{"id":4146,"date":"2022-05-05T12:48:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-05T12:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/beyondclimatepromises.ca\/?p=4146"},"modified":"2022-09-23T01:27:20","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T01:27:20","slug":"are-we-being-too-nice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/beyondclimatepromises.ca\/fr\/are-we-being-too-nice\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we being too nice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Artist: Alex Stewart<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atlantic Activist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a sincere question\u2014please hear me out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite general agreement that climate change is real and we\u2019re quickly running out of time to do something about it, Canada continues to forge a path of broken climate promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last November, the Office of the Auditor General of Canada and the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development released a report titled Lessons Learned from Canada\u2019s Record on Climate Change<\/em><\/a>. Kim Leach, the senior bureaucrat who led the performance audit, presented several key takeaways during a recent webinar<\/a> hosted by the Sustainability Network. This fact stood out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCanada has never met a greenhouse gas reduction target it has set.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The observation, Leach explained, covers Canada\u2019s track record since 1990. Despite plans and targets aimed at reducing<\/em> greenhouse gas emissions over the past three decades, Canada\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions have in fact increased<\/em> by 20 percent.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same webinar, auditor James MacKenzie explained that the federal government\u2019s Onshore Emissions Reduction Fund (launched in 2020) did not achieve its intended aims. MacKenzie\u2019s audit found that more than half of the companies that received funding in the first round used it to increase<\/em> oil and gas production.<\/strong> This was not by accident: the companies had revealed their intentions in their funding applications to Natural Resources Canada. And although the Fund was also meant to support workers in industries impacted by Covid, the companies applying for funding were not required to show how the money would be used to help with job retention (or creation).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fast forward to last week, when Jerry DeMarco, Canada\u2019s Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, and staff from the Auditor General\u2019s Office spoke at a parliamentary standing committee meeting about five new reports<\/a>\u2014addressing carbon pricing, a Just Transition for workers, hydrogen potential, greening federal government operations, and climate-ready infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can read the reports for yourself here<\/a>, or watch the two-hour committee hearing here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spoiler Alert: Canada is failing to come up with effective and credible plans to address climate change\u2014and it\u2019s not even meeting its existing lackluster plans and targets.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So, back to the question: Are we being too nice?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a rhetorical question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The federal government\u2019s own Commissioner and auditors are definitively outlining the ways in which our elected leaders and government bureaucrats are failing to address the greatest threat facing humanity\u2014and in many instances, actually making matters worse. But somehow, the public is expected to shrug off these failures as an honest mistake or simply politics. If we don\u2019t like it, we’re told, we can show our disapproval at the ballot box in a few years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two main problems with that: few members of the public will ever hear about these reports calling out the failures of the government, and we\u2019re almost out of time to make the significant changes that could curtail runaway climate change and biodiversity loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report released in April by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states<\/a> that in order to limit global warming to 1.5\u00b0C, greenhouse gas emissions must be on a sharp decline within three years and reduced nearly in half by 2030.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And if we fail?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, other recent IPCC reports (August 2021<\/a> and February 2022<\/a>) warn us about that, too. The UN Secretary-General has dubbed the reports \u201cA Code Red for Humanity\u201d and \u201cAn Atlas of Human Suffering,\u201d respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lives hang in the balance; species are disappearing every minute. Is it not time to start calling out broken climate promises for what they are? Lies.<\/strong> The UN Secretary-General thinks so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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