Political headwinds means death to some climate policies. Others may survive.

Much of what’s counted as success in climate policy risks an electoral gutting.

As the Canadian climate movement looks anxiously at the results of the U.S. federal election while awaiting Canada’s federal election, it should consider what policies have the best chance of surviving a blowout at the polls. 

The climate items most likely to withstand attack are in legislation like the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which funneled its investments as a deliberate strategy to make itself stick. Its ambition even benefitted Canada. These items earned unlikely support from Republican officials by building constituencies that benefitted from public investment in green assets.

The Net Zero Industrial Policy Lab notes that more than 70 per cent of the IRA's investment was in Republican districts with lower wages and education levels. These voters, combined with the support of business associations in mining, renewable energy and manufacturing, may create a powerful lobby that could act as a countervailing force against attempts at repeal.

A new Trump administration opposes those investments, but they will have a tougher fight to claw them back, than it will be to withdraw (again) from the Paris Agreement.

Public investment will lock-in the support and ensure climate action survives any future political headwinds. Alliances between labour and climate movements offer our greatest hope for creating that investment.

That’s because climate change can be seen as an existential clash between polluters, green beneficiaries and those most vulnerable to its impacts. “Existential politics is about whose way of life gets to survive,” writes University of Toronto Professor Jessica Green. The soundest political strategy is to grow the ranks of those directly benefitting from climate policy by passing pro-worker climate policies.

An electorally-vulnerable climate policy must recognize it is easier to build political coalitions around concrete, specific projects that provide more jobs, more public goods and a lower cost of living, rather than creating obscure, diffuse benefits. Those directly receiving benefits will fight any effort to put the toothpaste back in the tube when it comes to climate action.

That’s why Canadian carbon pricing remains politically fragile despite substantial rebates. It has struggled to generate the political support that its incremental, long-term implementation demands. Motivated, targetted political support moves voters more than abstract benefits to the mythical taxpayer. If a change in the federal government means the carbon tax is bound for the chopping block, green industrial policy can succeed where it stumbled.

Public investment can also complement improved regulations. Though overshadowed by American politics, Canadians won a hard-fought victory on Nov. 4 with the cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas industry of 35 per cent below 2019 levels. 

It is true that capping emissions expands alternative industries that will help create more green jobs — as many 700,000 more in a net-zero 2050, according to a Clean Energy Canada report. However, near-term political calculations mean climate policy must rally support via public investments to defend these successes. 

The cap on oil and gas emissions has complementary tools to upskill and re-skill workers who may be affected by that transition. However, more is required to create jobs in the near-term and use public investments in clean energy, housing and transit to lower the cost of living and lock in democratic support. The climate and labour movements have made substantial headway outlining this vision for a just transition via the Green Economy Network’s Common Platform.

Without this collaboration, pro-fossil-fuel forces will exploit the affordability crisis by threatening Canadians with a higher cost of living — as the Alberta government does with the “scrap the cap” campaign. It is absurd that oil and gas companies — which the federal government reports have raked in an increase in profits from $6.6 billion in 2019 to $66.6 billion in 2022 — share interests with Canadian workers. One can practically hear the champagne popping in corporate boardrooms when supply shocks like the war in Ukraine raise oil prices. Fossil fuel defenders cannot be allowed to delay climate action by cudgeling the financial vulnerability of Canadians.

Worker-led climate policy refuses to cede affordability to fossil fuel fanatics who will strand assets and workers as soon their projects lose economic viability. Investments in public goods — transit, housing, and energy — head-off that zero-sum game.

Canadians cannot learn everything from the American example. The IRA, for example, was too enamoured by saber-rattling with China to implement its more ambitious vision of a revamped care economy. Its implementation also did not halt a disastrous turn for Canadian-U.S. climate efforts. Even more so, its focus on de-risking private investments meant many projects didn’t register to American voters as government projects tied to the IRA.

But to whatever extent the IRA proves more durable than Canada’s carbon tax, it will be the result of its stronger deployment of the politics of climate change.

The successes of Canadian climate policy, both real and limited, must be steeled to survive the long-haul. To do that, it must be popular — or at least tough to crack. Visible and material public goods do the trick.

Nick Pearce is the National Convenor of the Green Economy Network, a coalition of labour unions and civil society organizations. A former journalist, he holds a Master’s of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto, with a specialization in Environmental Studies.