As Prime Minister Mark Carney announces he’s pausing yet another cornerstone environmental policy laid out by his predecessor Justin Trudeau, Industry Minister Melanie Joly won’t say whether the federal government will maintain its 2030 and 2035 emissions reduction targets.
I am willing to believe that “shareholder value” is less his priority than simply “the economy we all depend on”. As long as trade with the US is down 25%, we need to pull some drastic moves to keep Canada out of the poor house. I am willing to feed him some rope.
If we stay out of a recession, we can get back to a stronger stance. His track record suggests that climate is a priority for him. He did not create the Trump tariff disaster.
That’s what I thought too. But the projects his government is embarking on directly support existing businesses, mostly in the oil and gas sector. Those benefit shareholders who are generally more affluent than average Canadians.
His government has not announced projects that will benefit average Canadians. Nor has it announced projects that will lower our greenhouse gas emissions.
Rather than “pausing” the EV mandate, they could have said that they’re legislating tighter standards for ICE emissions, requiring standardization for EV chargers. But it’s support for the fossil fuel industry from top to bottom.
Well, I certainly do not want the government making it harder for the economy to succeed at this exact moment. That is for sure.
I am not sure people understand the danger we are in. If we have a second Great Depression, the climate is going to get screwed. I promise you that.
As for EV charging standardization. The market has already done this. Tesla style chargers are now the NACS (North American Charging Standard) and pretty much all new EVs are being manufactured to that standard.
If we stopped taxing foreign EVs, ICE emissions would also take care of themselves. Predating the mass adoption of EVs seems like quite a big gift to the fossil fuel industry.
That said, no pipelines in Carney’s nation building projects. That seems like a pretty big miss if the goal was “support for the fossil fuel industry from top to bottom”.
That’s debatable. A reduction in consumption would probably reduce GHG emissions.
There’s a long way to go. There are many charging networks, each with their own apps and and idiosyncracies. Some manufacturers (I’m thinking of Volkswagen) have restrictions on how their vehicles can be charged, otherwise the warranty is voided.
Until charging is as simple as plugging the vehicle in at a charger, and tapping how much the owner wants to spend, it’s too complicated.
Doubling throughput of LNG through Kitimat is a pretty nice gift.