Trudeau & Co. Sell Out the Future

Well, that puts an end to any Liberal pretensions of being a progressive party. No progressive would have done what they did today - green light the Trans-Mountain (Trudeau Memorial) pipeline expansion.

It was a rigged process under the Harper government and the Trudeau Liberals weren't to be outdone. They too rigged the process, getting caught red-handed when they ordered department officials to review the proposal and report only to then drag those adjudicators into a room to receive orders that they had better not say no, only "yes" would do.  That's petro-politics, everybody has to get a bit greasy.

The hilarious part is that the announcement came just hours after the House of Commons passed a motion declaring Canada is in a climate emergency. The Tories voted against it, the Liberals waited almost a day to trample all over it.

Meanwhile Dame Cathy says this time, if they're re-elected, the Liberals are going to make an extra effort to meet Stephen Harper's goal of a 30 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 except they're falling behind on meeting even that despite rapidly worsening climate change.

But the Trudeau government is on track to meet the Paris Climate Summit targets - by 2230.

As most people know, countries pledged a 2030 climate target as part of the global Paris Agreement. The Trudeau government pledged to meet a goal already set by Stephen Harper for a 30 per cent reduction from 2005. 

We now have twelve years of data — covering 2005 to 2017. At this half-way point, emissions have only declined by two per cent. 

Sure, that is technically a "downward" trend. But ...it is so foot-draggingly slow that it will take two centuries for Canada to reach its Paris target at that pace.

And it will take nearly a thousand years to reach Canada's 2050 target level. So, grab your calendar and pencil in a "We Did It!" celebration party for the year 2961 AD.

But now these environmentally conscious Liberals are committed to flooding world markets with what they hope will be massive volumes of high-carbon, high-cost, low-value, climate wrecking bitumen.  They figure, however, (figures don't lie but liars figure) that the stuff will be burned offshore so it's not our problem. How hypocritical can Liberals get?

Isn't it funny how our understanding of climate change has grown so much since Harper prescribed that '30 by 2030' target? Isn't it curious how much the climate itself has changed since then. Doesn't that mean those targets are even less meaningful today than when Harper proclaimed them?

Our own research shows that Canada is heating up at twice the average rate of the rest of the planet. And how has that impacted our plans for mitigation and adaptation measures? Mitigation - cutting emissions - remains unchanged and more elusive and, as for adaptation, what adaptation? Dream on.

And, if you need pictures, here's one. It shows how the oil and gas industry emissions have soared from 2005 to 2017 while responsible provinces cut emissions.  And even those figures reflect rigged emissions reporting by the Oil Patch.