Mr. Trudeau’s inspired words abroad often garner eye rolls at home. He promised to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, but his government still spends billions propping up the oil and gas industry. It also allocated 4.5 billion Canadian dollars ($3.41 billion U.S.) to nationalize a beleaguered oil pipeline from the company Kinder Morgan last year, while the country is expected to fall well short of its 2030 climate targets.

That said, these policies look like progress compared to what the gas-pumping Conservatives have planned. Most of their proposals drive Canada ever closer to the worst possible scenario in the climate report.

Mr. Kenney in Alberta has vowed to scrap his province’s version of the carbon tax, and then launch a legal assault to obliterate the landmark federal policy. At the national level, Mr. Scheer has urged voters to “Fill your tank!” via mass text message. He too plans to repeal Canada’s carbon price — it’s the first act he has promised as prime minister should he win in October. He hasn’t offered any replacement strategies for reducing emissions.

All this defiant anti-environmentalism looks more perverse than ever, though it’s nothing new for the conservative movement. If an election is on, expect a Tory to be trashing the proponents of a “job-killing” carbon tax (and then ignoring the earth once in office). By using noxious framing to obscure the carbon price’s value as a tool for reducing emissions, they’ve won multiple big races over the last decade. It was a successful gambit for former Prime Minister Stephen Harper back in 2008, and he expects it to keep working wonders. “Let the other guys do a carbon tax, because we can all win the next federal and provincial elections on that issue alone,” he confidently told supporters just last year.

Another election cycle, and no alternative that’s not awful. The governing Liberals, reeling and weakened by a major corruption scandal, are poorly positioned to stop the Conservatives. Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the federal New Democratic Party, which is now ranking a distant third, has rightly called climate change “the single greatest threat we face.” But even Mr. Singh supports the construction of a $30 billion liquefied natural gas project in northern British Columbia.

The new climate report clearly warns that making certain choices now will propel ever graver consequences.

Extrapolate from the recording-breaking wildfires in Western Canada last year that scorched 3.3 million acres, choking Vancouver with smoke that at times was worse to breathe than the air in Beijing. Those fires consumed more than 10 times greater an area of land than otherwise, suggest researchers, due to 1.9 degrees Celsius (3.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming in that region related to human activity.