I just assumed that since the US government has been such an overwhelming shitshow, it was distracting us from the better job being done in the nation to our north. The prime minister is Mark Carney, who leads the liberal party, so he must be doing good things. Maybe not.
A University of Toronto professor, Laura Tozer, teaches a grad level course in climate and climate policy. She has a few complaints for Carney to address.
“Every single semester, a student raises their hand in my class and asks: ‘Professor, is there any hope on climate change?’ How about this year when the new semester starts in January, you get to look them in the eye and answer,” she wrote in her letter, posted on LinkedIn, which also rattles off the laundry list of climate rollbacks under Carney.
X Suspended Canada’s Clean Electricity Regulations in AlbertaX Weakened methane regulations
X Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap
X Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system
X Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency
X Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency
X Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program
X Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate
X Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects
X Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation
> Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts
X Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne
Whoa. I’ve been ignoring Canada (forgive me, you know we Americans kind of have our hands full), but apparently the Canadian government has been fucking up, too. It sounds like Carney has been fully captured by the oil interests and is giving up on conservation efforts.
How is he doing on health policy and vaccination? Is he planning to take over Greenland? I’m afraid to look.
Carney is basically Canadian Starmer. Won because of the opposition and then tacking hard right despite what the people who voted for him want.
No.
The long term goal of the climate change accords was 1.5 degrees C.
We are there and CO2 levels and global temperatures are still going up rapidly.
1.5 C is gone.
Simultaneously with running past 1.5 C, global oil production set yet again another record high.
So we have CO2 levels still going up rapidly, the Global temperature going up rapidly, and fossil fuel production setting records every year.
There is no scenario in sight for halting global warming.
raven @#2
“There is no scenario in sight…”
Giant meteor. : )
Canada is being led by a Carney, and the USA is being run by a clown car cabinet. It’s a great day for the circus.
Canada’s election was also one of picking the lesser evil, and in Canada’s case, we chose Carney. The alternative would’ve been Pierre “Maple MAGA” Poilievre, who was much more interested in aping Trump than in fighting him. His political history wasn’t much better either. Canada’s trade and economy would be much, much closer to America’s mess if Poilievre was voted in.
Canada’s realignment with Asia and Europe could help out though. Canada rose tariffs against China to 100 at the same time that the US did during Trump’s first term, and like the US, our canola shipments were stopped as a result. Now that trade and relations between Canada and China are picking up, I’m hoping that’ll mean EV companies such as BYD being let into Canada. BYD is already based in many other parts of the world, where automotive assembly has been moved to as well. Canada already has plenty of rare minerals, critical to EV manufacturers, to help bring them into Canada’s marketplace. I see EV support to likely increase here after Tesla becomes much less dominant on Canada’s roadways.
Australia under a Labor (supposedly left-wing) government is doing just as badly.
Poilievre got personally humiliated (which is good, because he’s a mean, populist demagogue) , but the Conservative party had a strong showing resulting in a minority government for the Liberals. They’re doing kinda what the Democrats do: moving to the right because who else is the left going to vote for. Everyone thinks our left-wing party, the NDP, is unelectable, and it’s very frustrating to be a progressive up here, too.
As an American with Canadian experience, keep these two points in mind:
Canada is way better than the USA on any number of things
It’s a very low bar on those things.
Canada esp falls down on mining/extraction and on First Nations rights. Note the two are often intertwined.
The Overton Window (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window) has taken a huge lurch to the right worldwide over the last decade. Consequently although “leftist” politicians have been voted in they are more what would normally be called centre-right. They’re only left leaning in comparison to the barking mad neo-fascists they are up against.
Why the Overton window has lurched right could be the subject of multiple essays. Suffice to say, it didn’t slide that way on its own but was deliberately pushed. Hard.
@9 YES!
if the powers that be won’t let us fight the petrols through legal means, like voting, you know what that leaves, right? and every new climate disaster inches is closer to getting individuals motivated enough to take those actions.
and we’re having multiple climate change fueled disasters every year now! my own town has been grappling with unprecedented flooding. imagine a gun fondling homeowner whose house was flooded, who didn’t have flood insurance.
the only thing he has left to his name is a truck full of guns, and climate change has an all-too fragile human face. target-shaped, one might say.
these sellout politicians need to start running this fucking math or start running for their lives.
Bébé Mélange, it would be a real change of the “outraged, impoverished, disaster-stricken gun-nuts” went after the people that were ACTUALLY at fault for causing their problems.
But we know that there’s an entire RWNJ industry in directing outrage in other directions. And they’ve mostly been successful!
Just look at how the MAGAts don’t spare a thought for the GOP CEOs that sent their jobs overseas. Or the GOP finance-bros that crashed the markets in 2008, while laying off workers and robbing pensions in their buyout schemes. Or the Qanon nutz who ignored GOP Epstein & friends.
Maybe that part of the nation will wake up to how they’ve been lied to, over and over, and the result will be mountains of dead GOPers. But I doubt it. More likely they’ll go after the trans kids with pink hair.
@9,10.
Again with the simplistic left-right dichotomy.
Economics, authoritarianism, cultural orientation, epistemic style, all orthogonal to that.
A one-dimensional view of politics collapses many axes.
Not helpful for thinking about politics.
Just to really push the point home, don’t get them to do it in person. Get them to do it from a fossil fuel owned private jet. Because have you ever tried to even ACT less than wholly delighted while sipping champagne on a private jet? Impossible. It would really make the hypocritical point all the more jarringly and undeniably obvious.
I disagree with those decisions.
But …
Our major trade partner is doing it’s best to kill our auto industry, production in steel, copper, aluminum and lumber. Along with much else. Even lobster fishermen are suffering. That partner wants to impoverish us enough that we will have to join their violent, god-ridden, gun-ridden, short-lived society. Many of us would rather live on a warmer planet than suffer that fate.
One of my last experiences before leaving Texas was to go to a restaurant where there was a table of insane people who were obviously and heavily armed. No thanks.
And another major trade partner is putting 100% tariffs on important agricultural products.
With the upcoming “renegotiation” of USMCA/NAFTA worse is expected. Possibly much worse.
This is the partner we have subsided for five decades with cheap oil. And our agricultural problems are a direct result of cooperating with them on other issues.
But the recently completed trans-mountain pipeline not only allows us to sell more oil at world prices, it has raised the prices we get from the south, and is hence making a lot more money than it seems to on the surface. Naturally the industry, the Alberta government, and the Federal government want more of the same. It’s one of our few success stories, economically, in quite a while. It is not clear to me that it can be successfully reproduced, but you can’t blame people for wanting to do so.
So Carney evidently sees hydrocarbons (and minerals) as something with which to prop up the economy, at least until we find other buyers for our aluminum, lumber, canola, and manufactures. But those deals will take years to fully negotiate, and perhaps a decade to have a significant effect. In twenty years our oil may not be wanted, but it is now.
And there’s no political price for this. Those who put climate high on their agendas are divided among various factions. The absurd Green party, the NDP, and a minority of the Liberals. They cannot hold Carney to account.
By analogy, consider that the UK did not have its scheduled elections during WWII, but went back to regular elections after 1945. The real fight here will be to ensure that similar and effective climate measures are brought back when this emergency is over. That won’t be easy.
I am Canadian, and I didn’t know any of this!
And X is full of &^%#!
Good thing I got off that platform the moment Muck bought that thing.
@2 raven
Other than massive geoengineering projects to increase albedo and modulate incoming sunlight, which is what needs to be done in the long-term to keep Earth habitable.
Injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere seems promising. Well, as long as it doesn’t descend back down to the troposphere.
Artificial weathering of mantle rocks to passively absorb CO2, similarly promising. We have enough rock and enough coastline for it to work.
Giant mirrors in space are a long shot, but if we can build those and successfully modulate incoming sunlight, then it doesn’t matter how much carbon dioxide we have down here.
Idiocy writ large.
The rest of that proposed shit is no less stupid.
Your fantasies are indistinguishable from those of the ‘techbros’, mate!
As nom de plume says, the supposedly centre-left Labor government in Australia has been tearing up its environmental credentials, approving all coal and gas projects, limiting environmental regulations in mining and farming, refusing to act on Barrier Reef degradation, and so on. It is still much better than the Coalition, which is actively antagonistic to the very thought of environmental protection as a matter of cultural purity.
Equating ‘liberal’ with ‘left wing’ is … not a thing outside the US. Over where I’m from they tend to vote with the center-left on civil rights issues and with the right on economics.
It’s kind of expected for a former Bank of Canada and Bank of Canada governor. And to be blunt I suspect there’s an element of “Do some stuff that is the opposite of Trudeau.” If Trudeau’s policies had been more right wing perhaps Carney would have been slightly more left wing on certain things. Some of this is deciding to increase defense spending considerably, at the expense of other programs. The money to buy things like up to 12 submarines will cost billions, which has to come someplace. Triump 51st State nonsense has made spending more on the military popular.
That second one should be Bank of England.
Trudeau getting together with Katy Perry explained so much. Carney seems to me similar to Merz in Germany, you’re essentially totally corrupt and beholden to the fossil fuel industry, but somehow retain a shimmer of respectability.
Merz hasn’t had any respectability in at least a decade. Fuck knows why people vote for this slimebag.
@21. timgueguen :c ” Some of this is deciding to increase defense spending considerably, at the expense of other programs. The money to buy things like up to 12 submarines will cost billions, which has to come someplace.”
Wait, what? Don’t tell me Canada also got suckered into something like our Aussie AUKUS 2nd hand, decades away, absurdly costly and will be obsolete as soon as we get them, submarines deal too?
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/10/the-lethal-legacy-of-aukus-nuclear-submarines-will-remain-for-millennia-and-theres-no-plan-to-deal-with-it
@20. macallan : “Equating ‘liberal’ with ‘left wing’ is … not a thing outside the US.”
Here in Oz, the Liberal party is the main reichwing party which driven by Murdoch, billionaire mining company boss and cartoon evil villain made real Gina Rhinehart and its own divisions has become increasingly a far reichwing party. It has (mis~)governed as a Coal- ition (emphasis on the coal part) with the supposedly rural people representing but actually another Big Miners party, the Nationals, for most of this century. Sadly producing the very worst PMs of my lifetime – Abbott the Mad Monk and Scummo – and the worst opposition leader Dutton the Gestapotato and done incalculable damage with its Science Denialism and refusal to act on Climate. Sound familiar?
Better than the US is a very, very low bar that Canada manages to clear.
I don’t think humans will ever voluntarily reduce their impact on the earth on a meaningful level. We are the latest mass extinction event, we are going to run our course until all of the easily accessed resources are depleted and/or we go extinct ourselves.
@17. The Trump Enabling Disingenuous Troll Beholder (TEDTB) once again gives themselves away as a very probable Trumpist. Yeah, ignore the reality and consequences of what’s happening right now with Climate. Ignore the catastrophic destruction, the deaths, the suffering and grief and pain and the permanency of extinction including for coral reef and low lying – and alpine, glacial, cloud forest, etc .. ecosystems especially. Nah, we’ll just rely on untested hypothetical future techno-magic sometime later eventually and she’ll be right eh? Not like geoengineering even IF it works won’t have huge problems and cause massive issues and even IF it works not be massively problematic & screw over literally billions of other humans huh? Pretty hard to believe TEDTB actually supports the Greens and yet is supporter of that fucking bulldust. Not that it wasn’t pretty obvs already with things like ONLY attacking the Democratic party and claiming Biden was mentally worse senility~wise than Trump, ad nauseam..
On Geoengineering, I would recommend reading Clive Hamilton’s ‘Earthmasters: the Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering’ book – read many years ago. As this review on it just found notes :
Source : https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-11-27/review-earthmasters-the-dawn-of-the-age-of-climate-engineering-by-clive-hamilton/
Does Trump enabler, science denier, Putin shill and traitor to Progressives Jill Stein really support geoengineering I wonder? Is that where our Trump enabling troll gets the idea that its a good thing comes from? Doubt it but then she is, well, herself with her counter-productive Trump allied spoiler party. I could look it up I know but honestly fuck it. She and her fake party aren’t worth the time – and definitely NEVER worth voting for.
@29 Stevo
Right, Stevo, you wouldn’t want to burst that bubble you’re in with, y’know, actually doing some research.
Look up the mineral olivine when you get a chance, though. CO2 absorption through artificial weathering is not a pie-in-the-sky solution. We can do it right now.
Olivine is liable to be more interesting than Jill Stein ever will be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine#Weathering
She made her bed with Putin. It’s very well known. The Green party likely has no future but if it wanted one it’d drop her like a millstone. Out where I’m at the Greens are better known for having fake spoiler candidates, funded and put up by Republicans. Less than useless, actively harmful. Outside of ranked-choice voting systems I would never risk voting for one.
You do amuse, beholder. And the irony is strong.
Geoengineering definitionally denotes planet‑scale intervention in Earth’s radiative balance, carbon cycle, or atmospheric chemistry.
Also, regarding looking shit up:
Mg2SiO4 + 2CO2 -> 2MgCO3 + SiO2 — the stoichiometry means 1 mole of forsterite is required to react with 2 moles of carbon dioxide. That’s the most reactive of the silicates in olivine.
There are others (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969716319258)
Global CO₂ emissions: ≈ 60 gigatonnes CO₂ per year.
(https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-review-2025/co2-emissions)
Olivine stoichiometry: about 0.8 tonnes of olivine needed per tonne of CO₂ captured if fully carbonated, up to around 1.6 tonnes depending on chemistry and environment.
(https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.2c00374#:~:text=For%20ultra%2Dacidic%20soil%20pH%20(3.25)%2C%20forsterite%20is,present%20in%20the%20chemical%20formula%20of%20forsterite.)
∴ Required olivine flow: on the order of 40-80 gigatonnes of rock per year.
So that’s got be dug up, ground up finely (surface to volume stuff) and spread out to weather.
(Never mind reverse reactions, eh?(
[for comparison]
1.6 Gt of iron ore shipped in 2024 worldwide:
https://gmk.center/en/infographic/global-iron-ore-exports-reached-1-6-billion-tons-in-2024/
In the movie “Scrooged”, in the scene right after The Ghost of Christmas Present hits Frank Cross with toaster, Frank ends up in a mostly frozen, dripping sewer.
He says, “What is this Trump Tower?”
1988
You pass the fact check, chigau:
It’s actually, ” … where are we, Trump Tower…”
but it’s been a few minutes since I watched it.
[worse still, I can’t even remember whether I watched it!]
@30. The Trump Enabling Bad Faith Troll : I know about olivine – held some in my hands in high school geology class FWIW and the idea of its use in Geoengineering. That’s the methodology and that does not address in the slightest the objections to the whole Geongineering idea noted in my #28 & 29 & John Morales points in his #32-33.
Your avoidance of addressing the points made about you here and refusal to answer questions asked of you yet again is duly noted too.
Since you are a Stein fan you tell us, Is Stein a fan of Geoengioneering?
Whilst at it, tell us all who was the better candidate for the Climate – Kamala Harris or Worse & More Genocide Trump?
Also who was the better candidate for the Environment generally – Kamala Harris or Worse & More Genocide Trump?
Left/right remains very informative. It’s primarily about socio-economic (in)equality. If you want to reduce it, you’re on the left; if you want to maintain or increase it, you’re on the right. The “socio” component is closely related to “cultural orientation”, as that primarily means: do you believe some ethnic/gender-related/sexuality/national/religious groups should be privileged over others? As for epistemic style, the right in general has no qualms about lying, some on the “postmodern” left have been stupid enough to convince themselves there is no objective truth, but these are clearly different “styles”. Authoritarianism is indeed orthogonal to left/right.
beholder@17,
No surprise that you’re as much of an idiot about mitigating climate disruption as about everything else. Artificial weathering could be helpful in principle, but would require such large amounts of energy and land that reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a much more promising approach. None of the other approaches you mention deal with rising carbon dioxide levels (other than w.r.t secondary positive feedback effects), and
just demonstrates the extent of your invincible ignorance. It’s not that hard to find out that the acidification of the oceans is not much less disastrous than rising temperatures, and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere also disrupt ecological systems and food supplies by favouring some plants over others, and the balance of nutrients in crops. Oh, and sulphur dioxide is going to descend to the troposphere, and cause acid rain, although this is probably less of a problem than other likely effects such as disrupting rainfall patterns, including the monsoon rains that feed billions of people – but hey, they’re not Americans or Europeans after all.
One has to ask – are you actually a shill for fossil fuel interests? That would explain your enthusiastic support for actions that helped Trump’s return to power.
Yep, that’s a good excuse for doing fuck-all about it.
Yep, that’s a good excuse for doing fuck-all about it.
KG@40
Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not a fan of the path we are on, and I am not advocating for inaction.
Although a date hasn’t been set yet, the province of Alberta will be voting in a separation referendum. Alberta’s very MAGA-friendly (to the point of visiting DJT at his home outside of her official duties, and hobnobbing with other “luminaries” such as Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro) premier Danielle Smith has issued numerous demands to PM Carney and threatened to make separatism an official goal of her United Conservative Party if they are not met. This would push it from fringe to mainstream and possibly see a >50% vote to leave Canada.
So, PM Carney unfortunately is compromising to try to keep Canada together. Given Alberta’s oil reserves and the MAGA ties of the current Premier, I would expect an “independent” Alberta to immediately try to join the United States. Does anyone here think Donald J. Trump would say “No” to 170 billion barrels of oil? Me neither.
@ 40 KG @27 prairieslug,
I don’t think that was what was written.
There are a lot of humans on this planet and their common knowledge varies widely by source and circumstance. We choose little bubbles to live in. You’ve just expressed one of your own.
As an example, why are people in the U.S. vaccinating less even when it should be a well known common fact that vaccines keep children from filling our graveyards?
SteveR@25 the Canadian subs will be conventional, not nuclear. The choices have come down to a Norwegian-Germany design, and a South Korean sub. I suspect the South Korean design will win, because it is actually in current production, and Hanwha Ocean has said they will have the first sub ready by 2032 if the Royal Canadian Navy makes its choice in 2026. The Canadian Army is interested in Hyundai Heavy Industry’s K9 self propelled howitzer, which may also influence the submarine contract.
kevindorner @42 the polls I’ve seen indicate that the majority of Albertans currently don’t approve of separation.