The Conservative climate chasm

You’ll often hear that we’re over the hump on climate denial. Beyond the comment sections of the Internet, that’s broadly true for old-school, outright denial that climate change is happening at all. But a more insidious variant has taken root and it explains a good deal of the carbon ruckus in our politics — Conservative voters aren’t convinced humans are causing it.

You’ll recall that surreal moment in 2021 when delegates rejected adding “climate change is real” to the Conservative Party of Canada’s policy book. You might chalk that up to the nature of party conventions — in any party, they attract a disproportionate number of, let’s just say, “enthusiasts.”

But the political divide between Conservatives and other Canadians reaches far beyond the parties’ button-collecting bases. It’s not so much a divide as a chasm.

Around 90 per cent of Canadians who say they intend to vote Liberal or NDP tell pollsters that "climate change is a fact and is mostly caused by human activities," according to a survey by the Angus Reid Institute conducted in March.

By contrast, only one-third of federal Conservative voters accept this foundational climate fact.

And you’ll note the generous space for wiggle room — respondents merely had to acknowledge that climate change is “mostly” caused by nebulous “human activities.” No pointing the finger at fossil fuels, no need to side with the world’s scientists that human causation is “unequivocal,” with effects that are “irreversible for centuries to millennia.”

Conservative voters are a very long way from “unequivocal” — in the same survey, fully half said climate change is “mostly caused by natural changes and cycles.”

The political chasm is even more striking when it comes to climate impacts. Re.Climate just published its annual review of public opinion, What do Canadians really think about climate change? (disclosure: I am one of the authors) and found that “Canadians who voted Conservative in the last federal election express very different beliefs about climate impacts than those who voted for other parties, such as whether wildfires are linked to climate change.”

Only one-quarter of Conservative voters thought last summer’s forest fires were directly linked to climate change.

If you’re managing to hold the position that climate change isn’t driving extreme events or that humans aren’t causing it anyway, it’s not surprising if you don’t support action against carbon pollution.

And that’s exactly where most Conservative voters are at — barely one-third say that “climate change is a crisis and we need to act quickly.”

I suppose there’s some solace in the fact that one-third of self-declared Conservative voters are willing to buck the tide. But the raw numbers lead to a sneaking suspicion that a federal Conservative government would wield its axe well beyond the carbon tax.

“Why try to reduce carbon emissions if carbon emissions aren't a problem?” asked Philippe Fournier (rhetorically) after reviewing the latest polls. “One could re-frame Conservatives' opposition to carbon pricing as not just a cost of living issue, but also as distrust of climate science,” wrote the editor-in-chief of 338Canada. “If you don’t believe global warming is a man-made phenomenon, why even try to curb carbon emissions?”

Pierre Poilievre has been careful to ground his carbon tax attack on issues of affordability and effectiveness, not explicitly against climate action per se. But he’s certainly not trying to lead his base into alignment with the scientific consensus. Poilievre has accused the government of “exploiting” last summer’s forest fires and even heckled Liberal MP Karina Gould in the House of Commons, shouting that the wildfires in Alberta were “started by your government.”

And if Poilievre does ever intend to produce a climate platform without carbon pricing, he’s left himself few options. He could support new low-carbon energy but he’s crapped on most options to cut existing climate pollution: deriding EVs, supporting gas furnaces, conflating federal clean fuel and clean electricity regulations as additional carbon taxes and opposing the proposed cap on pollution from the oil and gas sector.

Instead of an emissions cap, Poilievre promises boom times for the oil and gas sector. “We’re going to clear the way for pipelines,” he promises. “Pipelines south, north, east, west.”

Writing about Poilievre’s attempt to force a “carbon tax election” in March, a group of 28 environment, legal and labour organizations warned, “It is clear to us that the debates and votes … are part of a concerted effort to dismantle more than just carbon pricing: they are part of an ideologically driven effort to limit all climate action.”

That effort has enlisted some notable supporters. While Poilievre positions himself on the side of working-class Canadians against “corporate lobbyists,” the corporates don’t seem to have taken it personally.

You can’t have missed the ads from the Pathways Alliance of oilsands companies claiming to be “on the road to net-zero.” Turns out, that road leads to the same intersection as Poilievre’s south-north-east-west pipelines. This week, DeSmog revealed the alliance’s co-founder, Alex Pourbaix, made a personal donation after the executive chairman of Cenovus attended a private “evening with Pierre Poilievre” fundraiser last year.

He wasn’t alone. Two dozen fossil fuel executives and investors attended that single event, and the donors included the former CEO of Suncor and the outgoing president of Canadian Natural Resources.

Chris Hatch writes Canada's National Observer's celebrated Sunday newsletter, Zero Carbon. Chris is the former executive director of Rainforest Action Network as well as the former executive editor at Canada's National Observer. He is now a columnist at National Observer and writes the acclaimed Sunday newsletter, Zero Carbon.