Climate was barely mentioned by anyone on the campaign trail, and despite being not-Conservative, the Liberal Party has long been a friend of the fossil fuel industry. Carney provided no indication that his leadership would be any different. If you want action on climate, you can’t keep electing Liberals and Conservatives.
Carney has on several occasions said that canada should become a green energy super power. Carney canceled consumer carbon pricing, but he kept the industry pricing, where the tax can be more impactful in developing change. He also worked with the bank of england during a big change for net zero initiatives than many of the public pushed against. I think he will do more for the environment in Canada than previous liberal leaders. We as the population also have a role by writing to our MPs on what changes we want to see and protesting policies that harm our planet.
What would one do to fight climate change. I’m assuming the first step would be taking over zoning laws federally to rezone for density, then investing hundreds of billions into mass transit instead of social programs.
Then it would be cutting off Chinese imports, obviously dramatically raising interest rates due to inflation, potentially toppling our housing bubble.
Then ending immigration from low emitting countries, causing a dramatic fall in GDP, and an immediate recession. Does this sound right?
I get it. You’re convinced that global warming isn’t a serious threat, or maybe you’ve just decided that it can’t be because you’re not willing to consider alternatives to how you live. That’s why it’s easy to invent a bunch of nonsense policy and pin it on a stranger. It makes it easy to pretend that you’re the reasonable one in the room. I understand it, but it’s still an idiotic position to take.
Here is some basic policy that Canada can and should adopt to combat climate change at the federal level. Some of it may well hurt the economy, but compared to the catastrophic damage the climate is already doing, it’s nothing.
Limiting the damage
Ban all expansion of oil and gas extraction. When your bathtub is overflowing, the first thing you do is turn off the tap.
Fine oil & gas firms for every abandoned well, then sue them for covering up the truth about global warming for decades and then for running disinformation campaigns about CO₂ after the truth came out.
Energy
Invest in solar, wind, and hydro because it’s cheap and fast to deploy. Much of this will have to come from China initially, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be trying to build this industry locally as well. Megaprojects should be championed as a national effort, and showcased to the world as Canada doing what needs to be done.
Leverage our many water systems to serve as flow batteries.
Offer subsidies for the insulation of homes and the conversion to heat pumps. Combine this with mandates for landlords that the homes they rent out are up to high efficiency standards.
Transport
Ban short-haul flights, especially those between Toronto/Ottawa/Montréal, Victoria/Vancouver/Kelowna, and Calgary/Edmonton.
Charge more per-person per additional flight every year, so that your second flight from Vancouver to Toronto in the same year costs 20% more, your third flight, %40 more, etc.
End all federal funding for highway expansion, redirect it into grants for transit and active transport like cycling.
Require a commercial license for any vehicle larger than a 4-door sedan or weighing more than 1 tonne, and apply a nation wide speed limit of 30kph off the highway.
Limit all non-highways to no more than 2 car lanes. Give that extra space up to slower traffic like pedestrians, bikes, hell even golf carts.
Offer financing for e-bikes and cargo bikes or work with private banks to make this available.
Invest in intercity rail, ideally along those same short-haul flight corridors.
Limit the size of vehicles permitted on all roads and lay out a plan to reduce that size over time.
Construction
Apply a 400% tax on any new big-box store development. They’re terrible for the economy anyway, but they’re also a terrible waste of resources.
Stem the expansion of suburban sprawl with the above traffic regulations and tax benefits for urban density.
Form a national housing agency for the federal government to start building homes again. The target for this agency should be densification, clustering around the transit initiatives mentioned above.
Support the production and use of concrete alternatives like hempcrete where possible.
Food
Tax beef to gradually higher amounts, and subsidise alternatives – even other meats. Chicken for example is leaps-and-bounds better for the climate than cow.
Support beef producers by helping them financially to transition to alternatives in exchange for agreeing to reduce their herd sizes every year.
Foreign Policy
Build an alliance of other nations to operate as a trading bloc for countries living up to their climate agreements. Membership in the bloc awards reduced trading friction, while non-members are hit with tariffs.
I don’t know where you got your three bananas ideas, but the above is a pretty good start for actual action on climate. Every one of these will improve quality of life, while the alternative is watching one city like Jasper go up in flames every year until it’s two cities, or three. Major cities like Kamloops, or even Vancouver are definitely already at serious risk even now. What do you think the economic cost would be if we lost them too?
Well I’m not denying climate change I just dont think its a smooth process, peoples ability to waste energy is their standard of living, and you’ll be voted out the second you limit their consumption and crash the economy.
It would drastically raise interest rates, since oil and gas make up a significant portion of our current account balance, and the housing bubble cant survive higher rates I dont believe; which you’ll also raise interest rates dramatically borrowing money to invest in renewables and meat production. We have an over 90% debt to GDP federally and provincially, which is a large weight on growth according to studies, if we cut off our exports what does that do to our debt load and productivity?
I like many of your ideas, but its economic suicide. I’ve not heard of this flow battery idea built into nature it sounds pretty neat, why are these not used in any other countries, can you really just pump water into a natural reservoir?
Yup. You tend to see it in countries that have the right geography (like Canada). There’s a relatively famous case between France and Switzerland I believe, but I can’t remember the name. There’s also talk of leveraging abandoned mines as well as a sort of gravity battery, but I don’t know of any actual applications of this model.
I appreciate that you’re not trying to deny climate change, but this talk of our inability to handle the economic consequences of the required action is also really common and it always has the same flaw: it ignores the economic cost of inaction.
I also think you’re misunderstanding the definition of standard of living if you’re equating it with one’s ability to waste energy. That’s a mindset born of the broken system that brought us here. A country that prioritises density and electrification is a country that uses far less energy… because it doesn’t need to waste it. Smaller cars use far less than SUVs, and e-bikes use a fraction of that, while moving in that direction offers you safer, cleaner, and quieter cities at a fraction of the price. The same applies to insulation and electrification of heat: cleaner, quieter, healthier, and cheaper.
I offer my own life as an example. I sold my car in 2008 and stuck to transit and cycling, renting a car for the occasional long weekend road trip. I saved roughly $10k/year, and bought a house in 2021 with about £300k down. I installed solar panels on my house for about £6000 and now my hydro bill is just £8/month while the rest of the country is choking on gas and paying around £150-£200/month for the privilege.
At the end of the day it’s about taking the long view and recognising that the cost of inaction far exceeds any short-term costs, then you do what a leader is supposed to do, take the nation with you and build the future you’ve convinced them they want.
Canada has been hooked on fossil fuels for so long that too many of us think that it’s the only way to live. This mindset has convinced many to decide that not setting the world on fire isn’t worth it, which is objectively insane.
Canada will not survive a 4° increase in global temperatures, so any argument that begins with “we can’t do what’s necessary” is an argument against our survival.
Climate was barely mentioned by anyone on the campaign trail, and despite being not-Conservative, the Liberal Party has long been a friend of the fossil fuel industry. Carney provided no indication that his leadership would be any different. If you want action on climate, you can’t keep electing Liberals and Conservatives.
Carney has on several occasions said that canada should become a green energy super power. Carney canceled consumer carbon pricing, but he kept the industry pricing, where the tax can be more impactful in developing change. He also worked with the bank of england during a big change for net zero initiatives than many of the public pushed against. I think he will do more for the environment in Canada than previous liberal leaders. We as the population also have a role by writing to our MPs on what changes we want to see and protesting policies that harm our planet.
Getting to net zero is a major reoccurring theme in Carney’s book.
His proposal is to use regulatory frameworks to make it be in businesses best interests for them to choose to make better environmental choices.
What would one do to fight climate change. I’m assuming the first step would be taking over zoning laws federally to rezone for density, then investing hundreds of billions into mass transit instead of social programs.
Then it would be cutting off Chinese imports, obviously dramatically raising interest rates due to inflation, potentially toppling our housing bubble.
Then ending immigration from low emitting countries, causing a dramatic fall in GDP, and an immediate recession. Does this sound right?
I get it. You’re convinced that global warming isn’t a serious threat, or maybe you’ve just decided that it can’t be because you’re not willing to consider alternatives to how you live. That’s why it’s easy to invent a bunch of nonsense policy and pin it on a stranger. It makes it easy to pretend that you’re the reasonable one in the room. I understand it, but it’s still an idiotic position to take.
Here is some basic policy that Canada can and should adopt to combat climate change at the federal level. Some of it may well hurt the economy, but compared to the catastrophic damage the climate is already doing, it’s nothing.
I don’t know where you got your three bananas ideas, but the above is a pretty good start for actual action on climate. Every one of these will improve quality of life, while the alternative is watching one city like Jasper go up in flames every year until it’s two cities, or three. Major cities like Kamloops, or even Vancouver are definitely already at serious risk even now. What do you think the economic cost would be if we lost them too?
Well I’m not denying climate change I just dont think its a smooth process, peoples ability to waste energy is their standard of living, and you’ll be voted out the second you limit their consumption and crash the economy.
It would drastically raise interest rates, since oil and gas make up a significant portion of our current account balance, and the housing bubble cant survive higher rates I dont believe; which you’ll also raise interest rates dramatically borrowing money to invest in renewables and meat production. We have an over 90% debt to GDP federally and provincially, which is a large weight on growth according to studies, if we cut off our exports what does that do to our debt load and productivity?
I like many of your ideas, but its economic suicide. I’ve not heard of this flow battery idea built into nature it sounds pretty neat, why are these not used in any other countries, can you really just pump water into a natural reservoir?
Yup. You tend to see it in countries that have the right geography (like Canada). There’s a relatively famous case between France and Switzerland I believe, but I can’t remember the name. There’s also talk of leveraging abandoned mines as well as a sort of gravity battery, but I don’t know of any actual applications of this model.
I appreciate that you’re not trying to deny climate change, but this talk of our inability to handle the economic consequences of the required action is also really common and it always has the same flaw: it ignores the economic cost of inaction.
I also think you’re misunderstanding the definition of standard of living if you’re equating it with one’s ability to waste energy. That’s a mindset born of the broken system that brought us here. A country that prioritises density and electrification is a country that uses far less energy… because it doesn’t need to waste it. Smaller cars use far less than SUVs, and e-bikes use a fraction of that, while moving in that direction offers you safer, cleaner, and quieter cities at a fraction of the price. The same applies to insulation and electrification of heat: cleaner, quieter, healthier, and cheaper.
I offer my own life as an example. I sold my car in 2008 and stuck to transit and cycling, renting a car for the occasional long weekend road trip. I saved roughly $10k/year, and bought a house in 2021 with about £300k down. I installed solar panels on my house for about £6000 and now my hydro bill is just £8/month while the rest of the country is choking on gas and paying around £150-£200/month for the privilege.
At the end of the day it’s about taking the long view and recognising that the cost of inaction far exceeds any short-term costs, then you do what a leader is supposed to do, take the nation with you and build the future you’ve convinced them they want.
Canada has been hooked on fossil fuels for so long that too many of us think that it’s the only way to live. This mindset has convinced many to decide that not setting the world on fire isn’t worth it, which is objectively insane.
Canada will not survive a 4° increase in global temperatures, so any argument that begins with “we can’t do what’s necessary” is an argument against our survival.