OTTAWA — None of the major federal parties has a plan to ensure Canada pulls its weight in the global fight to avoid catastrophic climate change, a sobering new analysis concludes.

Published Tuesday in Policy Options magazine, the analysis by University of British Columbia climate scientist Simon Donner looks at reductions in greenhouse gas emissions each major party has promised during the current federal election campaign. He compares them with a projection for how steeply Canada needs to slash emissions to do its fair share in keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century — the best-case goal of the international Paris Agreement.

The conclusion: none of the parties has promised to go far enough.

“These results paint a stark picture. Despite lofty claims and aspirational goals, there is no Canadian plan consistent with avoiding 1.5 degrees C or 2 degrees C warming,” Donner writes.

“Wherever you are on the political spectrum, the rhetoric of your party on climate change does not match the numbers.”

The 1.5-degree threshold has been held aloft by activists and scientists as the upper limit of acceptable global warming, especially since a bombshell report in October 2018 from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. That report offered a stark and urgent call to action, describing the “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society” that are needed to slash global greenhouse gas emissions.

The world has until 2030 to drop emissions by 45 per cent, the IPCC concluded, and must find a way to effectively eliminate them by the middle of this century. Failure to do so could bring about the calamitous consequences of runaway climate change, the report says, including widespread extinctions, an Arctic without sea ice, the disappearance of coral reefs, rising sea levels and more frequent and extreme weather.

With that in mind, Donner calculated Canada’s remaining “budget” for future emissions based on its approximate share of the global population (0.5 per cent). Then he calculated the depth of emissions reductions over the coming decades that would align with giving the world 2-to-1 odds of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees.

Canada’s current emissions target, set under former Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and maintained by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, is 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. Donner’s model shows Canada would need a sharp drop of emissions to almost net zero — 96 to 99 per cent below current levels — by 2030, a prescription that goes well beyond anything the major parties have committed to.

In an interview, Donner told the Star his goal is not to discourage the public with the seeming impossibility of these reductions. He said the bottom line is that the more reductions Canada can achieve, the better — even if the country can’t handle its fair share of cuts in the global fight.

“Let’s just be honest that this is almost impossible to do, so let’s just focus on doing as much as we can,” he said.

Donner pointed to the huge disparity in climate action that parties have promised on the campaign trail. The Greens pledge to double Canada’s current target to 60 per cent below 2005 levels — a target party leader Elizabeth May defended to the Star Tuesday as “very ambitious” and “not in any way a compromise” on what the IPCC is calling for.

The Conservatives stand at the other end of the commitment spectrum, having promised only to give Canada its “best chance” of achieving the existing 2030 target even as experts cast doubt on that assertion. Donner’s analysis, for instance, uses a model produced by Simon Fraser University’s Mark Jaccard to conclude the Conservative climate plan — which would scrap the national carbon price-and-rebate system and incoming clean fuel standards — would actually increase emissions between now and 2030.

In an interview, the Green leader said her party is the only one that is pledging emissions reductions in line with what the IPCC has called for. But she said that Donner is right to underscore the difficult task at hand, and how Canada needs to do more in the global push to reduce emissions.

“He’s right that we have to do far more on the basis of equity, and the way we see it as Greens is: we’re doing the maximum amount domestically,” May said.

In an email, NDP spokesperson Mélanie Richer said measures in their platform will set Canada on track to 38 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 — which the party says amounts to three-quarters of the way to what the IPCC has called for.

“We know we have to do more, and we’ll close that gap by working with Canadians, industry, labour and the provinces — and by using new technologies as they emerge,” Richer said, adding that the party will enshrine targets in law and create a new accountability office to review progress.

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In an emailed statement, Liberal campaign spokesperson Joe Pickerill did not address Donner’s analysis, but defended the party’s pledges to hit net zero emissions by 2050 through five-year reduction plans set in legislation.

The Conservatives did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

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