This was one of the unspoken conclusions of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released last month, which offered dire warnings about the future of the planet but failed to recommend shifting to a plant-based diet. Delegates from Brazil and Argentina – two of the largest beef-producing countries in the world – appear to be behind the elimination of the plant-based language that was reportedly in previous drafts.

A version of the report, leaked by climate group Scientist Rebellion, included these lines: “A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in GHG emissions… plant-based diets can reduce GHG emissions by up to 50% compared to the average emission-intensive Western diet.” Argentina’s secretary for climate change, Rodrigo Rodriguez Tornquist, requested that that paragraph be eliminated, according to documents obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative outlet. In its place, the language was shifted to the vague recommendation of “balanced, sustainable healthy diets acknowledging nutritional needs.”

This muddied messaging fails to lay out what adopting a sustainable diet actually entails. Such omissions are nothing new for these reports. After another draft report leaked in 2021, Unearthed analysis showed that Brazil and Argentina “have been diligently pushing to delete references to ‘plant-based diets,’ meat as a ‘high-carbon’ food, and ‘Meatless Mondays’ for years,” reports Quartz.

There’s no question that meat and dairy harm the planet. And research shows that transitioning to a plant-based diet can bring down emissions significantly. A 2022 study found that every dollar invested in such a transition away from meat and dairy would result in 11 times more emission reductions than investing that same amount of money in zero-emission vehicles.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), meat and dairy production contribute 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but estimates have varied widely, with FAO’s findings at the lower end of the spectrum. Studies show that meat and dairy also account for more than 80% of farmland use and a whopping 57% of all food-production emissions.

None of this is news to the scientists who work on IPCC reports, but they don’t get final sign-off. “The IPCC’s own scientists have recognized: animal agriculture is a major contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions,” says Delcianna Winders, associate professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law School. “That the IPCC permitted lobbyists with vested interests in perpetuating some of the worst contributors to climate change to override scientists’ recommendations about those very contributors is nothing short of treacherous.”

Similar lobbying has influenced language changes related to fossil fuels in IPCC reports. An earlier version of the 2021 report also recommended phasing out fossil fuels, but this language didn’t make it into the final version. Delegates from Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries were reportedly responsible for the more “technology neutral” language of the final report, according to climate journalist Michael Thomas.

Saudi Arabian delegates made changes throughout the report, Thomas reported in his newsletter, Distilled, to present carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a key climate solution. But CCS has been condemned by some climate scientists as an unproven technology and distraction that lets fossil fuel companies continue extracting oil and gas.

Though the IPCC told the BBC in 2021 that its “processes are designed to guard against lobbying – from all quarters,” it appears this is not actually the case. Delegates get the chance to weigh in after scientists have made their recommendations and before the reports are published. And letting delegates lobby for changes to important messaging because of economic concerns can undermine the science, and ultimately stall efforts to mitigate the impacts of planet warming.

“We are on the brink of climate catastrophe,” says Winders, “and have no time for this sort of Orwellian obfuscation.”

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“The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years,” the UN agency states in its Sixth Assessment Report, a final synthesis that brings together six in-depth science and policy reports dating back to October, 2018.

“There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the IPCC adds. The science shows roughly half the world’s population likely to be exposed to the impacts of climate change, and once-in-a-century climate disasters on track to become annual events.

Already, “widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred,” the report says. “Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people,” with disproportionate impacts for the “vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change.”

Those findings underscore the need—and spotlight the opportunity—to get climate change and its impacts under control.

“Deep, rapid, and sustained mitigation and accelerated implementation of adaptation actions in this decade would reduce projected losses and damages for humans and ecosystems,” the report says. Delaying those actions “would lock in high-emissions infrastructure, raise risks of stranded assets and cost escalation, reduce feasibility, and increase losses and damages.”

But some meeting participants warned that those delays are baked into the process by some of the key assumptions in the IPCC’s modelling.

“An immediate, rapid, and equitable fossil fuel phaseout is the cornerstone of any strategy to avoid catastrophic levels of global warming,” said Lili Fuhr, deputy director of the climate and energy program at the Geneva-based Centre for International Environmental Law. “Yet the negotiations this past week highlighted the clash between the latest climate science and the mainstream economic models that perpetuate a business-as-usual approach.”

This morning’s report shows how to prevent irreversible harm by scaling up proven climate solutions that are available now, Fuhr added, beginning with replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, boosting energy efficiency, and reducing energy and resource use. “Building our mitigation strategies on models that instead lock in inequitable growth and conveniently assume away the risks of techno-fixes like carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal ignores that clarion message and increases the likelihood of overshoot.”

We know what to do

The IPCC released its 37-page Summary for Policymakers Monday after a marathon negotiating session in Interlaken, Switzerland ran a day beyond its scheduled close. “You cannot imagine the euphoria that the IPCC synthesis report is pre-approved in the longest plenary ever!” tweeted working group vice-chair Diana Urge-Vorsatz, professor of environmental studies and policy at Central European University. “After 46 hours with a total of three hours of sleep…”

Negotiations bogged down over emissions targets and financing to vulnerable nations, The Associated Press writes.

“The report by hundreds of the world’s top scientists was supposed to be approved by government delegations Friday,” the news agency says. “The deadline was repeatedly extended as officials from big nations such as China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, as well as the United Nations and the European Union haggled through the weekend over the wording of key phrases in the text.”

The summary combines the utter urgency of the climate crisis with the message that humanity has all the knowledge and tools it needs to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deliver the financing to help affected regions, countries, and communities respond. Civil society representatives attending the talks said there was no disagreement on 1.5°C as a “survival target” for average global warming, and the meeting recognized that the most technically achievable decarbonization options are also the most economically feasible.

“Several mitigation options, notably solar energy, wind energy, electrification of urban systems, urban green infrastructure, energy efficiency, demand-side management, improved forest and crop/grassland management, and reduced food waste and loss, are technically viable, are becoming increasingly cost effective, and are generally supported by the public,” the Summary for Policymakers states. Between 2010 and 2019, the cost of wind turbines, solar panels, and lithium ion batteries fell 55%, 85%, and 85%, respectively, while solar deployment grew more than tenfold and electric vehicle use increased more than 100-fold.

“What’s missing is political will,” Stephan Singer, senior science and energy advisor at Climate Action Network-International, told a media briefing Sunday. “And that’s a very good message.”

Time to scale up solutions, investment

But with global climate emissions estimated at about 59 billion tonnes in 2019 — 12% higher than in 2010, and 54% higher than in 1990 — the carbon reduction options spotlighted in the report have to scale up, drastically and quickly. In the short term, every region of the world faces “increasing, multiple risks to ecosystems and humans,” including heat-related death and disease, physical and mental health risks, flooding in coastal and low-lying regions, biodiversity loss, food and water scarcity, and more.

“Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards,” the IPCC warns. “With further warming, climate change risks will become increasingly complex and more difficult to manage. Multiple climatic and non-climatic risk drivers will interact, resulting in compounding overall risk and risks cascading across sectors and regions.”

But there’s still time to take action if countries pick the right decarbonization options and scale up fast. “Deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would lead to a discernible slowdown in global warming within around two decades, and also to discernible changes in atmospheric composition within a few years,” the IPCC writes.

A chart toward the end of the synthesis report shows how important it is to get those choices right. In energy supply, solar and wind deliver by far the highest net emission reductions through 2030 at the lowest cost. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) delivers one-tenth the benefit at far higher cost. Nuclear, geothermal, hydropower, and electricity from biomass do little better.

In land, water, and food systems, the top options are to reduce the loss of natural ecosystems, followed by carbon farming and ecosystem restoration. The IPCC says reducing food loss and food waste has the least impact among a list of strategies. And in settlements and infrastructure, fuel-efficient vehicles, efficient lighting and appliances, transit, biking, efficient shipping and aviation, and avoiding demand for energy services show up as the least expensive options. Efficient buildings are more costly, but can deliver somewhat higher emission reductions in this decade.

The report points to synergies between actions to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate impacts, and between climate action and broader sustainable development goals.

“Rapid and far-reaching transitions across all sectors and systems are necessary to achieve deep and sustained emissions reductions and secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the IPCC writes. “These system transitions involve a significant upscaling of a wide portfolio of mitigation and adaptation options.”

By contrast, the report makes no mention of risky and controversial attempts at solar radiation management (SRM) and leaves out any reliance on carbon offsets. Its only reference to nuclear electricity is in the chart showing its low emission reduction potential and high cost through 2030.

The dangers of overshooting 1.5°C

The summary points to a “substantial emissions gap” between countries’ emission reduction promises under the 2015 Paris Agreement—even if they all keep their promises—and a pathway that would deliver even 50-50 odds of limiting warming to 1.5°C. Models that hit that target, with limited or no possibility of overshooting the 1.5°C threshold, assume immediate action and deep climate emission reductions of 43% from 2019 levels by 2030, 60% by 2035, 69% by 2040, and 84% by 2050. Models based on today’s national commitments, with no future increases in ambition, point to average warming of about 2.8°C at the end of the century.

The report says adoption of low-emission technologies is lagging in most developing countries, particularly the poorest, “due in part to limited finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity.” While financing for that activity has been rising, the rate of increase has slowed since 2018. Rich countries are contributing more to emission reductions than to climate adaptation, and mitigation funding is still falling short, after the developed world missed its self-declared 2020 deadline to deliver US$100 billion per year for international climate finance.

Overall, the report points to “widening disparities” between the cost of adapting to climate change and the available funds. At the media briefing Sunday, civil society representatives said the kind of severe climate impacts currently devastating Malawi and Vanuatu undercuts those countries’ ability to respond to climate change itself.

The impacts, risks, and costs of adapting to climate change will all rise if humanity’s inaction allows warming to overshoot the 1.5°C threshold, forcing more drastic action to bring global temperatures down. “If warming exceeds a specified level such as 1.5°C, it could gradually be reduced again by achieving and sustaining net negative global CO2 emissions,” the synthesis report says. But “this would require additional deployment of carbon dioxide removal, compared to pathways without overshoot,” raising concerns about whether the approach is actually feasible.

“Overshoot entails adverse impacts, some irreversible, and additional risks for human and natural systems, all growing with the magnitude and duration of overshoot.”

Overshooting 1.5°C would also increase the risk to infrastructure, low-lying and coastal settlements, and people’s livelihoods, and force countries to rely more heavily on expensive, unproven carbon dioxide removal technologies. “Transitioning towards net zero CO2 emissions faster and reducing non-CO2 emissions such as methane more rapidly would limit peak warming levels and reduce the requirement for net negative CO2 emissions, thereby reducing feasibility and sustainability concerns, and social and environmental risks associated with CDR [carbon dioxide removal] deployment at large scales,” the report says.

The IPCC lists a series of steps that countries and communities can take to adapt to the impacts of climate change—from water management on farms, agroforestry, and sustainable land management, to urban greening, wetlands restoration, and protection of upstream forest ecosystems to reduce flood risks and urban heat.

But “most observed adaptation responses are fragmented, incremental, sector-specific, and unequally distributed across regions,” the agency writes, and maladaption in many sectors and regions is having a particularly serious impact on marginalized and vulnerable groups. “Key barriers to adaptation are limited resources, lack of private sector and citizen engagement, insufficient mobilization of finance (including for research), low climate literacy, lack of political commitment, limited research and/or slow and low uptake of adaptation science, and low sense of urgency.”

And a far tougher future awaits without faster, deeper emission cuts.

“Some future changes are unavoidable and/or irreversible but can be limited by deep, rapid, and sustained global greenhouse gas emissions reductions,” the report states. But “the likelihood of abrupt and/or irreversible changes increases with higher global warming levels,” as does the “probability of low-likelihood outcomes associated with potentially very large adverse impacts.”

Standing together, working together

The report calls for a response to the climate emergency based on equity and fairness—not only because it’s the right way to get things done, and “a central element in the UN climate regime,” but because it delivers the best results.

“Adaptation and mitigation actions that prioritize equity, social justice, climate justice, rights-based approaches, and inclusivity lead to more sustainable outcomes, reduce trade-offs, support transformative change, and advance climate resilient development,” the report states. “Redistributive policies across sectors and regions that shield the poor and vulnerable, social safety nets, equity, inclusion, and just transitions at all scales can enable deeper societal ambitions and resolve trade-offs with sustainable development goals.”

That approach depends on giving everyone a stake in the decisions that affect them and building social trust based on “equitable sharing of benefits and burdens of mitigation”.

The report touches on the government structures and policies at all levels, and across levels of government, that can build buy-in for climate action by drawing on “diverse knowledges and cultural values”. And it points to finance, technology, and international cooperation as “critical enablers for accelerated climate action. If climate goals are to be achieved, both adaptation and mitigation financing would need to increase many-fold,” and while there’s enough money in the global system to get decarbonization done, “there are barriers to redirect[ing] capital to climate action.”

While any IPCC report (like any COP decision) as an exercise in compromise, some observers said the agency’s Sixth Assessment Report delivered a compelling mix of urgency and hope that could help advance climate action for years to come. The synthesis document tells “an incredible story of making the impossible possible,” said Kaisa Kosonen, senior political advisor and head of delegation at Greenpeace International. “It’s all hands on deck now, and there’s a role to play for everyone.”

With another seven years to go before the next IPCC assessment report, Kosonen said this is the agency’s “final warning” on holding average global heating to 1.5°C—because if nothing changes, the global carbon budget will be pretty much used up by the next time the agency reports. But CAN-International’s Singer said the peer-reviewed science will continue making the case for action in the years ahead, fossil fuels will still be more costly than lower-carbon alternatives, and the onus to get things done will remain with governments, businesses, and institutions—just as it always has.

“Action has to happen on the ground, in the countries, and that’s very, very important,” he said. “The implementation, the enhancement, and the improvement of national climate plans, more targets for renewables, more targets for energy efficiency, have to happen in national institutions, and in a participatory, equitable way. This is not what the [UN climate secretariat] or the IPCC can do for you. We need to be very clear on that. It’s the governments that have the responsibility.”

This article is republished from The Energy Mix. Read the original article.

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What’s your first memory of fire? Perhaps a fading log, crackling as it warms your toes on a late summer evening? Maybe your family gathered around a fireplace during the holidays? To say that fire is a constant in the human experience is well past the point of cliché. We have candles to celebrate each year of our life, and cremation at the end of it. We burn fires to get around our own planet, and to visit others.  

Maybe you didn’t notice that fire is so central to your life until the recent public fervour surrounding the potential phase-out of stoves that burn natural gas, propane or other fossil fuels and in the process emit climate-heating carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane into the atmosphere, as well as other toxic compounds like carbon monoxide and benzene. Many home furnaces, hot water heaters, fireplaces and electricity generators work the same way.  

Today, 83% of CO2 emitted comes from burning fires for heat, electricity and transportation. We burn carbon-based fuels such as coal, wood, natural gas, biomass, garbage, sewer sludge or oil to release the energy we use to produce electricity, drive our cars, heat our homes, grow food and generally provide the privileged in the world the comforts of 21st-century living.  

Since human-created fires are the principal source of CO2 emission into our atmosphere, the consequences of its endless proliferation are now being brought to bear in the climate crisis that threatens the ability of humans to live on the planet comfortably, if at all.  

Alongside the outrage about having to change the way one of your home appliances operates (although the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has made it clear that it does not intend to ban gas stoves, some cities are initiating bans on gas stoves in new homes), there is potentially a bigger question at hand: must humans give up fire as a technology to save the earth? 

To stay below the 1.5°C warming threshold recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an economy-wide rapid transition to zero-emission energy sources like wind, solar, geothermal and nuclear can help electrify the industrial, heating and transportation systems responsible for most of our CO2 emissions. At present, our current emission trajectory has us on target to reach 3°C of warming by the end of the century, a scenario children born today would see. 

To accomplish this, we have a limited number of fires left to burn to implement the huge changes required to build a truly sustainable economy. Building this new economy is going to require a lot of energy, which will require the use of fossil fuels in the short term. Will we burn the fires we have left to build a long-term sustainable economy, or will we burn them at a higher risk of damaging the planet irreparably? 

In 2021, the Global Carbon Project estimated that we could emit 420 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (or 420 gigatonnes) and still limit global warming to 1.5°C. Since we emit about 40 billion tonnes each year, we have about 10 years to implement big changes. 

Still, leaders are negotiating with the scientific reality to keep the fires burning. They have mostly opted for a scenario in which fossil fuel use continues throughout the century, and the 1.5°C threshold is temporarily overshot and returned to safe levels at some point thereafter. To accomplish this, they plan largely to rely on the promise of carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies (in combination with other similar but differently branded strategies like CO2 removal and negative emission technologies) to remove the excess CO2 from our atmosphere, despite high risk that the ecological destruction that will be wrought in an overshoot scenario will not be reversible.  

Others want to burn alternative fires, using fuels like hydrogen or ammonia, despite equal health and safety concerns associated with their transport, storage and use. Others want to burn biomass, from livestock manure, human waste or plant matter grown on the limited agricultural land we have, or from residues collected from forest or crop floors, a practice that can lead to soil degradation and can potentially emit two to three times more carbon into the air than fossil fuel use. 

Carbon capture and storage will likely play an important role in reducing CO2 concentrations, and we should continue research into and deployment of all carbon removal and avoidance pathways. But relying on future technological development entirely to justify a refusal to move away from fossil fuel use today is an extremely risky bet that policy-makers are making on our behalf. 

While we wait for leaders to show signs of some decisive action of a managed energy transition away from fossil fuels, we can be sure of one thing in our existing way of being: fire begets fire. 

It seems that no matter how clear and present the danger may be or how close the fire comes to the roadside, we cannot imagine a world beyond our most valuable and dangerous tool. Yet, there is only so much left to burn before we join the pyre. The question must be asked: what will be our last fire? 

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For several years, I’ve studied climate adaptation in the sports sector. The Tokyo Olympics were the hottest on record – a consequence of climate change. The Paralympics, which begin August 24, are expected to set records, too. It’s not the first time this has happened to Japan. In 1964, the last time the Games were hosted in Tokyo, they were moved to the fall because the weather conditions in summer were deemed unsafe. Fifty-seven years later, the city is hotter. Tokyo’s Bureau of Environment identified that the city experienced an average mean temperature increase of 3°C over the past century, with 2.7°C of that increase occurring since the 1960s.

Ahead of the Tokyo Olympics this year, athletes were asked to sign waivers that released the organizers from liability for risks associated with COVID-19 and extreme heat. This waiver proved useful when, two days into the Games, a heat wave began, affecting several outdoor competitions. Athletes sought medical attention for heat-related illnesses, and competitions were delayed. Most famously, the women’s gold medal soccer match was postponed from a mid-day start time to 9pm to escape the heat.

Sport-science research has demonstrated that humans perform exercise best in cool, dry environments at around 11°C. As temperatures and humidity increase, cognitive and physical performance deteriorate, to the point where health is compromised. This can potentially lead to heat cramps, heat exhaustion and, in extreme cases, heat stroke. There is also academic research that suggests balls move more slowly in the heat, and officials’ decision-making is worse. Long story short: the best games are not played in stifling heat, and the conditions are worse still for Paralympians. While temperatures during the Paralympics are expected to be one to two degrees cooler on average than during the Olympics, the conditions may still impose considerable heat strain since the Paralympic athletes often have a reduced ability to thermoregulate.

The Tokyo 2020 organizers knew the temperatures might present a challenge: the marathon and racewalking events were moved more than 1,000 kilometres north to Sapporo to escape the heat. And yet, aside from some extra water bottles and makeshift cooling tents provided at outdoor competition venues, not enough was done ahead of the Games to prepare.

With three extra weeks to prepare for similar conditions during the Paralympics, it is yet unclear whether sufficient additional measures have been taken to accommodate athletes in the heat.

The new United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released August 9, was unequivocal: conditions will worsen. Summer events will be more likely to face heat waves and erratic patterns of heavy precipitation. Paris 2024 is up next – a city that has also experienced severe heat waves in recent years. Then the Games move to Los Angeles, which has had average daily high temperatures of 30.4°C in July since 1990, and August daily highs above 31°C.

The region is also heavily affected by wildfires. The site of the original Olympic Games, Athens, was also threatened by raging wildfires this summer.

Winter events are similarly at risk. Beijing will rely almost exclusively on artificial snow, following three consecutive Winter Olympics with similar challenges: Pyeongchang 2018 had unseasonal snowstorms, which delayed competitions; Sochi 2014 had too little snow; and Vancouver 2010 trucked in snow from the British Columbia interior. Looking ahead, few cities are bidding to host the winter event given deteriorating winter conditions in most of the Northern Hemisphere, and the rising costs of hosting.

My research is focused on climate-adaptation efforts in the sports industry. Consistently, scheduling and location changes are highlighted as the most reliable and efficient way to adapt: move summer sport events to the fall, to avoid the heat. Shift winter sport events to the coldest months, and high-altitude locations. But this isn’t a perfect solution and is certainly not straightforward as these events are planned eight to 10 years in advance and each sport has qualifying events that are scheduled around them, creating a domino effect of rescheduling efforts.

One oft-suggested climate-adaptation plan for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which would reduce emissions associated with the construction of new buildings for each iteration of the event, is to set one recurring host city for summer and one for winter. However, this puts a lot of environmental pressure on those two cities.

The International Olympic Committee has recognized these challenges and adopted the environment as the third pillar of the Olympic Agenda 2020 and has begun setting increasingly stringent expectations for host cities’ sustainability efforts. But progress has been slow, and climate-adaptation plans don’t often figure into sustainability plans – these are usually left to the risk-management and facilities teams.

For its part, the International Paralympic Committee has declared its commitment to sustainability and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in 2019 by signing a statement of intent with the UN SDG Action Campaign. However, the organization has focused its efforts on equity, inclusion and health-related goals.

Only time will tell which direction the Games will go in future, but two things are clear: the Games are not sustainable in their current form, and climate adaptation is necessary for every iteration of the event moving forward.

Madeleine Orr, PhD, is a researcher at University of British Columbia at Okanagan and the founder and co-director of The Sport Ecology Group.

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Over the last year, many other car manufacturers have come forward with their own sparkling promises to pour money into the production of electric cars in Canada. But a recent report by the environmental organization Environmental Defence says these pledges are merely a “smokescreen” used by car manufacturers to distract from the fact that they are still selling millions of gas-powered vehicles. Keith Brooks, programs director at Environmental Defence, said in a press release that Canadians should take these commitments with a massive grain of salt. 

“The car companies make these promises over and over again, but they routinely fail to deliver, at least on scale. Meanwhile, they evade regulations and push ever more polluting SUVs on Canadians, all to pad the companies’ bottom line,” said Brooks. 

Environmental Defence takes issue with the fact that while car companies have promised to invest in manufacturing EVs, they’re still spending more on selling and promoting gas-powered vehicles that could hinder Canada’s emissions reduction goals. In recent years, a growing number of those vehicles have been gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks. 

In the first half of 2020, just 3.5% of cars sold in Canada were EVs, a percentage that will need to rise quickly if the federal government stands a chance of achieving its net-zero goal by 2050. In 2019, transportation accounted for 25% of Canada’s emissions, which was just behind the oil and gas sector at 26%. In order to get more EVs on Canadian roads in the near future, Environmental Defence has called on the federal government to do more to restrict the sale of gas-powered cars and to encourage consumers to buy electric ones. The report argues for new federal taxes on the sale of SUVs and pickups that would pay for EV incentives “to make EVs more affordable for everyone.” The Toronto-based organization also wants the government to introduce new tailpipe emissions regulations and to implement a nationwide zero-emission vehicle standard that requires car manufacturers to sell an increasing percentage of electric cars in Canada.

“The car companies make these promises over and over again, but they routinely fail to deliver, at least on scale. Meanwhile, they evade regulations and push ever more polluting SUVs on Canadians, all to pad the companies’ bottom line.”
– Keith Brooks, Environmental Defence

China, the European Union and a number of states, such as California, have adopted zero-emission vehicle standards. Provincial governments in Quebec and British Columbia have also already implemented their own such standards, but advocates say a national standard is necessary to ensure the even distribution of electric cars in Canada. 

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson recently announced that the federal government will follow suit on GM’s accelerated EV timeline, moving up its prohibition on selling gas-powered cars to 2035. It’s unclear at this point whether the federal government will adopt a national zero-emission vehicle standard or new tailpipe regulations, as it waits to see what the U.S.’s automotive emissions policies evolve into. Earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order that set a target that half of all vehicles sold in 2030 would be electric, but it wasn’t a legally binding requirement. Biden also announced that the U.S. would strengthen its tailpipe standards.

Canadian environmental groups welcomed Biden’s announcement as a step in the right direction for both countries but said the Canadian government needs to take more immediate action to reach its goals. “Canada cannot wait on Washington to realize its EV future. We’ll need to take that wheel ourselves,” said Joanna Kyriazis, senior policy advisor at Clean Energy Canada, in a statement.

The dire message from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent report expressed that urgency. The report noted that many of the effects of climate change are already irreversible – including shrinking ice caps and rising sea levels – and that it could take 20 to 30 years to stabilize global temperatures with “strong and sustained reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the report “must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.”

Unless the federal government here in Canada decides to take more immediate action, car companies will continue to promote and sell gas-powered cars that could be on Canadian roads for decades to come. 

Alex Robinson is the associate editor of Corporate Knights and an Ottawa-based journalist. 

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While rising concentrations of human-generated carbon in the atmosphere will continue to heat up the earth, we can still avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change by rapidly moving away from carbon-based energy, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report released Monday.

The IPCC report provides ammunition to critics who dispute industry’s claim that natural gas is an environmentally acceptable choice that, when combined with carbon capture and storage technology, will remain viable for years.

“For existing natural gas, we do need much stronger regulations to make sure industry deals with methane leakage,” says Julia Levin, senior program manager at Toronto-based Environmental Defence. “But the problems with natural gas go well beyond methane leaks. As the IPCC report shows, there is no room for new natural gas projects in the global carbon budget.” She specifically targets liquefied natural gas projects that are being built and others that are proposed in British Columbia.

The industry is pushing back, however, arguing that natural gas will remain a major energy source in Canada and around the world for decades to come and that this country should aim to be a global supplier of the fuel.

“We don’t see natural gas as a bridge fuel or a transition fuel; we think it’s a foundational fuel,” says Tim Egan, president of the Canadian Gas Association.

The carbon budget measures how much more greenhouse gas can be emitted before the planet reaches the point where the target for holding average temperature increases to 1.5°C is essentially out of reach. At the rate of emissions seen in 2020, the world would exhaust its carbon budget within 11.5 years, based on a 1.5°C target.

Meeting the climate targets will require a net-zero energy system, combined with urgent reductions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane and the scaling-up of efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the air, the IPCC report concluded.

The authors of the report – which was approved by 195 governments – based their conclusions on some 14,000 research studies from climate scientists around the world. They note the world has already experienced roughly 1°C of warming, which is responsible for extreme weather events such as the droughts and heat waves that are plaguing western North America.

The report places an increased emphasis on the importance of the short-lived carbon pollutants, such as methane, which is 80 times more powerful as a heat-trapped gas than is carbon dioxide.

“Drastic cuts in CO2, and eventually net-zero CO2 emissions, will be critical to limiting the maximum extent of future warming,” Ilissa Ocko, senior scientist with the U.S. Environmental Defense Fund, said Monday. “But cutting methane emissions is the single fastest, most effective way there is to slow the rate of warming right now.”

Methane emissions currently account for a quarter of average global temperature increases, a percentage that is second only to carbon dioxide. Targeting methane emissions is “the leading opportunity to slow the rate” of global warming over the short-term, Ocko said.

She said the world needs a two-tracked approach: focus on longer-term decarbonization by transitioning off fossil fuels while tackling the short-lived pollutants in the near-term.

Canada and the United States agreed in 2016 to aim for a 40% to 45% reduction in methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 2025, though former president Donald Trump backed away from that commitment. The federal government passed regulations aimed at achieving that target, though environmental groups argue the rules will not achieve their stated aim.

The Biden administration is now determined to not only meet, but exceed that commitment, said Rick Duke, White House liaison for the special presidential envoy for climate change, during a conference call on Monday.

Duke said the U.S. government is working with like-minded nations, including Canada, to accelerate the reduction of methane emissions from industry, agriculture and landfills. The most economical measures exist in the oil and gas sector, where captured methane represents added fuel supply that can be sold to customers.

The Calgary-based Pembina Institute has urged Ottawa to require the oil and gas industry to reduce its methane emissions by 75% from 2012 levels by 2030 and to invest in greater efforts to detect fugitive emissions.

The Gas Association’s Egan says companies are already spending on technology to reduce their methane emissions, driven both by regulation and the economics of capturing more of their fuel.

As to the staying power of natural gas, Egan says the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) notes that natural gas accounts for 35% of Canada’s end-use energy and forecasts that it will rise to 40% over the next 20 years. (The CER forecast is not consistent with Canada’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, however.)

“Natural gas is our most affordable and most reliable energy source,” Egan says. “We think natural gas is here for the duration.”

Shawn McCarthy is an Ottawa-based writer who focuses on climate change and the low-carbon energy economy.

The post Methane burning through global carbon budget appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s a similar science that Bataille, an energy economist and economic modeller, has been using for more than 20 years to show the impact of rising greenhouse gas emissions on people and the planet.

While his and other climate models haven’t received near the widespread global attention as pandemic-tracking charts used to urge citizens to help “flatten the curve” of the virus, Bataille is hopeful that information will help people take this type of science more seriously.

“Suddenly modelling is relevant to them, numbers are relevant to them, and the credibility of the experts is relevant,” says Bataille, a Vancouver-based energy policy consultant and researcher at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations, a non-profit research centre headquartered in Paris.

And while it’s an inexact science, Bataille says modelling can provide much-needed direction in times of uncertainty, especially when well communicated to the public.

“People know they need to do something different, so they are looking for direction,” says Bataille, who is also an adjunct professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University (SFU). “What I am seeing is that, if experts communicate what they know and don’t know and provide clear direction given this uncertainty, and are willing to correct themselves, people will listen.”

It’s not just wishful thinking for Bataille, a key figure in the movement to decarbonize heavy industry, in particular steel – a sector whose emissions, together with concrete, are responsible for 14.7% of global CO2 emissions.

Bataille’s work is slowly but steadily helping the steel sector build a path toward a net-zero carbon future.

Bataille, a 47-year-old married father of two young daughters, first became interested in modelling as an economics and political science student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. One of his UBC professors was renowned economist John Helliwell, whose letter of recommendation landed Bataille a spot in the master’s program in resource and environmental management at SFU.

Bataille worked and studied with Mark Jaccard, a professor with a specialty in developing energy-economy models that assess the effectiveness of sustainable energy and climate policies. Jaccard ran (and still runs) an energy material modelling group at SFU, which also houses the Canadian Energy and Emissions Data Centre.

Bataille says the team built models of the Canadian economy, showing the potential for reducing emissions. “It was a hotbed of energy and economy modelling, and still is,” he says. “A lot of the people who do this in Canada now all came from this group and this school.”

Bataille became the executive director of MK Jaccard & Associates, a spin-off of his work with the professor at SFU from 2006 to 2011, before co-founding Navius Research Inc., where he worked for four years before going out on his own, with a focus on modelling for heavy industry, in particular steel and cement.

Jaccard describes Bataille as “very talented as a modeller” and a “quick study” who has become “a high international roller” when it comes to energy modelling for policy analysis. “He’s a very good, hard-nosed critical thinker,” says Jaccard, adding that Bataille is also skilled at bridging the nexus between academia, government and non-governmental organizations.

Shahrzad Rahbar, president of the Ottawa-based Industrial Gas Users Association, tasked Bataille with four different projects in different roles she’s held over the past couple of decades. She describes him as an “honest researcher” with a “fiercely analytical” mind.

Rahbar hopes Bataille’s work will inspire industry and policy-makers in Canada to put a greater emphasis on decarbonization moving forward.

“I think Canada’s missed opportunity is an international leadership role in the industrial piece of the puzzle when it comes to carbon reduction,” she says.

“As Chris’s work gets more international recognition, I hope that there will be more of a Canadian appetite for looking at the industrial piece in the same manner [as they do internationally] and attempts to craft a viable transition plan.”

If Bataille could set Canada’s strategy for decarbonizing steel during this time of once-in-a-generation public investment, he would get the federal government (and high-carbon manufacturers) to commit to using greener steel and build supply through accelerated research and development, piloting, commercialization and guaranteed lead markets at higher prices for set amounts of greener steel. For a few billion dollars spread over a decade or so, he says, we could make hydrogen-reduced ore in northern Quebec and ship the reduced iron to electric-arc furnaces in Ontario, where it could be made into steel.

Bataille says it was the initial work with Rahbar that enabled him to go out on his own to pursue his “obsession” with industrial decarbonization. That led to his various research papers, talks, policy influence work and work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Some of his work includes being lead editor of a special issue of Climate Policy on the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project (DDPP) in 2015/16 and a two-year project to review technology and policy options for net-zero emission decarbonization of heavy industry, including detailed physical and policy transition plans for the Canadian steel, chemicals, mining and forest products sectors. Bataille says the policy package written for the 2014/15 DDPP helped inform Alberta’s climate plan under then-Premier Rachel Notley, which helped them form the template of the federal climate plan.

He’s also a lead author for the industry chapter of the sixth cycle of the IPCC Assessment Report (2019 to 2021).

Bataille sees his mission as normalizing conversations about industrial decarbonization, making it part of forecasts such as the one announced in March by the Canadian Steel Producers Association to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The net-zero commitment from the federal government on down is a necessary beginning. It [requires] a huge jump in technology, and we aren’t going to incrementally bumble our way there,” he says.

It’s his ability to work on different sides of the debate, including industry and academics, that Bataille believes enables him to break through barriers.

“I’m a hybrid academic and corporate person,” he says. “On one hand, I get what it means to run a business, to have things go really well, then south when you’ve got people on payroll . . . Then, on a deep level, I’m a researcher. I’m a person always trying to look forward and explore the world ahead of us . . . [Having experience with both] allows me to realize what policies are likely to have traction and not have traction because of the stickiness of reality.”

Despite pilot projects like the Swedish HYBRIT (Hydrogen Breakthrough Ironmaking Technology), described as “the world’s first fossil-free steelmaking technology,” overall progress on decarbonization has been slow. Nonetheless, Bataille believes his work is helping drive change long-term.

“I would like to see HYBRIT’s hydrogen DRI iron ore reduction technology, or something like it, become the new standard for making steel in my lifetime.”

It’s that hope that inspires him to press on.

“People need a purpose in their lives, and for me it’s an endless font of purpose. It’s not going to be solved when I’m done working, but it’s work worth doing.”

Brenda Bouw is a freelance writer  and editor based in Vancouver.

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The gunshot that started the race to reach net-zero by 2050 was really a 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report. The report sent a powerful message: 1.5 degrees Celsius is the maximum warming we can accept. The IPCC was clear that this target for a “safer” world (compared with even more warming) is within reach but requires global carbon (CO2) emissions to decline by 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 and hit net-zero by mid-century. When nations convened a year later for COP25, the annual UN climate conference, the target was cemented: 73 countries, 398 cities, 768 businesses and 16 investors announced that they were working to achieve this goal.

Canada is one nation on the growing list of countries that promised to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. While the federal government is critical in setting the pace, we cannot get to net-zero without leadership from industry and corporations.

The “what” is fairly straightforward: we’ll get to net-zero when we achieve a global balance between emissions produced by humans and emissions taken out of the atmosphere. How we get there is, perhaps surprisingly, more important than the final destination. We need a flattening of the carbon curve, which will be particularly difficult for such carbon-heavy sectors as cement, steel, freight, aviation, chemical manufacturing, and oil and gas. Encouragingly, Canada’s Economic Strategy Table on clean energy indicates that by 2030, a $26 trillion low-carbon economy will create 65 million jobs worldwide.

As the corporate world plans for net-zero, a few principles should guide our collective thinking.

Delayed action on reaching net-zero increases our risk of carbon overshoot
and necessitates costlier action later.

The power of carbon budgets

Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C isn’t possible without public policy and corporate strategy informed by a carbon budget. As with any other budget, it helps measure progress and lets you know exactly where you stand relative to your goal. That’s why the federal government’s commitment to set legally binding, sectoral milestones that fairly and equitably achieve net-zero by 2050 is absolutely essential.

The concept of shrinking carbon budgets should guide corporations across all sectors. Energy companies producing only fossil fuels face a particular challenge: how do you offer a cost-competitive, low-carbon product while demand decreases as industrialized economies strive to decarbonize? Governments, corporations and civil society together need to plan pathways to reach these targets in such a way that we all can innovate and diversify to ensure Canadians have steady, in-demand employment as we transition to this decarbonized economy.

Not every pathway to net-zero is equal. One approach might be to stick to “business-as-usual” without reducing emissions and instead rely on CO2 removal measures to get to net-zero by mid-century. A second, safer approach is more transformative. It sees a company immediately creating and implementing an emissions-reduction plan that achieves substantial and sustained greenhouse gas (GHG) decreases to reach net-zero earlier.

Both approaches hit net-zero in 2050, but if every company adopts the first approach, we will blow through our carbon budget and fail at limiting warming to 1.5C. Why? It’s all about steadily decreasing annual emissions between now and 2050 so cumulative emissions stay below the global carbon budget to maintain that safer world. Delayed action not only spends our limited budget earlier (increasing the risk of overshoot), but also necessitates more stringent and costlier actions later to rapidly make up the difference.

Prioritize early mitigation

Carbon emissions are still growing in Canada, according to the latest national inventory report. Those emissions need to peak as soon as possible and decline rapidly before they reach net-zero. For businesses, that means now is the time to seize opportunities to reduce emissions across their supply chains. That might mean embracing new products, services and business models.

A key indicator for success will be early and deep mitigation, an approach that tackles carbon in all areas of the supply chain, with strict timelines and public reporting.
High-end outdoor gear company Arc’teryx is one example of a Canadian company that recently pledged to go net-zero by 2050. It has publicly committed to reduce emissions associated with its headquarters, Canadian production facility, and retail stores by 65% by 2030 (compared to 2018), which includes curbing the footprint of its fabrics, products, factories, mills, shipping and distribution centres.

For fossil fuel companies, the route to decarbonization is far more challenging, given that the bulk of emissions come from the end use of the products they create. Shell is planning to reach net-zero on scope 1 and 2 emissions involved in the creation of its products. It’s also committed to a 65% reduction on scope 3 emissions (those GHGs associated with the use of their products, namely burning Shell products in cars or furnaces). To achieve all these reductions, Shell has announced it plans to diversify beyond oil and gas, with a fresh business model that includes selling low- or zero-carbon energy products, including hydrogen, low-carbon biofuels, solar and wind power.

Critically, Shell has set annual targets to reduce its net-carbon footprint, covering a three- or five-year period, and it has wisely linked executive pay to reaching these targets. It also plans to use carbon removal measures, including carbon capture and storage and nature-based solutions like reforestation.

Though it’s too early to know if these company approaches to reaching net-zero will deliver, as they try to manage the material risks of climate change these businesses are positioning themselves as leaders in a low-carbon economy.

Improved building design could reduce overall demand for cement by 34%.
—Energy Transitions Commission’s Mission Possible report

Use every tool at hand

Mitigation (efforts to reduce or prevent emissions) should be the first and most important step for all companies in tackling this global crisis. That means such measures as adopting low- and zero-emission vehicles to replace combustion-engine fleets, switching to zero- or low-carbon fuels like green or blue hydrogen for high-temperature processes, dramatically improving energy efficiency in buildings, exploring alternative delivery logistics, and committing to renewable energy use.

The IPCC pathways to a 1.5C world all use carbon removal measures to some extent (both natural and technological). Shifting toward a circular economy model will also be important. This means using materials more sustainably, by recycling, reusing and designing less resource-intensive products. Design also plays a role: improved building design, for one, could reduce overall demand for cement by 34%, according to the Energy Transitions Commission’s Mission Possible report.

Turn up the heat on climate policy

Net-zero is only as credible a target as the set of policies that will be introduced to get us there. Corporate leaders have a unique place at the table to inform the development of these policies and champion implementation that results in stable, good-paying jobs, strong communities and sustainable development that delivers on decarbonization and climate resilience. They’re already doing so through initiatives like the Catalyst Business Coalition, an alliance of dozens of Canadian companies ranging from a craft brewery to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, together calling for increased climate action. Among other things, the coalition calls on the federal government to prioritize stimulus funding for employment opportunities resilient to future economic shocks as the world limits warming to 1.5C.

On the transportation front, the Urban Delivery Solutions initiative – a national network of businesses including Canada Post and UPS – is asking government for policies to support low-carbon urban freight operations in Canada.

To safely achieve our goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, Canada’s approach to carbon removal needs to move beyond business as usual. It’s time we embrace a transformative scenario. Working with companies to rebuild our economy and society to be carbon neutral by mid-century won’t be easy, but it is within reach.

Isabelle Turcotte is the federal policy director at the Pembina Institute and is based in Ottawa.

Related:

Report: Building Back Better with a Bold Green Recovery

The post How companies can get net-zero right appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Stock markets around the world had some of their worst performance in decades this past week, well surpassing that of the global financial crisis in 2008. Restrictions in the free movement of people is disrupting economic activity across the world as measures to control the coronavirus roll out.

There is a strong link between economic activity and global carbon dioxide emissions, thanks to the dominance of fossil fuel sources of energy. This coupling suggests we might be in for an unexpected surprise from the coronavirus pandemic: a slowdown of carbon dioxide emissions due to reduced energy consumption. Based on new projections for a sharp decline in economic growth in 2020, the impacts of the coronavirus might significantly curb global emissions.

The effect is likely to be less pronounced than during the global financial crisis (GFC). And emission declines in response to past economic crises suggest a rapid recovery of emissions when the pandemic is over. But prudent spending of economic stimulus measures, and a permanent adoption of new work behaviours, could influence how emissions evolve in the future.

The world in crisis

In just a few short months, millions of people have been put into quarantine and regions locked down to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Around the world events are being cancelled and travel plans dropped. A growing number of universities, schools and workplaces have closed and some workers are choosing to work from home if they can.

Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has cancelled a critically important meeting and will instead hold it virtually.

The International Energy Agency had already predicted oil use would drop in 2020, and this was before an oil price war emerged between Saudi Arabia and Russia.

The unprecedented coronavirus lockdown in China led to an estimated 25% reduction in energy use and emissions over a two-week period compared to previous years (mostly due to a drop in electricity use, industrial production and transport). This is enough to shave one percentage point growth off China’s emissions in 2020. Reductions are also being observed in Italy and are likely to spread across Europe as lockdowns become more widespread.

The emission-intensive airline industry, covering 2.6% of global carbon dioxide emissions (both national and international), is in freefall. It may take months, if not years, for people to return to air travel given that the coronavirus may linger for several seasons.

Given these economic upheavals, it is becoming increasingly likely that global carbon dioxide emissions will drop in 2020.

Coronavirus is not the GFC

Leading authorities have revised down economic forecasts as a result of the pandemic, but so far forecasts still indicate the global economy will grow in 2020. For example, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) downgraded estimates of global growth in 2020 from 3% (made in November 2019) to 2.4% (made in March 2020). The International Monetary Fund has indicated similar declines, with an update due next month.

Assuming the carbon efficiency of the global economy improves in line with the 10-year average of 2.5% per year, the OECD’s post-coronavirus growth projection implies carbon dioxide emissions may decline 0.3% in 2020 (including a leap year adjustment).

But the GFC experience indicates that the carbon efficiency of the global economy may improve much more slowly during a crisis. If this happens in 2020 because of the coronavirus, carbon dioxide emissions still could grow.

Under the worst-case OECD forecast, the global economy in 2020 could grow as little as 1.5%. All else being equal, we calculate this would lead to a 1.2% decline in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020.

This drop is comparable to the GFC, which in 2009 led to a 0.1% drop in global GDP and a 1.2% drop in emissions. So far, neither the OECD or International Monetary Fund have suggested the coronavirus will take global GDP into the red.

The emissions rebound

The GFC prompted big, swift stimulus packages from governments around the world, leading to a 5.1% rebound in global emissions in 2010, well above the long-term average.

Previous financial shocks, such as the collapse of the former Soviet Union or the 1970s and 1980s oil crises, also had periods with lower or negative growth, but growth soon returned. At best, a financial crisis delays emissions growth a few years. Structural changes may happen, such as the shift to nuclear energy after the oil crises, but evidence suggests emissions continue to grow.

The economic legacy of the coronavirus might also be very different to the GFC. It looks more like a slow burner, with a drop in productivity over an extended period rather than widespread job losses in the short term.

Looking to the future

The coronavirus pandemic will not turn around the long-term upward trend in global emissions. But governments around the world are announcing economic stimulus measures, and the way they’re spent may affect how emissions evolve in the future.

There is an opportunity to invest stimulus money in structural changes that lead to reduced emissions after economic growth returns, such as further development of clean technologies.

Also, the coronavirus has forced new working-from-home habits that limit commuting, and a broader adoption of online meetings to reduce the need for long-haul business flights. This raises the prospect of long-term emissions reductions should these new work behaviours persist beyond the current global emergency.

The coronavirus is, of course, an international crisis, and a personal tragedy for those who have lost, and will lose, loved ones. But with good planning, 2020 could be the year that global emissions peak (though the same was said after the GFC).

That said, past economic shocks might not be a great analogue for the coronavirus pandemic, which is unprecedented in modern human history and has a long way to go.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post How changes brought on by coronavirus could help tackle the climate crisis appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a special report this past fall, saying we have until 2030 to cut global carbon emissions in half if we hope to sustain human life on this planet.

In Canada, the economic cost of climate breakdown has been estimated at $21 billion to $43 billion by 2050. The devastating impacts of extreme weather events are now all around us: from wildfires in British Columbia, to flooding in the Maritimes, to extreme heat waves in Quebec. In 2018 alone, the insured damages for severe weather events across the country were already $1.8 billion.

A newly released study commissioned by Environment and Climate Change Canada has underscored the overwhelming reality that here at home, we are not immune to the effects of a changing climate. Just the opposite, in fact: it’s now understood that Canada is warming at twice the global average.

And we need not look elsewhere to place blame. Canadians contribute more than their fair share of greenhouse gases. We’ve earned an embarrassing place in the top 10 global emitters, despite the fact we’re home to only 0.5% of the planet’s population. We’re actually the worst offender per capita among G7 countries, followed by the U.S., then Japan.

At the same time, we face a spate of interconnected crises: economic inequality, gaps in our healthcare system and household debt among them. We live in a time when 48% of Canadians are hovering on financial insolvency and the top 20% of Canadians control almost 70% of the wealth.

These challenges are aggravated by the climate crisis. For example, as crop yields decrease, food prices go up, and those already on the financial brink are pushed further to the margins.

The bottom line is that how we respond today will seal the fate of our natural ecosystems, economic prosperity and global security. We don’t have time to waste.

Many are now saying we need a “moonshot” – moving past Band-Aid solutions and towards more ambitious, comprehensive and bolder action to address the scale, scope and speed of the climate crisis. Greta Thunberg is a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who inspired global school strikes with a lone climate strike last September. She bravely shared her fears at the World Economic Forum this past January in Davos:

“Our house is on fire. According to the IPCC, we are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes.

On climate change, we have to acknowledge that we have failed.

But there is time to turn everything around. We can still fix this.

We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases.

Either we do it or we don’t. Either we prevent a 1.5 degree of warming, or we don’t. Either we choose to go on as a civilization, or we don’t.

We must change almost everything in our current societies.

I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.

And then I want you to act. I want you to act as if you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. Because it is.”

So, the question becomes: What does it look like “to act as if the house was on fire”?

Thankfully, we have a historical precedent for this kind of decisive action, at the scale of the crises we face: the revolutionary New Deal in the United States. It was shaped by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) at a time when the Great Depression presented the greatest challenges the country had seen since the Civil War. His optimistic proposals were designed to produce three Rs: reduce poverty (“relief”), stimulate the economy (“recovery”) and stabilize the banking system (“reform”).

The question becomes:

What does it look like

“to act as if the house was on fire”?

Over the following years, the New Deal provided a coordinated series of actions that collectively kickstarted the American economy. It significantly increased gross national product and decreased the country’s previously crippling unemployment rates. While the measures were bold at the time, FDR continues to be categorized as one of the most important presidents in American history.

Fast forward almost 90 years and we have the opportunity to model our action today based on what worked for Roosevelt back then.

In the U.S., lawmakers led by Senator Ed Markey and House Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have put forward a Green New Deal resolution in Congress, and Democratic presidential hopefuls are jumping in to affirm their support.

They, too, see both the urgent opportunity and enormous costs of inaction.

In Canada, young people have largely been at the forefront of this conversation. In February, thousands met in Ottawa at an event called PowerShift to continue organizing. Now, supported by 350.org, they are championing a non-partisan campaign – “Our Time” – to mobilize an unprecedented youth vote to elect candidates who support a Green New Deal for Canada in the 2019 federal election.

We need to follow the leadership of these young people.

We can take this conversation to our kitchen tables, classrooms, corporate boardrooms and, ultimately, our Parliament, engaging people from across the political spectrum.

Because to refine what a Green New Deal for Canada could look like, we need to start a national conversation to guide it.

One that includes workers in affected industries, Indigenous communities, businesses, civil society groups and everyday people from all walks of life. Opinions have begun swirling on what could be included. Now the need is for coordination and strategy, and coalitions have begun to emerge: most recently a group of 65+ organizations across sectors and across the country have endorsed the Pact for a Green New Deal, together with dozens of luminary Canadians.

This can transform the current conversation in our country, one that is pitting those that support a price on carbon against those that support continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure – a failed dichotomy. Instead, let’s dream bigger.

Because we all want the same things: clean air, clean water, economic prosperity and a higher standard of living for all people in Canada.

Under a Green New Deal, the federal government would exercise a much wider range of policy tools to not only invest in the economy of the future, but to do so in a way that protects the people most directly affected by a dramatic transition.

While specifics are exactly what needs to be discussed over the next year, fundamental principles have begun to be put forward, for example by those that have endorsed the Pact for a Green New Deal:

1. It must meet the demands of Indigenous knowledge and science and cut Canada’s emissions in half in 11 years while protecting cultural and biological diversity.
2. It must leave no one behind and build a better present and future for all of us.

As we begin to dig in, modelled after that of the U.S., a Green New Deal for Canada could include:

• shifting to 100% zero-emission and renewable energy sources
• retrofitting all existing buildings to the highest energy efficiency standards
• building clean, affordable and accessible public transit, including high-speed rail
• building a more sustainable food system that ensures universal access to healthy food
• ensuring truly universal access to clean water and affordable housing
• skills retraining and a national jobs guarantee for private and public sector workers across the country.

In Waterloo Region for example, this means we would break ground on two-way, all-day, high-speed rail as part of the Metrolinx network. It means that as our community gentrifies, affordable housing would be guaranteed for all. And it means ensuring our land-use planning and infrastructure investments – from transit to energy to food – are decided with the next generation in mind.

In doing all this, across the country, a Green New Deal for Canada would both create thousands of high-wage jobs and provide solutions to so many other challenges we face in communities across the country. In the building sector alone, Corporate Knights estimates a Green New Deal would spur $20 billion in new investment, creating 233,000 additional jobs, while generating $54 billion in overall economic benefits per year by 2025.

In the building sector alone, Corporate Knights estimates a Green New Deal would spur $20 billion in new investment, creating 233,000 additional jobs, while generating $54 billion in overall economic benefits per year by 2025.

By co-creating this vision with Indigenous peoples, we can further reconciliation and ensure there is a place for everyone to share in the prosperity of the economy of tomorrow.

In the U.S., those making the case for a Green New Deal point out that necessary funding could flow from the considerable return on investment and wealth these projects would create. They are also open to opportunities for public and private partnerships, or contracting work, recognizing the scale of the challenges ahead.

In Canada, we could kickstart this shift with public money we’re currently using to subsidize the economy of the past. For example, if we started by ending current federal subsidies for domestic oil and gas producers, we would free up $16 billion over 10 years.

61% of Canadians

support a

“a massive government jobs program and investment in clean energy,

green technology, and electrification.

 

Now, this is our moment. So many have paved the way. Now, it’s on all of us to move this conversation to Parliament. To ensure our elected representatives bring us together to shape the specifics of a Green New Deal for Canada.

Polls suggest this could be a movement with broad support. This April, Abacus Data found that a majority of Canadians – 61% – support or somewhat support such a proposal, described as “a massive government jobs program and investment in clean energy, green technology, and electrification.” When asked how they feel about the plan if it requires “corporations and the wealthy” to pay higher taxes, support increased to 66%.

The key to our success will be how we engage previously and currently underrepresented groups to shape solutions for all, from Indigenous peoples to migrant communities to the precariously employed, to ensure they have a valuable place and will share in the transition.

Earlier this year, I decided to run for Parliament, because I believe we can dream bigger. We can rise to meet the challenges we face. And championing big ideas at the scale of the Green New Deal is one example of what this could look like.

Ultimately, this is not about left versus right. I don’t see taking action on the climate crisis as a partisan priority.

I see it as our responsibility to act in a way that respects the urgent calls we’ve received, from young people like Greta Thunberg to Indigenous leaders to climate scientists around the world.

And it’s in our collective best interest to act decisively, securing a bright future for generations to come.

Let’s get started.

Mike Morrice, founder of Green Economy Canada, is running to represent Kitchener-Centre in Parliament as a candidate with the Green Party of Canada.

The post Dreaming Bigger: A Green New Deal for Canada appeared first on Corporate Knights.