Climate campaigners in Canada and beyond and protested Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's ongoing support for the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project. (Photo: Greenpeace)
Jul 07, 2019
It's possible that the world's top climate scientists are lying.
Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
If so, we can relax and feel confident that Justin Trudeau has dealt with the climate crisis in the appropriate way.
Although the prime minister approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline last month, he's vowed to channel pipeline profits into clean energy projects. Compared to the Conservatives, Trudeau's climate package, which includes taxes on carbon, seems reasonable and balanced--with a sweetener of environmental activism thrown in. (After all, it's 2019.)
But if climate scientists are not lying, if they're just honestly reporting their scientific findings, Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
I'm inclined to believe the scientists. Convened by the United Nations, they reviewed more than 6,000 scientific studies and reported last fall that we have only about a dozen years left if we are to prevent truly dire climate conditions which go well beyond the kind of horrific wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods we're already experiencing.
To avoid this, the scientists on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called on the world to make urgent and unprecedented changes that would dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption.
The chances of the world doing so are, of course, slim.
But that slim hope would be reduced to a thread by the Trans Mountain expansion, which would triple the pipeline's capacity to transport the province's heavy crude oil, one of the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels.
That would be equivalent to adding 34 million cars to our roads, according to the environmental group Oil Change International.
Renowned U.S. climate scientist James Hansen has said if Alberta's oilsands are fully exploited, it's "game over."
Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
So Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
Given the Canadian political landscape, Trudeau's compromise may seem like the best we can do. But, as Winston Churchill once said: "Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required."
By that standard, we're failing miserably.
With climate change increasingly in the headlines, it's easy to be lulled into believing the world is finally cutting carbon emissions. In fact, they continue to rise.
The climate has warmed roughly 1degC since the 1850s, and it's expected to warm another half-degree, due to carbon already in the atmosphere. The big question is whether we can hold it to 1.5degC--a level of warming with severe but manageable consequences. At 2degC, it gets truly scary.
Ottawa admits Canada is far from meeting its carbon-reduction targets. This understates our poor performance.
A 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications ranked Canada among countries with the world's least effective climate policies. The study found that if Canada's policies were adopted worldwide, global temperatures would rise by a disastrous 5.1degC by the end of the century. And that assessment was made before Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Given the potential catastrophe ahead, it's amazing the subject is often discussed with detachment.
Economist Moshe Lander of Concordia University recently argued that, with the world moving toward a carbon-free future, Alberta's oil should be extracted while there's still time; "it's sort of a now or never approach."
This attitude--let's dump every bit of carbon into the air while we can still make a buck from it!--reveals a stunning indifference to the enormity of the crisis we face, and the fighting spirit we'll need to summon if we're going to save ourselves and future generations.
Winston Churchill demonstrated that sort of fighting spirit when he vowed in 1940: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets."
Imagine if he'd settled for: "We'll do our best. But we have to balance the need to fight tyranny with the need to create jobs."
Join Us: News for people demanding a better world
Common Dreams is powered by optimists who believe in the power of informed and engaged citizens to ignite and enact change to make the world a better place. We're hundreds of thousands strong, but every single supporter makes the difference. Your contribution supports this bold media model—free, independent, and dedicated to reporting the facts every day. Stand with us in the fight for economic equality, social justice, human rights, and a more sustainable future. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover the issues the corporate media never will. Join with us today! |
© 2023 TheStar.com
Linda Mcquaig
Linda McQuaig is an author, journalist, and former NDP candidate for Toronto Centre in the Canadian federal election. The National Post has described her as "Canada's Michael Moore." She is also the author of "The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada's Public Wealth" (2019), "War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet: It's the Crude, Dude" (2006) and (with Neil Brooks) of "Billionaires' Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality" (2012).
It's possible that the world's top climate scientists are lying.
Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
If so, we can relax and feel confident that Justin Trudeau has dealt with the climate crisis in the appropriate way.
Although the prime minister approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline last month, he's vowed to channel pipeline profits into clean energy projects. Compared to the Conservatives, Trudeau's climate package, which includes taxes on carbon, seems reasonable and balanced--with a sweetener of environmental activism thrown in. (After all, it's 2019.)
But if climate scientists are not lying, if they're just honestly reporting their scientific findings, Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
I'm inclined to believe the scientists. Convened by the United Nations, they reviewed more than 6,000 scientific studies and reported last fall that we have only about a dozen years left if we are to prevent truly dire climate conditions which go well beyond the kind of horrific wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods we're already experiencing.
To avoid this, the scientists on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called on the world to make urgent and unprecedented changes that would dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption.
The chances of the world doing so are, of course, slim.
But that slim hope would be reduced to a thread by the Trans Mountain expansion, which would triple the pipeline's capacity to transport the province's heavy crude oil, one of the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels.
That would be equivalent to adding 34 million cars to our roads, according to the environmental group Oil Change International.
Renowned U.S. climate scientist James Hansen has said if Alberta's oilsands are fully exploited, it's "game over."
Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
So Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
Given the Canadian political landscape, Trudeau's compromise may seem like the best we can do. But, as Winston Churchill once said: "Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required."
By that standard, we're failing miserably.
With climate change increasingly in the headlines, it's easy to be lulled into believing the world is finally cutting carbon emissions. In fact, they continue to rise.
The climate has warmed roughly 1degC since the 1850s, and it's expected to warm another half-degree, due to carbon already in the atmosphere. The big question is whether we can hold it to 1.5degC--a level of warming with severe but manageable consequences. At 2degC, it gets truly scary.
Ottawa admits Canada is far from meeting its carbon-reduction targets. This understates our poor performance.
A 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications ranked Canada among countries with the world's least effective climate policies. The study found that if Canada's policies were adopted worldwide, global temperatures would rise by a disastrous 5.1degC by the end of the century. And that assessment was made before Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Given the potential catastrophe ahead, it's amazing the subject is often discussed with detachment.
Economist Moshe Lander of Concordia University recently argued that, with the world moving toward a carbon-free future, Alberta's oil should be extracted while there's still time; "it's sort of a now or never approach."
This attitude--let's dump every bit of carbon into the air while we can still make a buck from it!--reveals a stunning indifference to the enormity of the crisis we face, and the fighting spirit we'll need to summon if we're going to save ourselves and future generations.
Winston Churchill demonstrated that sort of fighting spirit when he vowed in 1940: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets."
Imagine if he'd settled for: "We'll do our best. But we have to balance the need to fight tyranny with the need to create jobs."
Linda Mcquaig
Linda McQuaig is an author, journalist, and former NDP candidate for Toronto Centre in the Canadian federal election. The National Post has described her as "Canada's Michael Moore." She is also the author of "The Sport and Prey of Capitalists: How the Rich Are Stealing Canada's Public Wealth" (2019), "War, Big Oil and the Fight for the Planet: It's the Crude, Dude" (2006) and (with Neil Brooks) of "Billionaires' Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality" (2012).
It's possible that the world's top climate scientists are lying.
Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
If so, we can relax and feel confident that Justin Trudeau has dealt with the climate crisis in the appropriate way.
Although the prime minister approved the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline last month, he's vowed to channel pipeline profits into clean energy projects. Compared to the Conservatives, Trudeau's climate package, which includes taxes on carbon, seems reasonable and balanced--with a sweetener of environmental activism thrown in. (After all, it's 2019.)
But if climate scientists are not lying, if they're just honestly reporting their scientific findings, Trudeau's package is a dangerous fraud--one that gives us a false sense that we can dramatically increase output from Alberta's oilsands without seriously imperiling the world, and ourselves.
I'm inclined to believe the scientists. Convened by the United Nations, they reviewed more than 6,000 scientific studies and reported last fall that we have only about a dozen years left if we are to prevent truly dire climate conditions which go well beyond the kind of horrific wildfires, heat waves, droughts and floods we're already experiencing.
To avoid this, the scientists on the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change called on the world to make urgent and unprecedented changes that would dramatically reduce our fossil fuel consumption.
The chances of the world doing so are, of course, slim.
But that slim hope would be reduced to a thread by the Trans Mountain expansion, which would triple the pipeline's capacity to transport the province's heavy crude oil, one of the world's dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fuels.
That would be equivalent to adding 34 million cars to our roads, according to the environmental group Oil Change International.
Renowned U.S. climate scientist James Hansen has said if Alberta's oilsands are fully exploited, it's "game over."
Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
So Trudeau's promise to direct pipeline profits to clean energy--as good as that sounds--is like allowing cigarettes to be sold to kids as long as tobacco companies make generous donations to cancer research.
Given the Canadian political landscape, Trudeau's compromise may seem like the best we can do. But, as Winston Churchill once said: "Sometimes it is not enough to do our best; we must do what is required."
By that standard, we're failing miserably.
With climate change increasingly in the headlines, it's easy to be lulled into believing the world is finally cutting carbon emissions. In fact, they continue to rise.
The climate has warmed roughly 1degC since the 1850s, and it's expected to warm another half-degree, due to carbon already in the atmosphere. The big question is whether we can hold it to 1.5degC--a level of warming with severe but manageable consequences. At 2degC, it gets truly scary.
Ottawa admits Canada is far from meeting its carbon-reduction targets. This understates our poor performance.
A 2018 study published in the journal Nature Communications ranked Canada among countries with the world's least effective climate policies. The study found that if Canada's policies were adopted worldwide, global temperatures would rise by a disastrous 5.1degC by the end of the century. And that assessment was made before Trudeau approved the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
Given the potential catastrophe ahead, it's amazing the subject is often discussed with detachment.
Economist Moshe Lander of Concordia University recently argued that, with the world moving toward a carbon-free future, Alberta's oil should be extracted while there's still time; "it's sort of a now or never approach."
This attitude--let's dump every bit of carbon into the air while we can still make a buck from it!--reveals a stunning indifference to the enormity of the crisis we face, and the fighting spirit we'll need to summon if we're going to save ourselves and future generations.
Winston Churchill demonstrated that sort of fighting spirit when he vowed in 1940: "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets."
Imagine if he'd settled for: "We'll do our best. But we have to balance the need to fight tyranny with the need to create jobs."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.