FYI: they still want you dead. Former Canadian federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna, who often appears to believe she still holds that job, just attended yet another climate gabfest and clarified the point. This one was Montreal Climate Summit, “an annual gathering of political, business and union leaders as well as philanthropic and environmental organizations to discuss the city’s climate transition.” Its what? But never mind. The point is that during an interview McKenna hissed “In Canada, we expect, Canadians expect everyone to step up and do their parts. But instead, we have oil and gas, which is largely foreign-owned, largely U.S.-owned, who aren’t doing their part. All they’re doing is increasing our emissions and demanding subsidies.” All they’re doing. And here the companies thought they were buying goodwill with all their carbon capture and public groveling. Guess again.
To be sure, McKenna’s rhetoric is pretty fiery undergraduate-seminar cookie-cutter stuff. But then Canadian politics hasn’t exactly been distinguished by its adult qualities in recent decades, so we shouldn’t be surprised that a person who once held important responsibilities would shrill that the heads of oil companies, as CTV reported:
“have been profiting from Russia’s illegal war on Ukraine and now the war in Iran. ‘But what do they do with those profits? They give them back to fat cat CEOs and then they go give them back to their shareholders, largely Americans who support Donald Trump,’ she said.”
Boo that awful Donald Trump. Not that he’s mayor of Montreal or anything but what a cheap applause line.
Now since the purpose of the gathering was to discuss Montreal’s climate transition, it might not be out of place to make level-headed, even inclusive pronouncements about practical steps that could be taken at the municipal level. If you could think of any (other than, as Stella Ambler of Municipal Watch notes, reaching out for federal subsidies by talking greenly). Especially since her tenure as Climate Minister, from 2015-21, was not exactly characterized by significant reductions in GHGs nationally, or coalition-building.
Of course in Canada coalition-building is less necessary than it might be elsewhere, not least because Canada’s energy industry has played the game for years. Instead of a forthright defence of what they do, and a direct challenge to the science and policy behind Net Zero, they admit, or claim to believe, that humans are setting the planet on fire, present themselves as especially guilty, and then ask to be allowed please to continue at least for a bit.
It is done, apparently, in the name of public relations. But even in that respect it’s a dud. It doesn’t make friends of their enemies. But in taking this position they do forfeit the support of a great many normal people who actually don’t believe there’s a climate crisis, but who are not going to get out front on the issue. And if you expect politicians to lead, well, you obviously haven’t spent much time reading Canadian newspapers.
Most conservative politicians, including Alberta’s premier, privately don’t believe there’s a climate crisis. But they’ll never say so out loud, partly because they haven’t done enough homework to be able to defend that position when the paid government media come after them and partly because their party leaders have a cunning plan to win power by being fake liberals. (Even when they are the leaders.) But we digress.
But if McKenna is right that “Canadians expect everyone to step up and do their parts” it is high time industries slated for execution got vocal about bad policy.
