Climate leadership does not exist in North America

When you are looking for leadership, you look to leaders. And anyone who was looking to Canada for leadership on combatting climate change was never looking in the right places. Canada has been an embarrassment on the international stage since the days of Stephen Harper and before and we have missed every single target, KPI, milestone and commitment we have made because we are not serious about addressing climate change. We refused to make a choice to become a world leader in the development and deployment of renewable energy even though we have the material and intellectual resources to have done so. At the beginning of this century we had an OBVIOUS opportunity to completely reinvent our economy and energy system. Instead we pandered to a handful of oil and gas companies who held federal and provincial governments hostage to their rapacious need for profit at the expense of, well, the entire planet’s liveable future.

We faced a choice and we made it, and now the rest of the world is trying to ignore us and our neighbour as we just give up on trying to make a contribution to this cause and instead lay down and create the conditions for death merchants to acquire profits in these waning days.

So don;t look to us. Look to the people that are actually doing something about it. I have some faith – what else is there to have – that a behemoth like China has the scale and capacity to make some kind of dent in the catastrophic numbers the world is facing. And along with countries in the global south who are now buying the affordable renewable infrastructure that China is manufacturing at scale, there might be a tipping point for the world that will eventually reach North America, even as we erect walls around our temple of oil and gas.

Who knows? Perhaps that might be enough to get the world into the right lane on this journey. That would be great. But Canada will be a backwater in this new world, contributing a few minerals here and there if provinces can even be bothered to talk to First Nations and avoid the inevitable legal morass that will come when they pursue projects at the expense of the laws of the land. We have probably lost the ability to compete for any sector of the generation of the planet’s next form of energy dependance. The sycophantic governments in Alberta and Ottawa and elsewhere bleat on about fossil fuel projects as if they are the adults in the room, while the rest of the world tries to pry itself away from the poisons that will end us.

I’m encouraged by Bill McKibben’s observation about what’s happening at scale on this issue. And then I look at the current policies of our governments and just shake my head at their naiveté. Watching people year after year, government after government, burn their own house down to sell matches to the to arsonists is frustrating and infuriating. But I can only hope that the market they hold so sacred will finally turn their heads to the opportunities that have been lost and help them realize that they bet on a losing horse and all that is left to do now is cut our losses and get out before we are dragged into oblivion.