No one understands the power of populism like a progressive populist.

Jerry Brown has been there. As the iconic governor of California — now in his fourth term — Brown understands the vagaries of politics, the volatility of public opinion, and the venality of powerful interests.

He ran (and lost) insurgent campaigns for the presidency, but he has dominated California politics longer than anyone alive. Now, at age 80, he is in the fight of his life — or, as he puts it, what’s left of it.

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Not just his fight, our fight. Not just California’s battle, but Ontario’s war to win or lose.

The governor has harnessed his power as a populist-environmentalist to lead the crusade against global warming — by pushing back against the climate-denier-in-chief in the White House. But he fears Donald Trump’s thinking is contaminating Ontario, just as the poison of carbon infects the province.

“It would be a tragedy if Ontario attempts to go backward,” Brown warns in an interview.

There is an obligation to “reduce carbon poison in the economy of Canada and the economy of the world — we’re all in it together,” he tells me, after inviting me to hop in his car for the ride to the legislature where he will meet Lt.-Gov. Elizabeth Dowdeswell (herself an expert on global warming).

“Time is a-wasting.”

But the environmental times are a-changing in Ontario, and Brown can feel the chill wind blowing north over global warming. He worries that if voters here follow America’s lead by electing an anti-environmental leader, Ontario will change course on climate change — and leave California out in the cold.

Which is why he flew to Toronto this week seeking help for his counterattack against the U.S. president’s policies. Brown came, he saw, but he didn’t quite conquer.

In fact, he barely got an audience. In an unprecedented move, the opposition Progressive Conservatives refused to let Brown address the legislature.

Given that California boasts the world’s sixth largest economy and is a major trading partner at a time of NAFTA upheaval, the snub came as a surprise. Instead of addressing MPPs from all parties, Brown encountered a province poised to vote in a new premier, Doug Ford, who vows to dismantle Ontario’s cap and trade alliance with California and who has suspended his own Progressive Conservative Party’s recent promise of a carbon tax.

Brown, who launched his career by campaigning against corrupt insiders and entrenched elites, is awake to the perils of populism gone awry — there and here. In a public speech after meeting Premier Kathleen Wynne, he warned Ontarians to be wary of America’s experiment with Trump.

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He wants to get the message out that California is leading the charge against Trump, and that Canadians have joined hands with his state in a linked, market-based cap and trade program to lower greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost to the private sector. It was a Republican idea, embraced by his predecessor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the best way to achieve their bipartisan environmental goals.

Until Trump stood in the way. Brown worries that may happen here with the sudden Progressive Conservative promise to axe a carbon tax.

“Is this the party position now?” the governor asks me incredulously. “Well, I mean, they’re following Trump.”

Until recently, Ontario’s four major political parties, like the two major parties in California, shared a non-partisan consensus on fighting climate change through carbon pricing. All that changed when Ford renounced his own party’s election platform, doing everything in his power to do nothing about global warming.

Brown points out that daily changes in the price of gasoline dwarf the cost of cap and trade or a carbon tax — amounting to mere pennies at the pump. But if a populist keeps telling people they’re being ripped off, people will fall for it.

“I think it can be just propaganda. If you say something over and over again, it’s like the Big Lie,” he muses in our interview.

Removing cap and trade is political snake oil because no one will notice any “tax relief” in the future. “Even were they to be successful I don’t think they will see one dollar in their pocket, so it’s kind of a consumer fraud.”

It takes a populist to know a populist. Brown, who has bounced back from political setbacks, believes people will wake up to what he calls an “existential” environmental challenge.

“I would say this: If they think Trump is the saviour … you can go off the cliff, but then the rebound for the opposite will be all the stronger, so I would say it will be a very temporary deviation.”

Brown believes the Trump tide will be turned back, whether or not it seeps across the border to Ontario. But he bats away a question about his environmental legacy, recalling a recurring line in his speeches:

“This isn’t for me,” the aging governor likes to say. “I’m going to be dead. It’s for you.”

Martin Regg Cohn is a columnist based in Toronto covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn is a columnist based in Toronto covering Ontario politics. Follow him on Twitter: @reggcohn

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