That risks copy-cat requests from other provinces and a race to the bottom in other areas of climate policy. For the moment, we’re holding out hope that the two parties can negotiate something approaching equivalency on this file.

On electric vehicles, the government has paused its Electric Vehicle Availability Standard and consumer incentives, throwing into question one of the only policies Canada has to reduce emissions in the transportation sector.

Government has said that more information about the future of that policy should be coming soon, but the uncertainty has stymied EV sales in the country, which were previously rising steadily year over year. Maintaining a strong standard will help Canadians find better, more affordable vehicle options, while creating flexibility for vehicle manufacturers.

A fork in the road for the Canadian climate change discussion

The clearest case for progress has been with the federal government’s commitment to implement sustainable investment guidelines – also known as the climate taxonomy. The government has tasked the Canadian Climate Institute, working with Business Future Pathways, to do the technical work that will underpin the guidelines in order to help drive private investment into projects that are in line with the global energy transition.

Add it all together and we’re left with a policy picture that is still muddled.

That’s particularly unsettling given the stakes here: 2025 was also marked by the second-worst wildfire season in Canadian history. That meant people were faced with evacuation orders and alerts, especially those in remote and Indigenous communities. It meant millions of Canadians saw their neighbourhoods blanketed in toxic wildfire smoke for days at a time. And B.C.’s Lower Mainland recently had its major highways cut off from the Interior of the province, and floodwater is pouring into Abbotsford after an atmospheric river drenched the coast. That’s eerily reminiscent of the 2021 atmospheric river event that devastated much of the province and left billions of dollars in economic losses in its wake.

Yet, when it comes to concrete actions to protect people and communities across Canada, much is left wanting from all orders of governments.

All this is happening as clean and electric technologies – like renewables, batteries and electric vehicles – continue their inexorable march to transform global energy markets.

That on its own holds enormous potential to dramatically reduce future damages from climate change. It also offers a massive opportunity for Canada to increase prosperity, support affordability and bolster competitiveness in a world responding to new trade relationships.

Looking to the year ahead, Canada needs to resolve the policy uncertainty that’s standing in the way of progress as soon as possible. The problems we face are urgent, but the solutions are right in front of us.

No more grandiose rhetoric please: all I want for Christmas is some concrete delivery of long-promised climate change policy by Canadian governments.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

The post 2025 was defined by uncertainty on climate policy in Canada that needs quick resolution appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Now, a new study has shed light on a crucial schism, suggesting that those afforded seats at the global policymaking table are vastly underestimating the support of the public on certain policies.

Last year, researchers published the results of a survey of 130,000 people living in 125 countries that found that 69% of respondents were willing to contribute 1% of their salaries to help fight global warming. But a subsequent Oxford University report, released this month, based on a survey of 191 attendees of the United Nations Environment Assembly in early 2024 found that they believed support for such a policy to be at only 37% – just over half the actual amount.

The Oxford researchers surveyed politicians, people working at the UN and other institutions, and policy negotiators. “It’s not just policymakers – our findings suggest that individuals playing a diversity of roles at international environmental governance meetings could be operating under the assumption of a weaker public mandate for climate action than reality,” said lead author Ximeng Fang, a research fellow at Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

This illuminating research is key to rethinking global climate ambitions, at a time when the policies that have been adopted are falling short of what is needed to curb rising temperatures.

As delegates prepare to travel to Belém, Brazil, in November for the COP30 climate conference, another stiff debate around emissions targets is on the horizon. Brazilian organizers have vowed to bring “a new dynamic to global climate action” that aligns efforts to adhere to a battery of already-made commitments.

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Stefania Innocenti, a co-author of the report and associate professor at Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, said that some possible reasons for the misperceptions could be traced to news coverage, lobbying or perhaps the information bubbles that emphasize certain ideological viewpoints.

In the United Kingdom, for example, former prime minister Tony Blair grabbed headlines for a new report he authored that argues for a climate policy reset, suggesting that the current approach is doomed to fail. “Though most people will accept that climate change is a reality caused by human activity, they’re turning away from the politics of the issue because they believe the proposed solutions are not founded on good policy,” he writes. “Any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

Although surveys have repeatedly shown that the public wants action, leaders and the media continue to miss opportunities to place the climate fight at the centre of public discourse.

The global survey of 130,000 people, conducted in 2021 and 2022, “found widespread support of climate action,” with 86% endorsing pro-climate social norms and 89% wanting more intense political action from their governments on the dilemma. The study included countries that account for 96% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, 96% of the world’s gross domestic product and 92% of the world’s population.

Another survey of people living in 77 countries, called the People’s Climate Vote, found that 80% want their communities to strengthen their climate commitments, and 71% want their countries to replace coal, oil and gas with renewable energy quickly or somewhat quickly.

“I hope our research encourages policy officials to be braver and pursue more ambitious climate policies,” said Oxford study co-author Joshua Ettinger,​ who is now a postdoctoral research fellow at the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. “They have more public support than they may realize.”

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

The post There’s much more support for climate action than policymakers think, study finds appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Next week, the new government of Canada will be revealed. And regardless of who wins the election, our nation is about to embark on a new chapter in the climate change discussion. The consumer carbon tax is gone. Because this single policy was so dominant in the climate change debate, its repeal allows considerable space for a refocusing on other solutions.

So where do we go from here?

I’ll share more specific policy recommendations after election day, but here are three priorities that need to form the core of a renewed case for climate change progress:

1. Make life more affordable

After living through the most significant inflationary period in decades, Canadians are now faced with another economic threat from the destructive and chaotic trade actions of the Trump administration. That fundamental fact will colour all policy actions in this country in the months and years ahead – and climate policy is no different.

The good news is that many of the solutions we need to grow our economy and cut emissions involve technologies and actions that can actually improve day-to-day affordability.

Case in point: heat pumps. Previous research done by the Canadian Climate Institute calculated the cost differences between heat pumps and gas heating combined with air conditioning. The policy context has changed since the time of the report, but when you add it all up, heat pumps continue to beat the gas option on price alone in most places across the country.

As Canadians switch from fossil fuels to better, more energy-efficient electric technologies, they will save money on energy costs over time: average household spending on energy is expected to decrease 12% by 2050.

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The same is true for renewables such as solar and wind, which now provide cheaper power than new fossil fuel plants and most existing fossil fuel facilities.

That is unequivocally good news for climate action. There is no path to a net-zero future without powering the majority of our economy with new clean electricity – upwards of two to three times more than is currently on the grid.

2. Build a more competitive economy

Despite Trump’s attempts to slow down decarbonization, other jurisdictions all over the world are accelerating the transition to clean energy. These jurisdictions are precisely the ones Canada needs most to diversify its economy away from an increasingly protectionist United States.

The European Union, for example, is forging ahead with action to stamp out emissions: it is expected to solidify its 2040 emissions target in the coming months that would see the trading bloc cut carbon pollution by 90%. The United Kingdom is planning to meet all of the country’s power demand with clean electricity by 2030 – that’s after closing its last coal-fired power plant last September.

India, the world’s third-largest emitter, is expected to launch a new carbon market in October of 2026. And in China, which already has the world’s largest carbon market, the government is expanding coverage to include steel, cement and aluminum. That will add about three billion tonnes of emissions to the program and will mean that more than 60% of China’s total emissions are covered by the carbon trading system.

Even within the United States, 24 states in the U.S. Climate Alliance that represent close to 60% of the national economy have served notice that they will cut emissions in half by 2030.

All this will have profound consequences for Canada’s economic competitiveness. Decarbonization is where the business opportunities are: according to the International Energy Agency, investments in clean energy were expected to reach $2 trillion in 2024, almost double the amount invested in fossil fuels. The agency sees global demand for fossil fuels peaking before 2030.

Canada needs good climate policies to compete in a world where more of our major trading partners, including the European Union and the United Kingdom, are putting carbon border tariffs in place. In fact, even the United States is considering similar measures.

Fortunately, industrial carbon pricing can reduce the cost of these tariffs and keep revenue within our borders to invest in emissions-reducing projects. That’s a policy win that is helping drive emissions down while keeping costs low for companies – about the cost of a Timbit per barrel of oil. Not only that, these systems have nearly zero impact on household costs.

Canadian climate policy will need to lean into these benefits to stay competitive in a rapidly changing international environment.

3. Protect Canadians from extreme weather disasters

At its core, climate change is an issue that threatens the security and livelihoods of communities across Canada. And this threat will only increase over time.

Last year was the costliest for insured climate damages by far, at more than $8.5 billion. That shattered the next-closest year on record, which was in 2016 when the Fort McMurray wildfires drove the severe-weather price tag to $6 billion. The 2024 tally includes the Jasper wildfire, flooding in Quebec and Ontario, and the multibillion-dollar hailstorm in Calgary.

These impacts are just part of the overall cost of climate change. Previous research from the Canadian Climate Institute estimated that by this year damages from climate change would shave off $25 billion from the Canadian economy relative to a stable-climate scenario.

These losses add up in a variety of ways, but to give one real-world example, during the record-setting forest fires of 2023, thick smoke engulfed cities in Ontario and beyond. In just one week, these smoke-filled skies added more than $1 billion in health costs to the province.

Policymakers need to address these threats to our communities to ensure that Canadians across the country are better prepared for future climate disasters.

One of the oft-repeated themes of Earth Day is “Think globally and act locally.” In this next chapter of the Canadian climate change discussion, we need to keep this front of mind like never before. Donald Trump’s incoherent and economically illiterate ideas have plunged our country into a wholesale re-examination of our future. Good climate change policies are not a multilateral “nice to have”: they are a critical contribution to keeping life more affordable, making the Canadian economy more competitive, and keeping our communities safer.

Rick Smith is president of the Canadian Climate Institute, the co-author of two bestselling books on the effects of pollution on human health, and the executive producer of Plastic People, a 2024 documentary chronicling the damage done by microplastics in the human body.

The post A new chapter begins for the Canadian climate change conversation appeared first on Corporate Knights.

But Pierre Poilievre’s commanding majority in the polls evaporated when Donald Trump began threatening Canada’s sovereignty through trade sanctions. The Liberal Party saw a dramatic reversal of fortunes after Justin Trudeau resigned and was replaced by Mark Carney, a high-profile former investment banker who served as governor of the Bank of England during Brexit, and ran the Bank of Canada before that.

While Conservative voters see Carney as a likely continuation of what they regard as Trudeau’s profligacy, for Liberal voters the new leader represents a deft hand at the wheel and the possibility of responsible prosperity.

As a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance, Carney was a key architect of the global framework for sustainable finance that has underpinned much of the progress in the energy transition since 2020. “Private value can be put in the service of public values,” he said at the Sustainable Finance Forum in Ottawa last November.

But times are changing fast, and even since he made those statements the situation for sustainable finance has deteriorated, with several climate-aligned financial networks – which Carney helped facilitate – unravelling in recent months. And with all the economic uncertainty and political instability, climate change has ceased to be a deciding issue for Canadians. Since the last election, the environment has slid from first to seventh place on a Vote Compass poll of top concerns for voters.

Even so, many of the key issues in the election carry major implications for Canada’s contribution to fighting climate change, as well as the country’s ability to navigate the energy transition and the impacts of a warming planet.

Comparing Liberal and Conservative energy policies

Carney acted quickly when he became prime minister to kill the consumer portion of the carbon tax and thereby remove the most contentious element of the Liberal government’s climate policy. In doing so, he undercut a key election promise by Poilievre, who campaigned long before the election call that he would “axe the tax.”

Poilievre is now taking aim at the industrial portion of the federal tax that applies to large emitters, although most provinces administered their own industrial carbon tax under federal standards. He has promised to kill the Liberal proposal to impose greenhouse gas emission caps on oil and gas facilities and to support Alberta’s plan to double crude production by building pipelines and export terminals for liquefied natural gas.

Poilievre says he would create “energy corridors” through which pipelines and transmission lines could be built quickly. He also says he would overhaul the federal Impact Assessment Act to ensure that resource projects are quickly approved. But he has offered little in terms of support for transitioning the Canadian economy away from dependence on fossil fuels to more reliance on renewable, nuclear and other low-emission sources.

Carney’s support for the oil and gas sector is tied to his belief that investing in decarbonization technologies like carbon capture is essential to reaching net-zero. “We should run towards that, because that is, in the end, where we can have the biggest impact on the climate,” he said at the Ottawa forum.

The New Democratic Party supports the industrial carbon price and would add a measure to help the competitiveness of Canadian industry: a carbon border-adjustment levy that would tax imports from countries that don’t have comparable carbon pricing.

The Green Party, for its part, says it would halt all new fossil fuel projects by 2045 and would stop government subsidies for oil and gas companies, investing instead in renewable energy. 

A momentary opening for fossil fuel infrastructure 

Carney came to the Liberal leadership with a strong record on climate change. As governor of the Bank of England, he led international efforts to require financial institutions to account for climate-related financial risks. He also served as an adviser on climate-related finance to the UN secretary-general in the lead-up to the Glasgow conference in 2021.

His election platform calls for Canada to become “the world’s leading energy superpower, in both clean and conventional energy.” That means more oil and gas infrastructure like pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals, although Carney remains committed to the oil-and-gas emissions cap that would require the industry to sharply reduce emissions even as they aim to grow production.

 “In a world of declining fossil fuel consumption, Canada seems more likely to be among the earliest producers to fall than among the last standing.”

– Mark Winfield, professor of environmental and urban change, York University

Carney, too, would establish energy corridors, though he emphasizes the opportunity to build clean energy infrastructure, including interprovincial transmission. He would finalize clean energy tax credits and support spending on both natural carbon sinks and carbon capture projects.

Do Canadians really want more pipelines?

In a survey sent to subscribers of the Corporate Knights newsletter, respondents endorsed plans to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and speed up the transition to a clean energy economy.

In response to a question that garnered 385 responses, 52.5% said Ottawa should not offer incentives for new oil and gas pipelines or terminals because the environmental costs are too high. Only 17.7% offered unqualified support for such incentives, while 20.8% said yes if the Canadian resources would displace the use of coal overseas.

“Do not fall back on old habits,” one respondent wrote. “Pipelines are not the way to make Canadians richer.”

Respondents also supported federal efforts to drive the clean energy transition. Some 67% said the federal government should aggressively drive the adoption of green energy through regulations and incentives, “even if it means some higher consumer prices.” As well, 24% endorsed the federal role but only if it could avoid higher prices.

“Climate change is here and it’s hurting everyone and we need more than lip service paid to it,” another respondent wrote.

A wrong turn for Canada’s economic interests

Looking beyond the current crisis, some experts suggest that betting on fossil fuels is likely to backfire, not just in environmental, social and political terms, but also for the Canadian economy. “In a world of declining fossil fuel consumption, Canada – increasingly reliant on high-cost and high-carbon production like oilsands crude and fracked and liquified natural gas – seems more likely to be among the earliest producers to fall than among the last standing,” writes Mark Winfield, a professor of environmental and urban change at York University.

While the dramatic political changes in the United States seem to have created a renewed social licence for oil and gas infrastructure, many suggest that the real opportunity points in another direction: toward greater investment in renewables. “With the U.S. retreating from Biden-era climate action and Europe facing competing economic and security pressures, Canada might find an opportunity to position itself as a stable, climate-aligned investment destination,” writes Baltej Sidhu, an analyst at the National Bank of Canada and a specialist in sustainability and energy transition.

Research by the London Stock Exchange Group last summer found that, taken as a whole over the past decade, companies whose revenues come from reducing carbon emissions offered better returns than every other sector except tech.

Carney acknowledged the reality of renewable-energy dominance at the Ottawa conference in November: “Investment in clean energy is now more than twice the investment in conventional energy, but it needs to double again,” he told attendees. “In Canada, we will need to invest somewhere between $125 and $140 billion annually in this transition.”

What the two main parties are pitching for Canada’s industrial sector

Donald Trump’s erratic trade policies have also turned the election into a contest over who has the best plan to save Canada’s industries and put the country on a new international footing for trade. This spring, the U.S. president imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum. Weeks later, he slapped 25% tariffs on cars, targeting an industry that supports more than 500,000 Canadian jobs.

As well as shaking up the federal election campaign, these tariffs are creating anxiety in steel-, aluminum- and auto-manufacturing communities in Ontario and Quebec. The tariffs are throwing thousands of jobs into jeopardy, while also threatening Ontario’s transition to electric vehicle production and green steel, and growth in low-CO2 aluminum in Quebec.

“Businesses have stopped their expansion plans or delayed them because of the uncertainty, because they don’t know what tomorrow looks like,” says Greg Dunnett, CEO of the Chamber of Commerce in the steel centre of Hamilton.

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In response, the Liberals imposed 25% counter-tariffs on U.S. steel, aluminum and cars. Long-term, the Liberal platform includes $2 billion for the auto industry to build “a fortified Canadian supply chain,” boosting competitiveness, protecting employment and advancing job training.

Carney has also said he would continue the current industrial carbon-pricing system in cooperation with the provinces, a policy that Poilievre has vowed to revoke. This is of key importance in Hamilton, where a proposed $2-billion decarbonization project at ArcelorMittal Dofasco is on hold until after the election. Industrial carbon pricing and federal-provincial subsidies are critical in making the project viable.

Poilievre has said he would continue the counter-tariffs until U.S. tariffs are removed and use the proceeds for tax relief and worker support. Poilievre has also promised to cut the GST on new Canadian-made cars and provide loans and tax credits for affected businesses.

There have been an estimated 6,000 temporary layoffs in the auto sector since the tariffs went into effect. But Flavio Volpe, president of the Canadian Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association, says there could be many more layoffs if Trump follows through with a threat next month to impose tariffs on auto parts, not just fully assembled cars. “The industry is headed for major operational shutdowns, stranding workers, suppliers and automakers across the continent,” he says.

Making the most of Canada’s critical minerals

Canada’s critical minerals have never been so coveted, thanks partly to Trump. In a hot-mic moment, weeks before he stepped down as prime minister, Justin Trudeau told a Canada-U.S. business summit that Trump’s threat of making Canada the 51st state was connected to the country’s plethora of critical minerals.

Carney is promising to invest in critical minerals by creating a “First and Last Mile Fund” to directly support clean-energy and critical-minerals projects as well as accelerate exploration and extraction from recycling. The party also proposes to attract, expand and de-risk investment in critical mineral exploration and extraction with additional investments in and expansion of existing tax credits.

Carney’s platform includes a “One Project, One Review” policy, which involves setting up what it would call a Major Federal Project Office with a new mandate to issue decisions on major projects within two years instead of five, while “fully upholding environmental integrity and Indigenous rights.”

Meanwhile, Poilievre proposes a “One and Done” rule for resource projects. He says he’ll set up a so-called Rapid Resource Project Office to handle all regulatory approvals across all levels of government and says there will be one application and one environmental review per project to speed up the approval process while “ensuring efficiency without sacrificing environmental standards.”

The Conservatives are also vowing a one-year maximum wait time for project approvals, with a target of six months “giving businesses certainty, cutting delays, and getting shovels in the ground faster.”

Canada’s mining industry, which has been pleading for this kind of attention for years, stands to gain no matter which party winds up in power. Other sectors tied to the energy transition may not be so lucky.

The post Climate takes a back seat, but the energy transition looms large over Canada’s election appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The current iteration of Canada’s consumer carbon rebate is dead – which many view as a casualty of effective communication – yet climate policy remains a pressing topic for voters and a major battleground for political leaders.

As Canada grapples with intensifying climate-related challenges, the next government will need to not only implement evidence-based policies to meet international climate commitments, but also effectively communicate its vision to voters.

The public remains concerned about environmental issues, yet many are worried that bold climate policies have damaged the economy. This tension between environmental responsibility and economic growth will shape how each party formulates and communicates their climate policies in the upcoming campaign.

The Liberals pitch more carrots, fewer sticks

For Carney and the Liberal Party, the challenge is twofold. First, the Liberals must present a new climate plan after the collapse of the consumer carbon rebate, which has faced widespread public opposition in recent years.

While the new Liberal leader has already terminated the carbon rebate, it still remains unclear what his comprehensive climate plan will look like. Carney’s website states that his strategy will “Provide incentives for consumers. Put more of the burden on big polluters. And help us build the strongest economy in the G7.”

This suggests his climate policy will hinge more on positive incentives for consumers to invest in sustainable approaches rather than putting a cost on polluting.

While the carbon rebate initially enjoyed broad support as a key tool for reducing emissions, it has become a lightning rod for political controversy.

Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue – it’s increasingly seen as a matter of economic survival, with green energy jobs and clean technologies representing an opportunity for Canada to position itself as a global leader in the sector.

Carney will have to make a convincing case that his policy will create jobs, stimulate innovation and provide a clear path toward a greener, more sustainable economy. Failing to do so could lead to the loss of centrist and moderate voters, some of whom are wary of the perceived economic risks of aggressive climate action.

The Conservatives can’t ignore their own environmental wing

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has made axing the carbon rebate a central part of his platform. Framing the carbon rebate as an economic penalty, Poilievre has played into populist sentiments by promising to “axe the tax” and relieve financial pressures on Canadian families and businesses.

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However, even if the Conservatives are successful in eliminating the carbon rebate, they still face the challenge of needing a comprehensive climate policy that lowers emissions and meets Canada’s Paris Agreement targets. Poilievre has said he would not withdraw Canada from the accord, but he hasn’t addressed how he would meet Canada’s commitments.

Poilievre’s populist rhetoric may resonate with voters who feel economically squeezed, but it’s unlikely to be enough to win over voters concerned about the climate crisis – especially as he has voted against environmental and climate action in Parliament more than 400 times in his career, a point his opponents will be sure to raise repeatedly.

For the Conservatives, the real challenge will be how to present a climate policy that appeals to both economic conservatives, who prioritize fiscal responsibility, and environmental conservatives, who are concerned about the future of the planet.

Poilievre will need to clearly articulate how his policies will preserve Canada’s environmental future without stifling economic growth or inflating costs for the average Canadian.

The NDP and Greens have yet to take a clear stance

A key piece of the future of climate policy in Canada will be the NDP and the Green Party, who are generally considered left-of-centre parties alongside the governing Liberals.

The NDP, which can siphon progressive votes away from the Liberals – sometimes benefitting Conservatives – have been clear as mud when it comes to their climate policy for the next election. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh rescinded his party’s long-standing support for the Liberal carbon rebate in April 2024 but has not yet said what his party would put in its place.

Meanwhile, the Green Party, which has historically played a less significant role in electoral outcomes in terms of vote splitting, has generally maintained its support for the carbon rebate. Its website suggests the party supports the polluter-pays principle.

However, the Greens have yet to take a clear stance on the shifting climate grounds on which this election could partially be fought.

Better messaging will make the difference for climate policy

In the coming years, the future of climate policy in Canada will be less about crafting the perfect policy and more about crafting a message that addresses how people are feeling.

The Liberal Party has been open about the demise of the carbon rebate being a combination of a lack of their own effective communication strategy mixed with harmful disinformation campaigns that led to the undoing of their signature climate policy.

For the Liberals, Conservatives, NDP and Greens alike, the road to effective climate policy will lie in this communication. Political leaders will need to balance ambition and pragmatism, ensuring that their policies align with Canadians’ economic interests.

With 71% of Canadians suggesting they want the next government to do more to address climate change, leaders who can articulate a vision for a sustainable, prosperous future while addressing the immediate concerns of Canadians will be the ones who have the best chance of winning the public’s trust – and the next election.

Andrew Heffernan is a climate associate at the Information Integrity Lab and adjunct professor in political studies at L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa.

This story first appeared in The Conversation Canada. It has been edited to conform with Corporate Knights style. Read the original article here. 

The post How Canada’s political parties are navigating a public rift on climate appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, has the appearance of a prime-minister-in-waiting, but Canadians have little sense of what his government’s climate policies would look like.

The post Pierre Poilievre is loud on carbon pricing but silent on climate policy appeared first on Corporate Knights.

While environmental groups zero in on animal agriculture as a top driver of climate change, deforestation, biodiversity loss and ocean degradation, a growing number of consumers and governments have been demanding more from the sector to cut its carbon footprint.

However, most of the industry’s efforts so far appear to be focused on shifting messaging and undercutting climate policies rather than shifting practices.

Recent analysis by UK-based think tank InfluenceMap shows that the meat and dairy sector in the European Union is using much the same playbook used by Big Oil to chip away at climate policies. “The findings highlight that backsliding on climate and environmental policy in Europe cannot be explained solely by pressure from the farmers protests seen in recent months,” says the report, released in May. “In fact, years of the corporate meat and dairy sector’s strategic narrative building along with detailed policy engagement, both of which mirror fossil fuel industry tactics, have played a pivotal role.”

Researchers at InfluenceMap set out to understand the meat and dairy industry’s influence on the EU’s climate-related goals. They looked at 10 major corporations and five industry associations and how their advocacy affected six key EU policies aimed at tackling agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. The policies include a framework to transition Europeans to more sustainable diets and new rules around pollutants such as methane on European farms.

What they found was a concerted three-year campaign by the sector, aimed at subverting the EU’s efforts to reduce its environmental footprint and meet its net-zero targets. The strategic advocacy significantly influenced the trajectory of European policy-making around both the production and consumption of meat and dairy in the region, the authors found.

For example, the report notes, industry associations including the European Dairy Association, the European Livestock and Meat Trades Union, European Livestock Voice and others, were largely unsupportive of the EU’s Farm to Fork Strategy. The Farm to Fork strategy “should facilitate the shift towards sustainable diets, combining regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives necessary to secure a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly food system,” according to the report.

In fact, none of the industry associations analyzed for the report were shown to have engaged “positively” with those EU policies intended to help transition diets or reduce livestock emissions.

Industry associations also vigorously opposed these policies by using tactics reminiscent of fossil fuel lobbying, the report notes. “Both sectors employ similar misleading narratives through strategic public messaging to sow doubt and undermine the need to tackle GHG emissions from the meat and dairy sector.”

In particular, researchers highlighted two narratives: “emphasizing the importance of livestock for society; and distancing livestock from being viewed as a driver of climate change.” And it worked, according to the report, thanks to intense corporate lobbying from 2020 to 2023, with one-third of the examined policies significantly weakened and half of them stalled. Some of the key initiatives affected by these efforts include the Sustainable Food Systems Framework and revisions to the Industrial Emissions Directive, which regulates farm pollutants.

There was, however, a clear divide among companies (as opposed to industry associations). Consumer goods giants like Unilever and Nestlé showed more cooperative stances on the policies compared to meat and dairy producers such as Arla and Danish Crown. On Arla’s corporate website in May 2023, for example, “the company seemed to oppose the need for the transition of diets recommended by the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change], suggesting that consumers become ‘confused’ regarding sustainable diets which leads them to deselect dairy products.”

Moreover, the meat and dairy industry’s advocacy also influenced political discourse, notably within the centre-right European People’s Party (the EPP, the largest party in the European Parliament, is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s party), shaping its opposition to policies affecting dietary transitions and agricultural emissions reduction. By aligning with industry narratives, the EPP’s stance during 2022 and 2023 mirrored the interests of meat and dairy producers and their lobbying bodies, setting a tone for potential shifts in policy ahead of the 2024 EU elections.

InfluenceMap’s findings expose a sophisticated campaign by the meat and dairy sector to weaken EU climate policies.

“Following obstructive behavior from the industry, and the infiltration of industry narratives in the EU Parliament and EU Commission, policies that are fundamental to reducing GHG emissions in line with scientific advice have been significantly weakened or have stalled,” Venetia Roxburgh, EU program lead at InfluenceMap, said in a statement. “Without science-based policies tackling the sector, it does not seem likely that European agricultural GHG emissions will reduce in line with 1.5°C.”

Much like similar efforts made by these industries in North America, these tactics have reshaped the landscape of European environmental regulation, delaying and diluting crucial measures meant to help mitigate animal agriculture’s well-documented impact on climate and the environment.

The post Here’s how the meat and dairy lobby is watering down climate policy in Europe appeared first on Corporate Knights.