America may no longer be the world’s undisputed superpower, but its elections are still the most important moment on the global democratic calendar. They have the power to shape global outcomes on everything from trade to foreign policy, and that’s especially true when one of the presidential nominees is Donald Trump. But for all the attention rightly being paid to his nakedly fascist impulses and his pledge to deport American citizens, abandon international alliances and embrace 1930s-style protectionism, we risk missing the biggest impact his re-election could have: an irreversible climate catastrophe.
With all due respect to Al Gore, 2024 is the most important climate election in human history. We’re at a crucial tipping point in the fight against climate change, one that will be determined in large part by the outcome of next week’s vote. If the Democrats hold onto the White House, they’ll buy time for renewable energy technologies to continue spreading across the country — and throughout the US economy. If they win the House of Representatives and the Senate, they’ll be able to accelerate that process. But if Donald Trump is returned to power, all of that disappears — and with it, the hope of avoiding the worst-case outcomes outlined in (and targeted by) the Paris Accord.
Trump, after all, has called climate change a “hoax” and “one of the great scams of all time,” and he’s increasingly surrounded by people who feel the same way. Take, for example, Tim Dunn, the Texas pastor and fracking billionaire who is one of Trump’s biggest donors, having funneled $5 million of his company's cash into a Super PAC called “Make America Great Again.” He’s also a director of a non-profit called “The Convention of States” that wants to see the federal government’s powers severely curtailed — largely, it seems, in order to advance the fossil fuel industry’s interests. “Among its priorities is to ‘resist top down planning by our federal government’ when it comes to limiting the fossil fuels at the heart of the climate emergency,” DeSmog’s Geoff Dembicki writes. “It describes global heating as a ‘hoax,’ erroneously stating on its website that ‘the claim that 97% of scientists agree that climate change is man-made is patently false.’”
Project 2025, the detailed blueprint for a second Trump term that Trump has tried to pretend he’s never seen, would also actively interfere with the installation of clean energy technology. That would come at a significant cost to Americans who don’t work in the fossil fuel sector, according to analysis done by Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based NGO.
“The Project 2025 scenario reduces deployment of clean energy technologies and expansion of clean energy industries, significantly reducing job growth,” the analysis found. America’s GDP would also contract by $320 billion per year by 2030 and $150 billion per year in 2050. Oh, and although it goes without saying, greenhouse gas emissions would indeed skyrocket compared to the current trajectory they’re on.
The Harris campaign has been very quiet about its own climate policies and objectives, but it’s a safe bet that it would at least continue with the momentum that Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has created. Harris passed the deciding vote that made it law, after all, and over the ensuing two years its combination of fiscal stimulus and regulatory incentives have helped key parts of the economy start to decarbonize. With another four years, America could become a genuine leader — and manufacturing powerhouse — in the transition to clean energy.
Among the ideas and items being contemplated for a so-called “IRA 2.0” are expanded rebates for heat pumps, a Clean Electricity Performance Program that would reward emission-free power generation and punish higher emitting sources, and perhaps even border carbon adjustments like the ones Europe is slowly implementing on imported goods. And with four more years of a federal government that isn’t actively interfering in the installation of clean energy technology, the spread of wind and solar — including in red states like Florida, Texas, and Georgia — would become irreversible. So too would the economic gains and jobs associated with them.
So why hasn’t the Harris campaign put out a detailed climate plan in this most important of climate elections? Because American voters just don’t care about it right now. That’s understandable on some level, given the worries on the left about Trump’s fascism-curious campaign and the non-stop firehose of misinformation about climate change that’s been coming from the danker corners of the far-right ecosystem. According to Pew data from early September, climate is actually at the bottom of a list of ten key issues for American voters. It’s just fifth among Democrats, with healthcare, the economy, abortion, and Supreme Court appointments all rated as higher priorities.
It’s possible that the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Helene and Milton changed that political calculus for some voters. Then again, given that Republicans — including elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Donald Trump — responded to it by spreading wild conspiracy theories about FEMA diverting disaster relief money to migrants, the government seizing land in North Carolina for future lithium mining and even controlling hurricanes with“weather machines,” maybe that’s hoping for too much.
But make no mistake: in an election filled with high stakes, the highest of all may revolve around the direction of climate policy in the United States. In time, and depending on the outcome, future generations may wonder why it was never talked about that way.
The mainstream media is bending the knee
I’ve never believed that editorial endorsements make much of a difference in election outcomes. The number of people relying on them to inform their voting decision has always been vanishingly small, and that’s especially true as newspapers decline in circulation and influence. They also often lead to bizarre contortions by the editorial boards in question, whether it’s USA Today’s “disendorsement” of Donald Trump in 2016 (they refused to actually endorse Hillary Clinton) or the Globe and Mail’s decision in 2015 to endorse Stephen Harper’s party — but not Stephen Harper.
I’ll say this much, though: contorted endorsements that don’t make a difference are far better than the rank cowardice on display in America right now. At the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and now USA Today and its network of 200 local papers, editorial endorsements in the presidential election are suddenly being mothballed — often against the objections of staff and even editorial board members at these publications. It’s one thing to decide, many months ahead of the election, to do away with the habit. It’s quite another to do it at the last minute.
Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos tried to run damage control on his publication’s decision that’s already seen nearly 10 per cent of its online subscriber base cancel their subscriptions. “Let me give an analogy. Voting machines must meet two requirements. They must count the vote accurately, and people must believe they count the vote accurately. The second requirement is distinct from and just as important as the first. Likewise with newspapers. We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate.”
The logic here is borderline delusional, and the use of voting machines as an analogy is telling. He seems to believe that what the MAGA universe wants is impartial and objective journalism, and that his decision will somehow make his product more appealing to them. That hasn’t worked with voting machines, where all the transparency (and accuracy) in the world hasn’t prevented Trump’s supporters from believing any number of conspiracy theories about them. What they really want is voting machines that count the ballots in ways that elect their preferred candidates.
The same is true when it comes to journalism. They don’t want objectivity or impartiality but the opposite: information that favours and flatters their worldview. Their real beef isn’t with the existence of editorial endorsements, much as they might protest otherwise. It’s the Post’s willingness (for now, anyway) to report facts that are inconvenient to them. It’s the most basic element of journalism — speaking truth to power — that most threatens and offends them.
That’s why they attack the media, why they gaslight and threaten it, and why they’ll continue to do both even in the absence of editorial endorsements. They’re not actually interested in fairness or balance but rather creating a moral equivalency between (and confusion around) facts and fiction. And every time someone like Bezos gives them an inch, they’ll take it and keep pushing for more.
If Trump wins next week, this conversation might just be moot. But if he doesn’t, the rest of us should stop looking to billionaires like Bezos to defend an industry and a culture they clearly don’t understand.
Ontario needs a progressive primary
With Doug Ford’s government getting ready to bribe Ontarians with their own money in the form of $200 rebate cheques, progressives in the province ought to be thinking about how they can fight — and win — the election that’s all but inevitable now.
I have no useful suggestions to offer about strategy or policy, but I do think there’s one idea that’s worth considering for both the Ontario Liberals and NDP: a progressive primary. Doug Ford is this country’s biggest beneficiary of the first-past-the-post system’s inefficiencies, and he looks poised to once again exploit the roughly even split between NDP and Liberal voters in the province on his way to a third consecutive majority.
New Democrats and Liberals won’t like my idea, but here it is all the same: they should agree to stand down in ridings where they finished third in the last election. By my math, that would leave 49 ridings with only a Liberal (and yes, Green) candidate and 34 with only a New Democrat running against Ford’s PCs. Maybe they can negotiate to even those numbers up a little more.
This is essentially what the centre and left-wing parties did in the second round of France’s parliamentary election earlier this year in order to avoid a victory by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. No, Doug Ford’s PCs aren’t nearly as dangerous as Le Pen’s nationalist political movement, but it’s proof that the concept can work.
Yes, I know: it’s not like all NDP votes would magically travel into the Liberal column and vice versa. And yes, parties are loath to run anything less than a full slate of candidates. But by proactively mitigating the effects of a progressive vote split, they can deprive Doug Ford of his biggest asset — and maybe hold his government to a minority this time around.
Or, they can be stubborn and lose the way they lost the last two elections: badly, and due in no small part to a split vote. I know which path I’d choose.
Odds and Ends
There’s a long interview with Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson at the end of this newsletter, and in the spirit of trying to keep it at least somewhat readable I’ll just run through a few items here quickly.
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First, there’s a new poll from the Angus Reid Institute on the Liberal Party of Canada’s ongoing leadership conundrum. It suggests that Liberals are split on the idea of Trudeau stepping down — no surprise there — and that their options for replacing him are few and far between.
But it also shows why former BC Premier Christy Clark’s trial balloon isn’t likely to catch much wind. When her name was presented to both current and potential Liberal supporters it generated the highest negative swing, with 10 per cent more likely to vote Liberal but 19 per cent less likely to do so. As the poll’s analysis says, “Clark is a net negative among all three segments of the Liberal universe – current supporters, ‘definite’ considerers and ‘might’ considerers.”
Mark Carney, on the other hand, generates positive sentiment across the board, adding eight points of support among both those who would “definitely” consider voting Liberal and those who haven’t completely ruled it out yet. Yes, he may well be the second coming of Michael Ignatieff. But as the numbers keep suggesting, he might represent something completely different: hope.
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In a review of the new Volkswagen Golf GTI for an Australian publication, car enthusiast (and electric vehicle crank) Jeremy Clarkson said the quiet part out loud. “For a million obvious reasons, electric cars can be made in China for a lot less than they can in Europe. Now you might say that everyone would far rather have a VW than some battery-powered box from a company called BYD (which stands, revoltingly, for Build Your Dreams). But I wonder about that. Most people in the market for an electric car aren’t really interested in cars in the historical sense. All they want is a low price and a long range. And BYD is offering that.”
He’s so close to getting it. Yes, the gearheads out there might object to the idea of driving a Chinese vehicle, although I’d bet heavily they did the same with models from Japan and Korea a generation ago. But the gearhead population is a tiny, almost insignificant slice of the overall car buyer market. Most of us just want something safe, reliable, and low-emitting — and don’t want to pay $100,000 to get it.
That’s where some of the European and North American automakers have clearly erred. So, it seems, does Clarkson, even if he wants to blame politicians for it. “Honestly, I think VW is screwed and all the traditional western carmakers are too. Ford. General Motors. And while it was sensible for Fiat, Peugeot and Chrysler to band together and concentrate on hybrids rather than pure electric cars, I think this basket of yesteryear brands is screwed as well. A combination of Chinese economic power, here-today-gone-tomorrow politicians and a mad sense that we can all work from home mean that, in 20 years or maybe less, only boutique European carmakers will still be around.”
Maybe. But that’s capitalism, Jeremy. And in the end, the customer is always right.
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Finally, I want to acknowledge the piece that author Chris Turner wrote for the Toronto Star on the misguided notion that more climate alarmism will help the CBC — one that dovetails nicely with the column I wrote a few weeks ago. Turner, who writes about climate change more thoughtfully and realistically than anyone else in this country, doesn’t disappoint in his own take on the subject.
“The threat of climate change is everywhere, slowly deepening at all times. But for most people on most days, it is not an acute threat. The slow-burn horror of the threat has undoubtedly led some of us to dedicate our lives to finding solutions (or, in my case, informing audiences about them). But that slow burn is experienced only occasionally and seemingly at random as an emergency, and it rarely persists — the flood waters recede, the wildfire smoke dissipates. People return to their routines. So the preferred trick of a cli-fi storyteller or alarmed former CBC broadcaster is to shock the audience into action by making climate change seem more immediate and persistent than it actually is. It’s a kind of wish fulfillment, and it has not proven viable in reality.”
Read it here.
Jonathan Wilkinson is trying his best
It’s not easy being Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources right now. Jonathan Wilkinson, the former Environment and Climate Change Minister, has to contend with a provincial government in Alberta that seems determined to resist every federal attempt at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and will stop at nothing to protect its oil and gas industry from any accountability there.
Ironically, he says he’s actually trying to help that province and industry adapt to the onrushing reality of a global energy transition. So far, at least, it feels like those efforts aren’t exactly being welcomed — or reciprocated. But he’s still a regular visitor to places like Calgary, and just days after the Alberta government launched its latest campaign against federal climate policy I sat down with him at the ministers’ regional office to talk about how he sees the lay of the political and policy land right now.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
What did you make of the latest International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook — and what should people here in Calgary be thinking about as a result?
One of the things that should stand out is the comment that under both of the earlier scenarios, the stated pledges, and then the implementation of all of the things that have been announced, you will see oil and gas peak within the next few years, initially oil, but gas not that far behind it. And I think that's an important message, because what that says to us is within five to 10 years we're going to be into a declining market in both of those, and there are lots of obvious reasons for that. And in that context, then we're going to be effectively fighting for market share.
My argument to the sector is part of the basis of competition, yes, will be cost position, but part of it will actually be the carbon intensity of the products that you're selling, and that there will be value attached to the lower carbon intensity products as we move through the transition. And so efforts at decarbonization are actually efforts around economic competitiveness for the sector. That's the message that I have been communicating to the sector for some time.
How do you square that with the performative outrage we saw yesterday with the provincial government here and its new campaign to “scrap the cap”? It feels like they're operating in a completely different universe of facts than the ones that you're operating in and the IEA is operating in.
I think there is an element of performance. As folks are aware, Premier Smith has a leadership review in a fairly short period of time, and I do think that finding ways to have a confrontation with the federal government is about rallying her base. So there's an element of it which is pure performance, which I think is unfortunate, but it is what it is.
I think Premier Smith actually understands the importance of decarbonization. It's why she's actually supported the Pathways Initiative. It's why when she developed her climate plan with Sonia Savage, before the last election, she actually said the 75% methane reduction requirement was a good idea. And so I think, in her heart of hearts, she accepts the need to move to lower carbon intensity fuels. It's just when you have to bite the bullet in terms of saying, this is how you're going to do it, and this is the time frame that you're going to do it in, that she seems to have a bit more difficulty.
But you can't have it both ways. You can't have a policy that's aimed at reducing carbon intensity for the purpose of strengthening the industry in terms of its competitiveness, and yet wave your hands and say you're actually not going to do anything. And that's where she is right now.
Do you think that her approach, or her government's approach, is actually doing damage to the reputation of the sector in international markets outside of Alberta?
I think having the government in Alberta say “you don't really need to do this,” or “you don't really need a time frame within which to do this,” probably doesn't help. And while a lot of folks outside of Canada probably won't notice a provincial premier saying those kinds of things, some do. When I was at the last IEA meeting in Europe, a couple of people asked me about statements that the premier had made. I endeavoured to try to provide some context around all of that, but I do think it risks undermining that, and to be honest, I think it's a real shame.
This is about strengthening competitiveness and it's about looking at opportunities. And there is no province in this country that has benefited more from investments in the energy transition than Alberta. You look at the $12 billion Dow investment in the world's first net-zero petrochemical facility, both Lindy and Air Products building large scale low-carbon hydrogen facilities. The Strathcona announcement that they're going to move ahead with the CCUS project, the Imperial biofuels project….those are all energy transition projects, and Alberta is enormously well situated to build an economy that's going to be even more prosperous than what it has today.
Do you sense any disconnect or distance between the way the province is talking about the federal emissions cap and the way Pathways or industry participants are? Are they as bearish on the idea and on their ability to meet those targets?
To be fair to the industry, they don't like the idea of a cap either. It's not because they don't want to move in that direction. But it's the regulation that makes you stick to timelines, which is a forcing function. And nobody really likes to have a forcing function when they can actually make choices on their own.
I do think that you will continue to hear from the industry that they prefer that there not be an emissions cap. I don't hear the alarmist sort of statements that I heard from the provincial government about how this is a production cap that's going to shrink the size of the industry and all that kind of stuff. When you see the regulations, you will see that that's simply not true and that it is designed to address emissions, not production, and I think the industry understands that better.
Part of the dialogue here is this very unfortunate kind of air war that goes on between Alberta and Canada at times when, often behind closed doors, the working relationship is actually quite good on many issues. I think it's fair to say the industry would prefer no cap. But so the auto industry would prefer not to have a 2035 date for cars. They'd rather sort of see what happens, and then, you know, make it up as it goes along. And if it's 2040 or 2045 they'd be okay with that if they can't actually make the 2035 date.
The problem is climate change isn't going away. It's getting worse. And so if you don't have dates by which you're actually going to make the progress, you're never going to get to where you need to go.
Do you see a disconnect between the strategy the province has around fighting the emissions cap and the way they like to talk about the ethical nature of Alberta's oil and gas industry? It seems to me like this would be a wonderful opportunity to advertise to the world that we are, in fact, the most ethical source of oil and gas in the world, in part because we're the only one with an emissions cap. But the message coming from CAPP (the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) is that we're the only ones who have an emissions cap — and that's a bad thing. It feels to me like industry organizations and the province have this backwards. It could be a selling feature, and they're treating it like it's the opposite.
It absolutely could be a central selling feature. I mean, when we talk about ethical oil, people are talking about how we respect labor standards and environmental standards in terms of how we develop these things. And those are important. Canada can be proud of many of the standards that we have in place that other countries do not. But increasingly, the other element of this is the carbon output, and that is a major environmental issue. If you can actually bring your products to market and say, not only do we respect labor standards and on the ground environmental standards, but we're offering you a product that is very low carbon intensity and fits within the context of the energy transition in the fight against climate change, it's a great selling feature. That's why I say it strengthens the competitiveness of the industry. If you don't do it and you essentially have products that are relatively high carbon products (which right now the oil sands is, even with improvements in emissions intensity that happened a number of years ago), it's a much tougher sell.
The province is saying that the federal government is putting a production cap on oil and gas. Meanwhile, they are literally putting a production cap on renewable energy. Can you square that circle?
It makes no sense. It makes no sense from an economic perspective, and it makes no sense from an environmental perspective. Alberta was the poster child for investment in renewable energy. Everybody wanted to be like Alberta, because all the investment was flowing here. And then there was a political decision that this actually wasn't a good idea.
The chill that has gone through that sector has been a boon for British Columbia, for Quebec, for Ontario and for Nova Scotia, who are very keen to actually have more renewables built into the grid. So I think it's really unfortunate. It's unfortunate for Alberta in terms of greening the grid. It's unfortunate for Alberta in terms of investment in the province. It's unfortunate for many of the rural municipalities that were actually getting a tax base out of many of these projects. It is hard to square but, as I say, the biggest beneficiary is the other provinces who really want it. BC Hydro just finished a call for proposals that was largely wind focused. And you know that money is coming from investments that could have been made in Alberta.
It's just another example to me of this phenomenon where people in Alberta love to tell themselves that the biggest threat to the oil and gas industry is Liberal politicians, when in reality it's actually the Conservative ones. I've tried to make the case that the Liberal government has done more to help the oil and gas industry over the last nine years, often to its political detriment, than any government I can remember in a long time, and you have a provincial Conservative government that is actively harming the oil and gas industry. How do you get people here to understand that?
It's difficult because we don't have a lot of boots on the ground here, right? The Premier's in the media every day, in the same way that Premier Moe is in the media in Saskatchewan every day. I come as often as I can, but I'm here, what, maybe four or five times a year?
I think it's true in every province that people are a little bit more trusting of local voices than they are of a voice coming from Ottawa. But I just keep trying to pound on the same theme, which is that it's about the competitors of the sector. It's about trying to enable Alberta to be successful and to call out when people are saying things that just aren't accurate. I try to be the adult in the room to actually engage people in these conversations in an era of social media. Maybe that's the right strategy. Maybe not. But we just have to keep doing it.
I would agree with you that there are many things that we have done that have been a political pain to us to support the oil and gas sector, including the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and yet the view on the part of the provincial government seems to be that everything is our fault. I actually think, left to their own devices, they are going to walk the economy into some very difficult circumstances. If you look at the successes of the last few years, all of the investments I talked about, they're all underwritten by the federal government — all of them.