October 29, 2024
…about Canada’s place in the world of greenhouse gas emissions
Not long ago, I attended a conference where a member of the audience asked a speaker (I’m paraphrasing), “When will other countries start doing all the things Canada is doing to reduce emissions?” The underlying premises behind the question were clear:
- We’re doing a lot
- It’s putting us at an economic disadvantage
- It’s not fair
- And even: why should we Canadians be working so hard to reduce our emissions when the real culprit is China?
Unfortunately – and sorry if I’m bursting a few bubbles here – those underlying premises are largely false – or to put it more gently, they’re ‘misconceptions’. Consider:
- Yes, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have declined by 7.1 per cent since 2005 – but that’s not nearly enough, given that our official target is a 40-45% reduction by 2030. Achieving our target means that our emissions need to drop 33-38% (or 419 to 457 million tonnes/year) over the next six years – a very steep and challenging reduction by any measure. Alas, it’s the consequence of years of inaction, as can be seen in this graph of Canada’s official emissions.
- According to the world’s leading climate scientists, global emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030 if global warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. So Canada’s emission reduction target of 40-45% by 2030 isn’t over-the-top ambitious; it’s simply the average reduction needed by 2030 in every country of the world. You could call it ‘doing our part’. Some countries have considerably more ambitious targets than Canada; the EU’s legally binding target is at least 55% below 1990 levels by 2030, and Finland has passed a law to be net-zero by 2035.
- Many Canadians believe that we’re already doing our part to fight climate change, but here are two unfortunate realities: Canadian emissions per capita are among the highest in the world; and Canada has set many emissions reduction targets in the past, but never achieved a single one.
China is widely blamed for climate change, and it’s true that as a country its emissions are the highest in the world. But – and sorry if I’m bursting a few bubbles again here – consider:
- China has about 36 times the population of Canada, but its emissions are about 20 times those of Canada. On a per capita basis, they’re about half ours.
- A lot of China’s emissions are the result of manufacturing stuff for us, so it’s worth reflecting whether some of those emissions are really ours.
- China is the world leader in solar energy, and installed more in 2023 than the rest of the world combined did in 2022.
- China is the world leader in wind energy, with about 25 times as much as Canada.
- China is a world leader in the adoption of electric vehicles and electric buses and trucks.
And are measures like carbon pricing putting Canada at an economic disadvantage? Ironically, scrapping carbon pricing – a policy centrepiece of the party likely to form our next federal government – may put us at an economic disadvantage, as countries with carbon pricing can be expected to impose tariffs on imports from countries without carbon pricing.
The point to all of this: if someone is asked to do something when they already believe they’re doing more than everyone else, they’ll be more inclined to resist and push back than to act – even if their basic belief is wrong. So it’s important that the basic beliefs that guide us be correct.
I hope the above information can help with that (without being too blunt, of course!).
This story was brought to Nouzie by RSS. The original post can be found on https://carlsgreenideas.wordpress.com/2024/10/29/correcting-common-misconceptions/