Canada’s climate debate is becoming a snoozefest

At the end of last year's UN climate summit, we saw a landmark deal to “transition away” from fossil fuels. For those who saw our skies fill with smoke last year, the deal offers a glimmer of hope that we may yet avoid some of the worst impacts of climate change. More importantly, it offers the chance to get down to work on solutions. But in 2024, the question remains whether we will take the transition away from fossil fuels seriously.

We have entered a critical time for the climate, but public debate in Canada on climate policy lacks the depth, engagement and factuality necessary to help form real solutions. It feels like every time I listen to the news I hear commentators stressing the point that Canadians have lost their passion for climate action. Tuning in feels like watching endless reruns of a TV show called “environment versus the economy.”

We are meant to believe the hard economic times we face have turned our desires for climate action to dust because Canadians may not be as likely to want to make personal sacrifices by taking action individually. A point that by omission avoids an honest discussion of real climate solutions that can benefit individual people immediately and the planet for generations to come. It boils all climate action down to issues of individual cost, even when the focus of that action is directed at making a highly profitable industry do its fair share.

The framing of Canadian viewpoints on “individual cost” has also left out the heavy cost of not taking action and Canadians’ calls for corporations and governments to do more. That for every dollar of inflation over the last two years in Canada, 25 cents of that went to oil and gas and mining extraction profits conveniently gets left out of the debate.

It is a somewhat persuasive frame when repeated over and over, but it’s not a new one. It’s a rehashing of the same stale rhetoric fossil fuel advocates have rolled out every time their economic interests are threatened by systemic policy changes that might shift blame from individuals to the industry responsible. It is a framing of the climate dialogue designed to divide, to silence and to convince us all that we are alone in our concerns about the future of our planet.

The foundation of this frame is based on redefining what’s seen as “practical” and making climate action appear impractical by comparison. But like a house built on thawing permafrost, eventually, the foundation crumbles precisely because it underestimates people.

When East Coast LNG was proposed as a solution to Europe’s energy security crisis, it was framed by industry advocates as the practical path to energy security. Of course, even a basic understanding of the projects proposed, which would not have come online for years, would have shown this “solution” to be completely impractical, but that didn’t matter.

It also seemed practical to assume the oil and gas industry with all its money and power would have no problem convincing Canadians that East Coast LNG was the right way forward.

But even with all their might, the oil and gas industry couldn’t convince Canadians to support East Coast LNG. To the contrary, climate remained their leading deciding concern. Flash forward to 2024 and Repsol, the company with the most promising of the proposed projects, has cancelled its East East LNG plans. It turns out the project was neither practical nor even economically viable — at least not without massive sums of taxpayer money.

When Bay du Nord was approved by the Canadian government in April 2022, many assumed the project would move ahead, that it was inevitable from that point on. Once again, time told a different story.

Flash forward to 2023: Bay du Nord has been put on hold for up to three years and people’s desire for alternatives is growing. Hundreds took to the streets in St. John’s for real solutions that move the province beyond oil dependency, breaking the all too easily accepted rule that people in oil- and gas-dependent provinces support oil and gas expansion.

Despite repeated evidence that fossil fuel expansion presents us with no real solutions, the rhetoric of practicality and individual cost is still centre stage in our debates on climate.

The issue of an emissions cap right now is often framed as a debate of Alberta versus the rest of Canada. The voices that feature first in coverage of the emissions cap are those that fit into the assumed narrative that there is a dichotomy between Albertans and everyone else. This despite two polls showing support for the cap in Alberta.

That commentators have fallen for the line Canadians don’t care about climate change, after a summer of community-devastating wildfires many Canadians fear is due to be repeated, says more about their gullibility than that of the Canadian public. The commentator prominency of political strategists and former advisers instead of scientists and people actually impacted by climate change in Canada is, more than anything, disappointing.

It’s also getting pretty boring.

Because there are real dialogues to be had on the substance of climate policies that would get past the veneer of what we assume those policies, and their supporters, to be. Debates between politicians of all stripes and actual climate scientists, like those studying the cost climate impacts are having on Canadians, would offer the public far more value than debates between random columnist A and random columnist B.

News would do well to feature constructive discussions on carbon pricing between people who earn less than the average political strategist or think tank lobbyist. Rather than endless coverage of those who claim to know what the public is thinking, we can build a healthy dialogue on climate policy directly among those who are truly struggling right now — one that is informed by the facts of policies. Real discussions about corporations’ responsibility for pulling their weight on climate change could get to the truth of why Canadians feel the playing field is unfair.

The tough, practical questions are the ones we aren’t asking often enough and not asking them underestimates those watching and leads them to tune out. They’re the questions that require genuine engagement with the general public with solutions, not scandal, in mind.

Those real arguments, discussions and conversations are vital to our climate and the future of every child in Canada. But even if you disagree, you’ve gotta admit, it would make for far better TV.

Conor Curtis, a social and environmental researcher and writer from Corner Brook, N.L., is head of communications at Sierra Club Canada Foundation.