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While polls suggest human-induced climate change is the top issue or near the top on voters’ minds, the political debate about it in this election is mired in utter nonsense and pie-in-the sky rhetoric.

In the real world, there is nothing Canada can do that will have any significant, practical impact on global industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to man-made climate change.

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We’re too small a player. Our per capita emissions are among the highest in the world, but we’re responsible for just 1.6% of global emissions.

While the United Nations has been calling for drastic global cuts for decades, emissions keep rising — by 2.7% last year and 1.6% in 2017, to a record 31.7 billion tonnes.

Emissions were up in China in 2018 by 4.7%, the United States by 2.5% and India by 6.3%, collectively responsible for almost half of the world’s emissions.

Canada’s emissions are also rising, by eight million tonnes in 2017 (the last year for which Canadian figures are available) to 716 megatonnes, up from 708 in 2016 (one megatonne, or Mt, represents one million tonnes of emissions).