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Targets are supposed to allow us to hold the government of the day accountable, but do they? Has there been any real accountability for the three decades we’ve dithered while the world has warmed and communities worldwide have suffered from floods, fires, storms, drought, disease and conflict? Our targets don’t even go far enough. Globally, they amount to more than double the temperature rise scientists consider safe.

At the end of the day, there’s only one target that ultimately matters — zero. Our best scientists tell us we need to eliminate carbon pollution by 2050 in order to stabilize the global climate at safe levels. On a global scale, that means drawing as much or more carbon down from the atmosphere as we put into it.

Our leaders need to detail when and how we will reach this post-carbon economy. Planning to switch from coal power to fracked gas and reduce per-barrel emissions from the tarsands while only expanding fossil fuel exports just isn’t going to cut it.

Here’s the good news — life can get better as we build this new economy. There’s a tremendous amount of work to be done and well-paying hardhat union jobs to do it. We need to retrofit every building in the country, change the way we manage our forests and farms, unleash affordable public transit just about everywhere and build renewable energy from coast-to-coast-to-coast.

Approving one last liquefied natural gas plant or tarsands mine on the false hope that we might squeeze it into our deeply inadequate targets is downright irresponsible. Oil and gas is already Canada’s single most polluting sector and the only one continuing to grow its emissions. New fossil-fuel projects cannot help us get to a post-carbon economy just like light cigarettes don’t help anyone quit smoking.