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July 18, 2022 • 11 hours ago • 3 minutes read • 57 comments Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greets revelers at the Toronto Youth Carnival, Saturday, July 16, 2022. Photo: Christopher Katsarov / The Canadian Press
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After admitting in April that it exceeded its 2020 target to reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by a mile, the Trudeau government on Monday released part of its plan to meet its 2030 target, which is even more unrealistic.
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This is consistent with the fact that no Canadian government of any political spectrum has come close to meeting an emissions target since 1988, when the first one was set by the then Conservative government.
Global efforts to meet UN emissions targets call for cutting current emissions in half by 2030. In the real world, they peaked last year.
The reality is that climate change policies are not environmental policies and will have no effect on the weather in the next eight years or far beyond.
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These are economic policies that are raising the cost of living for Canadians, contributing to annual inflation poised to rise to “just over 8%” this week, according to Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem – the highest level since 1982. this way.
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Even the massive economic downturn caused by the first year of the pandemic in 2020, which dramatically reduced global emissions that year, has kept Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from coming close to meeting his 2020 goal of reducing emissions to 17% below the levels from 2005 to this year.
That meant his 2020 target was 615 million tonnes of emissions, while his government said in April that actual emissions in 2020 were 672 million tonnes.
Trudeau missed his target by 57 million tonnes, equivalent to all emissions from Canada’s electricity sector that year.
But 2020 was a difference because of the economic downturn caused by the pandemic. A one-year decline in this context is irrelevant to emissions reductions, which, to be credible, must occur year after year over decades.
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This has never happened.
The more realistic figure to weigh against Trudeau’s 2020 target was Canada’s 2019 emissions, which were in line with historical norms.
In 2019, Canada emitted 738 million tonnes of greenhouse gases, meaning Trudeau missed his 2020 target by 123 million tonnes – the equivalent of nearly all emissions from Canada’s power and agriculture sectors that year.
On Monday, the Trudeau government provided more details on its plans to cap emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector — which contributes the most emissions of any sector — to at least 42 percent below 2019 levels by 2030, which means up to 118 million tonnes, although ideally the plan is to reduce them to 110 million tonnes.
It intends to use either a cap-and-trade system or a modified carbon pricing system (both carbon taxes by another name) to achieve this.
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Given that Canada’s oil and gas sector emitted 203.5 million tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2019, that means the Trudeau government’s goal is to reduce them by between 85.5 and 93.5 million tonnes annually by 2030, equivalent to eliminating all annual emissions from Canada’s construction sector in less than eight years.
When the feds first announced the plan in March, Alberta’s then-environment minister called it “insane” with “devastating economic consequences.”
NDP Leader Rachel Notley called it “a fantasy … we’re not going to get there.” Of course, if the Liberals are still in power in 2030, when they exceed their 2030 target of cutting emissions to 40% to 45% below 2005 levels, they will announce an even more unrealistic plan to reduce to net zero by 2050.
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