If You Think This Election Must Place the Environment First, There's Only One Choice

When it comes to climate change this election has been swamped in greenwash. Justin promises action - haven't we heard that before? Andy, well he's not really promising anything.

Jagmeet has been drowning himself in green paint but his plan isn't much better than Trudeau's.

The three of them, if they lived up to their own hype, would still leave Canada in the 600-650 ppm range and that is the path to climate catastrophe.

There is another party and it has a plan that would take Canada back down to 450 ppm. That, of course is the Green Party, the only one that's not feeding you horse shit.

CBC hired the economic modelling firm, Navius Research, to scrutinize each party's platform on greenhouse gas emissions.

The NDP’s plan, which is being touted as "A New Deal," only outperforms the Liberals by about 12 megatonnes. Meanwhile, their plan would have a more significant negative impact on economic growth. The party's plan relies on government funding for many of the policies — things like $1.5 billion for green innovation, $2.5 billion for home retrofit incentives and $6.5 billion for electric vehicles and transit.

"The NDP relies on inefficient government intervention, but also on the myth that reductions can happen by hitting large industry instead of final consumers of coal-fired electricity, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, et cetera," said Mark Jaccard, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Resource and Environmental Management.

Then there's the Green Party.

The Greens have proposed policies that radically transform some Canadian industries. They propose, for instance, banning oil fracking, which means shutting down most oil production in Canada outside of the Alberta oilsands. 

"The Green Party is the only party that is taking us to deep levels of decarbonizing the economy and deep emission reductions," said Carter.  

"They give us a fighting chance of doing our part in the global community of keeping global temperatures to a 1.5 C of warming."

"When I look at that GDP data I'm actually pretty reassured," said Carter. "I mean even the Greens have what we've been calling the most radical policy here. They are not bringing us into recession. This is not a recessionary picture at all."

Jagmeet is a nice guy. I get that. But he's 'orange' and orange has never done green very well. He threw something together because he figured it was a vote winner but the Dippers haven't thought it through. They simply looked the other way for years while the Greens really focused on giving Canadians "a fighting chance."