Accelerate urgently for the climate

This text is part of the special report The State of Quebec 2023

Despite cries of alarm sounding from all sides, the intensity of the fight against climate change remains insufficient to give us a real chance of reversing the trend. What is blocking?

At the opening of COP27 on November 6, UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a very stern warning to the approximately 100 heads of state and government gathered in Egypt. “It’s either a climate solidarity pact or a collective suicide pact,” he told them.

According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published last February, the average temperature on the planet has already warmed by 1.09 compared to the pre-industrial era. “The objective of keeping global warming below 1.5 seems difficult to achieve without a major boost,” recognizes Léa Ilardo, climate policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation.

States will have to halve their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2050 — as they committed to in 2015 in Paris — to maintain a chance of reaching this target. . However, GHG emissions in the world continue to increase. The consequences of climate change described by the IPCC (multiplication of natural disasters, new diseases, water shortages, food insecurity, etc.) are chilling. However, progressing towards a major reduction in GHG emissions still seems very difficult.

“This crisis shows the great power of oil and gas industry lobbies, which are slowing down the shift to renewable energies,” says Léa Ilardo. We also face a certain institutional inertia. Political decisions are taken slowly and setbacks are always possible. Especially since the often very divergent interests of States complicate the advent of very ambitious international agreements.

End the tyranny of GDP

The fight against climate change would also come up against a vision that is too narrowly economic of the state of health of a country or a population. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, economic, labour, social and environmental leaders from Quebec joined forces in the G15+ collective to work to make our economy and our society more united, more prosperous and greener.

One of their flagship projects consists of determining economic, social and environmental indicators that offer a more accurate portrait of the degree of well-being in Quebec than the gross domestic product (GDP). “The collective approach of this process makes it possible to find interesting indicators, but above all shared by specialists who come from very different backgrounds,” explains Daniel Charron, Vice-President, Social Commitment and Public Affairs at Fondaction.

The collective has so far brought together around fifty societal, environmental and economic indicators for Quebec, Ontario and Canada. It includes data on income, debt, productivity, employment, education, housing, food security, environment, health, etc.

“The exercise revealed blind spots,” says François Delorme, an economist from the University of Sherbrooke who co-piloted the Indicators project. Indeed, 18 indicators remain undocumented at present, that is to say that we do not have sufficiently robust data for them or that this data does not exist. »

This is the case, for example, of indicators on homelessness, the social economy, environmental health and sustainable mobility. It is also an issue with several indicators related to climate change, such as total natural disasters, carbon sequestration capacity and adaptation measures.

As such, the exercise of indicators resembles that which takes place in sustainable finance, where the desire to integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into investment decisions often comes up against the lack reliable or comparable data.

“There is an effort in the world of finance to establish harmonized reference frameworks that make it possible to better take into account the impact of the ESG criteria of companies and financial products in investment decisions, underlines Daniel Charron. The indicators proposed by the G15+ share a similar objective, namely to ensure that public policy decisions are not based solely on economic criteria, such as GDP or job creation. »

Increase the pace

In 2021, Canada emitted 563,538 metric tons of CO2, or 1.5% of global emissions, according to a recent study by the European Commission. This is a 27% increase from 1990, and a slight decrease of 2.5% since 2005. We remain in the top 15 countries in terms of emissions per person.

The Canadian plan aims for a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels and carbon neutrality by 2050. “However, the federal government is sending out contradictory messages,” deplores François Delorme. We raise the emission reduction targets, but we buy a pipeline and give the green light to the Bay du Nord oil project. »

In Quebec, the government wants to reduce its emissions by 37.5% compared to 1990 by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. “The most recent plan for a green economy will only allow us to achieve half of this target, recalls Léa Ilardo. The government must quickly pick up the pace. »

Among the positive points, she underlines the adoption of a law in 2021 which puts an end to the research and production of hydrocarbons in Quebec. However, this did not prevent the LNG Quebec natural gas liquefaction plant project from resurfacing during the election campaign.

For his part, François Delorme displays cautious optimism towards the creation of the Committee on the economy and energy transition, chaired by the Prime Minister, on which we find four ministers and the CEO of Hydro-Québec. “The Quebec government is giving some signs that it will take climate change more seriously in its second term, but we will have to judge the tree by its fruits,” he says.

However, he is concerned about the slowness of the shift made by most governments. “We cannot procrastinate with the climate change crisis; small steps will not be enough, he says. Governments, which are responsible for the common good, must understand this and act accordingly. »

Municipalities at the heart of the fight

This special content was produced by the Special Publications team of the To have to, pertaining to marketing. The drafting of To have to did not take part.

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