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.

RELATED STORIES

The 2026 Global 100 list puts speed in the spotlight

How to scale up the green economy

Trump’s war on wind is pushing investment north to Canada

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.

The post Publisher’s Note: Kermit was wrong appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The party’s momentum has been building since the United Kingdom’s July 2024 general election, when voters elected four Green Party members of Parliament out of a total of 650, quadrupling the party’s number of representatives in the House of Commons while removing a handful of seats from the Labour and Conservative parties. 

Nearly two years later, the Greens are now averaging around 13.5% support nationally, with a notable gain in recent months, according to an aggregated Guardian tracker. In February, Green Party candidate and plumber Hannah Spencer won a by-election in Manchester’s Gorton and Denton constituency, an area that had been previously held by Labour for the past 90 years, bringing the party’s total number of MPs to five. 

What’s powering the surge? Experts say increasing political fragmentation is a key factor, with more voters looking for alternatives to Labour and the Conservatives, which have held the most seats in recent elections. Growing disillusionment with the governing Labour Party is another factor. Britain’s centre-left party is tanking with voters, many of whom feel it has failed to address the cost-of-living crisis or deliver on its promises. According to YouGov’s polling, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s personal favourability sat at 18% in January 2026. 

There’s a big space to the left of the Labour Party that’s been there for a few years. Polanski is tapping into that opportunity.

— Mitya Pearson, University of Warwick

While Starmer’s support stagnates, the Green Party’s Polanski, who is 43, is on an upward trajectory. He was elected party leader in fall 2025, beating two of the party’s MPs with a left-wing eco-populist platform and a direct communication style. Polanski has said the party needs to “connect with that anger and turn it to hope, turn it to possible solutions.” And his message and style have been resonating with an increasing number of voters who feel abandoned by the Labour Party. Since fall 2025, Green Party membership has almost tripled, from 68,500 to more than 200,000.  

“I finally feel seen by a politician and someone who is willing to not only defend but make my family’s lives better,” says Tinashe Warikandwa, a London resident who describes herself as a member of the queer community and the daughter of an immigrant and a disabled mother. She is one of the thousands of Brits who recently became Green Party members. “My great interest in Zack is his push to tax the rich,” Warikandwa says. “There is such a discomfort in the U.K., with the cost of everything and not much funding going into our communities. I like his angle of saying there’s more of us than the 1%, so he’s trying to bring us all together. He’s young and fresh and unfiltered.” 

Polanski’s message connects the dots between cost-of-living pressures, economic inequality and the climate crisis. He has also taken on issues that Labour and other parties have been reluctant to engage with, including the rights of Palestinian people to self-determination and trans rights.  

“There’s a big space to the left of the Labour Party that’s been there for a few years. Polanski is tapping into that opportunity,” says Mitya Pearson, assistant professor in the Politics of Climate Change MA program at the University of Warwick. “Although [the Greens] have always really emphasized the environment and climate change, they’ve been keen to point out that they’re not a single-issue party. So while climate change is part of [their platform], it’s not absolutely front and centre.”  

The rise of the Green Party and forward push on climate policies in the United Kingdom stands in contrast to what’s happening in Germany, Austria and other European countries, where far-right parties have been trying to dismantle support for climate policies by blaming them for cost-of-living challenges. Environmentalists and think tanks are raising alarm bells about what they’re calling a “greenlash” against the European Green Deal and other climate policies. 

Pearson believes that European voters are still supportive of progressive climate policies but that support for these issues has been superseded by affordability concerns. In both Europe and the United Kingdom, voters are sending the message that affordability and the climate are interconnected and must be addressed as such.   

Will Polanski and the Green Party be able to continue to build support in the United Kingdom by connecting those dots? Calls are growing for Starmer to resign, and Pearson says some expect the Labour Party to begin leaning more to the left to rebuild its base. If that happens, there may be more competition for the space the Greens have been moving into. Which could mean more debate about progressive issues, and more choice for voters. 

The post The U.K. Green Party’s having a moment  appeared first on Corporate Knights.

In the first week, however, the spotlight shone on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the ongoing debate about whether the government should require certain employees to be vaccinated as another wave of COVID-19 infections swells. Canada’s role in safeguarding future life on this planet has yet to be broached in a serious way. That is likely to change.

This campaign is bookended by a summer in which the climate emergency became increasingly apparent and the UN climate summit this fall – to be hosted in November by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson – in which nations will be expected to make more ambitious commitments to head off global environmental disaster.

Each of the political parties has made sweeping promises for climate change action, and voters need journalists to ask probing questions about their adequacy and credibility.

Journalist Markham Hislop recently commented that the Conservative Party of Canada’s climate change policies as outlined in their platform effectively “close the gap” with the Liberals’ stance on the issue while suggesting that the New Democrats offer a slightly more ambitious plan than the one put forward by the Trudeau government.

The result, he suggested, is less opportunity for wedge politics in which the Conservatives are painted as Neanderthals, as they were under Andrew Scheer during the 2019 campaign.

There is some truth to Hislop’s contention, especially when journalists are preoccupied with other priorities that create more clearly defined wedges. Still, there are yawning differences among the parties with regard to climate ambition. There continue to be deep cleavages in terms of how they would treat the oil and gas sector, which is responsible for 25% of Canada’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

Liberals remain vulnerable 

In the past nine months, the Liberal government moved the yardsticks on climate ambition. They announced a tougher 2030 target and commitment to net-zero emissions by 2050, passed legislation that provides some accountability on meeting GHG-reduction targets, and announced plans to raise the carbon price to $170 a tonne by 2030. They also announced more than $15 billion in spending to commercialize and adopt clean technologies that will help Canada meet its commitment and create jobs in the zero-carbon economy.

Still, the Liberals remain as vulnerable as they were in the 2019 election among voters who rank climate change high on their list of priorities and are unhappy with the Trudeau government’s ongoing support for the fossil fuel industry.

In addition to support for the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and export facilities for natural gas, the Liberal government provided some $1.9 billion in subsidies to the industry in 2020, the International Institute for Sustainable Development concluded in a report this year. Activists say that figure dramatically underestimates federal assistance by excluding things like pandemic-related wage subsidies and Bank of Canada bond purchases.

Conservative climate platform falls short 

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole, meanwhile, is determined to give his party more credibility on climate change policy, but so far he has had mixed success.

His platform promises $15 billion in spending over several years to support the development and adoption of low-carbon technology. It includes a modest carbon price of $50 per tonne but would allow consumers to keep the proceeds of the levy to spend on a variety of energy-saving devices. The move may appeal to voters, but it would do little, if anything, to encourage less fuel consumption. The Liberal program provides cash payments to Canadians to ease the burden of the levy but is not tied to their actual spending.

When O’Toole released his climate plan last spring, analysts concluded it was a “serious” plan that could, if fully implemented, achieve GHG reductions that would put Canada within reach of our initial target of reducing emissions by 30% below 2005 levels by 2030. It’s a target that may have been reasonably laudable when it was initially set by former Conservative PM Stephen Harper in 2015.

However, that target is clearly insufficient to put the country on course for achieving net-zero status by 2050. The Liberals will no doubt remind climate-conscious voters that the Conservatives have not endorsed the net-zero target.

In April, the Liberal government increased its ambition to reduce emissions by between 40 and 45% by 2030 and hit that mid-century, net-zero goal. The New Democrats would set a target of 50% GHG reduction by 2030, while the Green Party of Canada says we need to go further and cut GHGs by 60% in the next decade.

O’Toole has the least ambitious targets, while at the same time, his party lacks credibility to implement the plan for a number of reasons.

Environmental economist Nic Rivers – who was quoted in the platform as lauding its seriousness – notes that many of the proposals are conditional on a number of factors, often requiring identical American action. While the platform has some serious policy proposals, it is easy to be skeptical about whether there will be seriousness in implementing them, Rivers says.

Conservatives remain deeply divided about the importance of GHG reductions. At a spring policy convention, the delegates voted down a resolution that would recognize the reality of climate change and the need for Canada to address it.

The party has oil in its DNA. Conservatives have worked hand-in-glove with the industry’s leaders in recent years to oppose Liberal climate and environmental policies, and their platform calls for continued expansion of oil and natural gas exports.

While Conservatives have endorsed technology to capture carbon emissions in industry, that approach faces serious limitations. Chief executives at Suncor Energy and Cenovus Energy say it would require $75 billion to decarbonize the oil sands, and they want the federal government to pay. It would take additional billions to capture carbon from conventional oil and natural gas production. None of this would address emissions that occur when the oil or natural gas is burned as fuel.

One telling item, as reported last week by The Narwhal’s Fatima Syed: the Conservative platform proposes to criminalize civil disobedience actions that would interfere with oil and gas projects. Conservatives – both federally and in Alberta – have waged war on environmental groups that oppose oil pipelines and liquid natural gas facilities as unsustainable fossil infrastructure. Former PM Stephen Harper and his cabinet minister Joe Oliver targeted environmental groups, including increased audits of their charitable status by Revenue Canada.

Still, the Conservatives are clearly hoping mainstream voters will see a “serious” enough plan to check the climate box as they consider their election options. Liberals, meanwhile, have upped their ambition considerably since 2019 and want to persuade Canadians that theirs is an urgent but pragmatic approach.

Avid climate voters, including young Canadians who rank it as a high priority, will have to decide whether Liberal actions are sufficient or opt for a more ambitious NDP environmental platform that would intrude heavily in areas of provincial jurisdiction. The Green Party has the most ambitious climate agenda and could attract ardent environmentally minded voters. However, internal battles derailed its campaign before the election even started.

In a tight contest, the parties’ ability to manage the climate agenda could be one key to electoral success.

The post Climate crisis remains wedge issue on campaign trail appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The reality is that decisions are often made by politicians who see facts as supplementary to arguments of emotion, quick to choose actions based on opinion polls rather than scientific data. We see this in the pandemic response, with some governments reluctant to listen to the science and act quickly, leading to more prolonged shutdowns.

Even when scientific advice is made available and clear, some refuse to listen. Last month the director of Ontario’s COVID-19 scientific advisory table almost resigned out of frustration because the scientific advice to implement better protections for front-line workers fell on deaf ears. Now Premier Doug Ford is keeping outdoor activities closed despite the science table advising against doing so. First the Ford government opened up too quickly, against the advice of science, to appeal to business owners, and now they refuse to allow outdoor activities, to show that strong action is being taken on COVID. Both efforts were misdirected, and both continue to be ineffective. Shutdowns are difficult, especially for small business owners. But we could have avoided the shutdowns of the third wave if we had not prematurely opened after the second; the economy ultimately suffers more when decisions are taken with a short-term view.

We need to be doing more than just listening to the science – we need to be acting upon it too. Around the world, countries that made science-based decisions, collaborated and acted swiftly fared better than those that did not. A newly released report by the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response found that open data and science were key to developing a vaccine in record time and that the countries that devalued science and denied the impact of the pandemic suffered the greatest harm with the highest infection and death rates.

Even as we round the corner of this crisis, a larger, more threatening, crisis looms: climate change. Here the science has been clear for decades and continues to get clearer as every year brings higher temperatures, more unpredictable weather and natural disasters that threaten our communities with flooding and forest fires.

While Canada’s newly announced climate target of reducing emissions by more than 40% by 2030 is welcome, it does not go far enough. Canada is the only G7 nation to have greenhouse gas emissions increase since the Paris Agreement. As a result, Canada needs to reduce emissions 60% by 2030 to reach our stated net-zero goals. Just as deaths are a lagging indicator of COVID infections, climate change is a lagging indicator of CO2 emissions.

Global clean technology activity is expected to be worth more than $2.5 trillion by 2022. If Canada does not act now to invest in this coming transition like our allies in Europe and the United States have, we will be left behind.

Whether it is a global pandemic or global warming, we need political leaders with the expertise to make evidence-based policy decisions that will affect us all. Unfortunately, only 7% of parliamentarians have a science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) background. Sure, we can have leaders who listen to the science, but what happens if they don’t really understand it? Or worse, what if they understand but choose to ignore it for political gain?

Unfortunately, scientists rarely attract the attention of political parties and often carry the stereotype of being poor communicators. After all, if there is one skill a politician needs, it’s the ability to communicate to their constituents.

The image of the nerdy antisocial scientist content to remain in their lab with their beakers is dated and inaccurate, however. Today’s generation of scientists go on to create venture-backed start-ups, develop impactful policy and quickly rise to positions of power in multinational corporations. Two of the most influential female heads of state of the last century, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, both received degrees in chemistry, the latter a PhD. Regardless of how you feel about their politics, the impact they have had on the world is undeniable.

Science and technology, while important and necessary, are not sufficient to address the crises we face. You can be the most brilliant scientist with the best technology, but unless you can convince a policy-maker to support it and a market to buy it, it will sit on the shelf. This is why I’ve decided to take a leave from my dream job as the youngest-ever director at the National Research Council to run for office for the federal Green Party in Toronto.

I’m running because we must move faster to combat the threat of climate change and sustainably renew our society and economy. I’m running because we need more diversity in Parliament and more science in policy. I’m running because I want to lower the barriers for other non-traditional candidates to consider running, because a diverse government is a robust and resilient one.

I hope that my run inspires other scientists to consider running as well, regardless of party, because Canada needs them now more than ever.

Phil De Luna is a scientist and cleantech innovator turned first-time candidate and aspiring politician. He is running for the Green Party in Toronto-St. Paul’s in the next federal election.

The post Why Canada needs more scientists running for office appeared first on Corporate Knights.

We won’t know until the votes are counted one day after Earth Day, on April 23^rd, but the fact that it’s possible for a Green Party to come close to forming a government in North America is being celebrated by ecologically-guided Canadians across the country. It’s especially encouraging given the string of victories in other parts of Canada by parties that are outright hostile to ecological values, as was the case in this month’s Alberta election.

Peter Bevan-Baker, leader of the Green Party of Prince Edward Island, has described his party’s popularity as “the local expression of a global phenomenon.” The former dentist and nine-time Green Party candidate believes that people around the world are realizing that the political and economic ideas that dominated the last century are not making people’s lives better. After decades of these policies in action, a growing number of voters now believe that their governments have not held up their end of the social contract.

People are desperately looking for something different in their politics. As economist Milton Friedman said, “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

In Prince Edward Island, “change” has always meant going back to the party that you just kicked out of office a few years prior. Never before has a third party been considered a viable option to break the two-party dominance. Then a poll published in 2017 showed Bevan-Baker was the most popular politician on the island, and the Green Party of PEI suddenly became a contender. The number of voters who said that they planned to support the party in the next election ramped up quickly.

After three terms of Liberal government, PEI’s Green Party has positioned itself to be the “something new” that people are looking for. Around the globe, this desire for change has led to the election of political outsiders from every shade of the political spectrum. Last fall, the CAQ party rode that wave to victory in Quebec. In Prince Edward Island, the Greens have been able to capture that energy.

The PEI Green platform emphasizes revitalizing local-scale economies and communities by redirecting government funds towards smaller local businesses and promoting locally grown food and locally produced goods. It plans on expanding healthcare to go beyond prescribing reactive treatments and include “social prescribing” to connect patients to community activities that support wellbeing. The Green belief is that strengthening community programs and the non-profit sector can have some of the biggest effects on a person’s health and security.

The Green worldview is undeniably different than that of Liberal, Conservative, or Social Democrat parties. It’s built on a different set of assumptions about how society, the economy, and the natural world fit together. Instead of seeing “the environment” as a single component within an all-encompassing economy, the Greens see the natural world as the core of everything. Economic activity that degrades the ability of the natural world to sustain humanity is not progress.

All around the world economic growth marches forward and yet indicators of wellbeing don’t improve. Despite this, economic growth at all costs remains the singular focus of much of our economic activity, and politicians tout it as a solution to nearly every problem that we encounter. This is especially relevant in Prince Edward Island. PEI is currently experiencing the highest GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate in Canada, and yet this isn’t translating into a higher quality of life for islanders.

The PEI Green platform calls for a new way of rating the wellbeing of islanders, as well as the performance of the government. One of the possible options could be the Genuine Progress Indicator or GPI. It’s an idea that’s popular in the field of ecological economics and measures over two dozen environmental, social and financial indicators, subtracting any economic activity that has a negative social impact. The GPI has been a lifelong project for Bevan-Baker, who worked with his local Liberal MP in 1997 to develop legislation that would replace the GDP with a GPI. The bill was presented in Parliament­­ but was not pursued by the government at the time.

Green Party of PEI leader Peter Bevan-Baker

Bevan-Baker and his party also plan to introduce a new carbon pricing framework “that can actually achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” The party is promising a low-interest loan program to promote small-scale solar energy, as well as free transit for those on social assistance and major support for electric vehicles.

A recent Ipsos-Reid survey found that three–quarters of Canadians believe that the government needs to do more to address climate change. Likewise, recent polling has reported that over a third of Canadians “would consider voting for the Green Party of Canada.” Despite this high level of accessible voters, the Green Party of Canada has never garnered more than 8% of the vote in an election.

Canadians have consistently elected governments that are terrified of taking the actions that are necessary to avert catastrophic climate change. They’re afraid because embracing those actions would mean acknowledging that our beliefs about how the economy should work were wrong all along. In the words of American writer Upton Sinclair, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Greens don’t have this fear, because they’ve been saying we were wrong for decades. Many of the Green Party’s ideas and solutions have strong theoretical backing, developed through the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics, but they’ve rarely had an opportunity to be tested in practice. As people realize that the old solutions aren’t working, Greens may finally be able to convince a large chunk of PEI voters that a different approach is possible.

Prince Edward Island is small. It holds less than one percent of Canada’s population and is the size of a medium-sized city in most other provinces. The effect of the island’s economy on the greater economy of Canada is equally small. But the effect of an elected Green government on the public consciousness of the country could be huge. A win in PEI will show that Green ideas are viable, that Green politicians are electable, and that there’s never been a better time to embrace these ideas and the people who are championing them.

James Marshall is the author of What Does Green Mean?, an upcoming book on the history and ideas of the Green Party in Canada and around the world. He’s a former BC Greens candidate and is currently seeking the Green Party of Canada nomination for Vancouver Centre. James’s father, William, was one of the founders of the federal Green party.

The post PEI’s Green Party poised to win by putting planet and people first appeared first on Corporate Knights.