Emission Impossible

Climate change has been on Canada’s political agenda since 1988, when we hosted the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere and joined the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That was thirty-five years ago: the professional lifespan of a whole generation of politicians and public servants and long enough, one would think, for serious action.

Canada did ratify the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the Copenhagen Accord in 2009, and the Paris Agreement in 2015. At Kyoto, we committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 6 percent below 1990 levels by 2012; at Copenhagen, we set a target of emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. We never came close to either goal. At Paris, we committed to emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030; in 2021, we revised that upward to a targeted reduction of 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Nonetheless, the Climate Action Tracker currently...