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General · 1st June 2020
Barry Saxifrage
(Note: full article attached at the bottom as PDF.)

It's that time of year again when countries release their updated climate pollution inventories. This is when aspirational climate promises get measured against real world pollution levels.

And for Canada, the latest results are terrible. The new data shows that in 2018, our annual emissions rose yet again. This time by a depressingly large 15 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2).

As my chart above shows, we are now emitting 729 MtCO2 per year - our highest level in more than a decade.

Worse still, we've now erased all the progress we've made towards our international climate targets. We are now emitting the same amount of climate pollution as we did back in our 2005 baseline year. Thirteen years - zero progress towards our targets.

We don't have to keep failing. Climate failure is a choice. We could choose climate success instead. For example, we could adopt the climate toolkit used successfully by our Commonwealth peer, the United Kingdom.

The U.K. emissions are shown as the blue line on the chart. The U.K. has a much larger population and much larger economy than we do. So, it's not surprising that back in 1990 they also emitted far more climate pollution than we did. Now, as the chart makes clear, they emit far, far, less than we do.

While we've been busy increasing emissions by 125 MtCO2 per year, the U.K. has been cutting theirs by 330 MtCO2. The resulting climate action gap between our two major economies is rapidly approaching half a billion tonnes per year.

(To continue reading see the full article attached below as a PDF...or read online at the National Observer)
Canada and UK Climate Promises vs Actions
Canada and UK Climate Promises vs Actions
Canada and UK per capita emissions with changes since 1990
Canada and UK per capita emissions with changes since 1990
List of Canada's nine climate targets set so far. No plans created to meet any of these...
List of Canada's nine climate targets set so far. No plans created to meet any of these...