The Minister of Environment & Climate really gets it: you don’t have to actually reduce carbon emissions, you just have to confidently walk around talking like you want to reduce them. After a report to the UN from McKenna’s own department stating Canada won’t be anywhere close to 2030 targets, she said “We are 100 per cent committed to meeting Canada’s 2030 climate change target, and I’m proud of the progress we’re making.”

She’s a fast learner, jumping right into that approach after just a couple of weeks on the job. Before heading to Paris she said Harper’s target of a 30 per cent reduction to carbon emissions by 2030 was a minimum “floor” (despite being pretty well impossible to meet). Then, in Paris, she said Canada aspired to do even better than the 2ºC reduction targets (which are even less likely we’ll meet than Harper’s emissions targets).

New Brunswick recently announced they were going to re-direct their gasoline and diesel taxes to a climate change fund. McKenna’s response? “Investing in climate action is great — but a carbon price does more than that,” she said in a Facebook page post. “It also changes economic decisions by sending a price signal that wasn’t there before. That price signal makes pollution more expensive and rewards clean innovation.”

New Brunswick has already reduced its carbon emissions by 30 per cent from 2005, but McKenna is not impressed by this province that actually reduces emissions through action. She just wants to be able to say the province has a new carbon price, never mind actual results.

McKenna and the rest of the Trudeau government avoid specifics on what the future would have to look like to meet these targets and, as a result, they conceal how we aren’t going to be anywhere close to meeting them. McKenna and the rest of the Trudeau government avoid specifics on what the future would have to look like to meet these targets and, as a result, they conceal how we aren’t going to be anywhere close to meeting them.

And what about the “price signal” she’s talking about. Let’s take a look at British Columbia. They have a revenue neutral carbon tax: 70 per cent of the revenue goes back to corporations, and the rest to individuals. B.C.’s emissions have essentially been flat since 2010 — so much for the price signal. For McKenna, an ineffective revenue neutral tax is fine, as long as she can call it a “carbon price.”

McKenna probably understands that carbon pricing must be combined with directing revenues towards the shift, making alternatives to fossil fuels more economical. It isn’t sufficient to have a tax just so you can say there is a price signal. If you have a tax without sufficient incentive to change, you’re basically just charging people to pollute and then re-distributing the money. Why is New Brunswick’s approach to directing existing taxes to actual change less valid than B.C.’s approach that results in no change?

Then there was the noise coming from McKenna in Germany about Canada being off coal by 2030. It turns out when McKenna said completely off coal, she meant kind of off coal. Nova Scotia thinks they have a deal with her to keep burning coal past 2030, and Saskatchewan thinks they should too. Her own low-carbon fuel initiative considers whether cement plants should continue to be allowed to burn petroleum coke (essentially coal made from processing bitumen). But hey, she got some great press and photo ops in Bonn.

Then there are McKenna’s ongoing statements that Canada will absolutely hit the Paris carbon reduction targets — when there is virtually no hope of that.

Simple math shows this impossibility, but let’s get more specific on what would have to happen to hit the target. Let’s assume that industries, including the oil and gas industry (responsible for 25 per cent of Canada’s GHG emissions), hold steady at 2015 carbon emissions levels while still growing production; and that agriculture emissions from animals and crops stay the same as 2015 levels. Now let’s say all of Canada’s electricity moves off fossil fuel; gasoline cars and light trucks are no more; and no residential buildings emit greenhouse gases.

If all those things happened we would just hit the 30 per cent reduction from 2005. We’re talking industry not growing emissions past 2015 levels, zero fossil fuels for electricity, all-electric personal transportation systems and all-electric residential heating. No one is talking like that in Canada.

McKenna and the rest of the Trudeau government avoid specifics on what the future would have to look like to meet these targets and, as a result, they conceal how we aren’t going to be anywhere close to meeting them.

To solve a problem you have to admit you have one. We are Canada, we produce fossil fuels, we like to burn them and we want to sell them to others. Turns out, that is incompatible with reducing carbon emissions. Oh well, we’ll just ignore that. Now, where’s the next climate action and/or fossil fuel project photo op?

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