Is Canada Headed For A Climate Disaster?

Climate change will keep making headlines if the world doesn’t work really hard on solving it. While emissions coming from developing countries like China and India constitute the majority of greenhouse gases emitted today, the burden on solving climate change may actually fall on other countries. In this feature opinion article we will explore how Canada can not only achieve its climate goals, but also help solve climate change in other parts of the world.

Canada’s Climate Change Plan Falls Short

Climate targets

Climate change was a corner issue addressed in the recent 2021 Canadian federal elections. While leaders took the stage to make their plans shine, the government’s work focused only on setting a target and managing court battles regarding putting a cost on Carbon. It seems that this is somehow disconnected from the reality of our world as Canada’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is miniscule, at only 2%. Canada can likely work hard to achieve zero emissions, but even if this happens the climate change problem will not be solved because 98% of the world’s emissions are not emitted inside Canada. Emissions emitted in Canada will be harder to eliminate in comparison to any other places in the world because of Canada’s colder climate, slow public infrastructure project cycle, and simply the high standard of living. To put this into perspective, Canadians emit more than triple the Greenhouse Gases (GHG) compared to the average of the rest of the world. The Canadian…