By Ray Rivers
November 24th, 2025
BURLINGTON, ON
Canada used to pride itself on being a leader on the global warming issue. All of that seems to have changed with our new prime minister. Mark Carney had once been appointed as the United Nations Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, so one would have expected he’d be an advocate.
But then his nation has found itself in an economic trade war with it’s largest customer and facing off against an Alberta provincial government determined to destroy the country – unless they could expand and diversify access to other oil markets. Currently Canada’s largest export, western oil, goes to American refineries, and as we know Trump could change that in a pen stroke.
Carney has halved former PM Trudeau’s tree planting promise.
And so it was unsurprising that Canada’s voice was nowhere to be heard at this year’s annual Congress of the Parties (COP 30) to the UN convention on climate change. Among other things, Mr Carney has halved former PM Trudeau’s tree planting promise. And it would be outright hypocrisy for Canada to call for the phase out of fossil fuels when the PM has cast the country as an energy superpower and has cancelled so many climate action programs of his predecessor.
Over 200 Canadian delegates, about half from the non-government sector, showed up at Belém Brazil this month, a city appropriately located at the mouth of the Amazon. But they were apparently pretty much there for the warm weather, food and beverages because Canada was otherwise silent. Belém is not a tourist town and was unprepared to hold fifty or so thousands of delegates, in fact forcing some to have to curl up for the night on cruise ships and even converted shipping containers.
This was the second largest COP, after COP 28 in Dubai, but America decided to stay home. So China assumed global leadership and the Saudis won the day, managing to short circuit a resolution to phase-out fossil fuels which most delegates, including host country Brazil, had hoped for.
America has historically been the largest carbon polluter – though China has surpassed it in recent years. Still, unlike the USA, China is on the right track to getting off carbon. The Chinese produce more renewable energy than any other nation on earth and, in fact, are on track to add more renewable energy to their grid than the rest of the world combined this year. Also, China produced 70% of the world’s electric vehicles last year.
U.S. climate bill’s EV incentives are not the game-changer North American auto industry was hoping for – The Globe and Mail
Mr. Trump’s America First has become contagious in America. Auto maker General Motors, for example, has gone all-in on new gas guzzlers. The company is luring buyers to its new vehicles, which resemble retro 50’s classic cars – each with a petroleum power plant. Trump has cancelled all the incentives to buying an EV and the USEPA has been ordered to kill all greenhouse emissions restrictions for power plants.
Drill Baby Drill is the order of the day in America for Mr.Trump who has called climate change the biggest hoax ever perpetuated. It’s as if Trump, who used to own gambling casinos, is playing Texas Hold-em, or more appropriately Russian roulette with the planet. He’s all in – calling-out climate change as a bluff and upping the ante with his Drill-Baby-Drill.
Background links:
Canada Missing in Action – Trump no Trump – Carney VS the Climate – Saudi Green Plan – Newsom vs GM –
COP Showdown – EPA Emissions –
Discover more from Burlington Gazette - Local News, Politics, Community
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
You are unbelievable, Ray. You should try and keep up with the news. Your comments on the climate conflab in Brazil says more about the unserious nature of the occasion than any anti-climate change writer could ever hope to achieve. You fail to mention Carney’s outstanding performance at the G20 where he urged all the participants to arrive at a common price for carbon, so that they can achieve trading agreements that would exclude the U.S.. I don’t know why you insist on pissing on this guy’s government when he is proving to be the best environmental sensitive leader since Mulroney.
Brief and factual reportage with just enough plain-written critical observation to cut to the political ‘bone’ of the issue. Thanks.
I think also that the industrialized Global North is finding itself in a bind of its own making: it is an addict (to fossil fuels) in denial…while the addiction, like all addictions, slowly kills it. But more: the industrialized North (having produced most of the climate-altering excess atmospheric carbon) is also realizing that it is ‘on the hook’ for hundreds of billions (trillions, the more we wait) in ‘Climate Debt’ owed to the rest of the non (or semi-) industrialized world (generally, the ‘Global South’). How will this debt ever be paid (with so much political and ideological opposition and denial)? The current ‘solution’ seems to be: deny, call it a ‘hoax’, withdraw (‘leaders’ sticking their collective heads in the sand), and ‘business as usual’ (nothing to see here). And, in so doing, we ‘kick the can down the road’ (i.e., leave it to our children and grand children’s future to fix). The sociologists (currently hurting from de-funding of their research) call this ‘inter-generational discounting.’ It seem clear now that the ‘leadership’ we need most must come from the bottom-up, from the people; concerned and informed people must play the ‘long game’: vote responsibly, advocate whenever/wherever possible, and look past this politically poisonous and disastrous era with a clear (and carbon-free) vision of a habitable world for all.