“We trotted slowly behind a rapidly changing climate. »
This quote from one of the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can be found in the book The State of Quebec 2023highlighting a text written by economists François Delorme and Clarisse Thomas.
It sums up perfectly the general observation that emerges from the twenty short essays grouped together in this book, which comes at the right time, at a time when the priorities of the Legault 2.0 government are being determined.
This observation is that the efforts devoted both to the fight against climate change and to our adaptation to this phenomenon are largely insufficient.
The playwright Annabel Soutar (the gray eminence of Christine Beaulieu for the play I love Hydro) refers to it as “our collective inability to respond adequately to the urgency of climate change”.
The former spokesperson for Québec solidaire Françoise David is more scathing. “The Government of Quebec is not totally absent subscribers. But, next to what should be done, what climate change requires in terms of action and leadership, it is poor and worrying,” she writes.
The problem is that we don’t have the courage of our ambitions.
This is another of the conclusions reached by several of the approximately 60 people (scientists, economists, elected officials, journalists from the To have toetc.) who contributed to this book.
In Quebec, we are betting on a smooth transition, whereas we rather need a real “transformation”, believe François Delorme and Clarisse Thomas. “More incisive and more concrete” solutions.
The professor of physics at the University of Montreal Normand Mousseau is on the same wavelength. He recalls that the Plan for a green economy presented by the CAQ in April 2022 “aims above all to decarbonize sectors through technological change”.
But this approach is sterile. “It is presented as a way to avoid substantially changing the habits of citizens and businesses, while largely preserving the functioning of the current economy. However, the scale of the changes necessary to achieve carbon neutrality is incompatible with this claim that they will only have a minor effect on our way of life,” the expert points out.
So there are a lot of cries and SOS in this book. But there are also, rest assured, many solutions and encouraging signs.
Starting with the fact that there is a clear consensus in Quebec on the issue of climate change. A CROP survey reveals that this is an important issue for nine out of ten Quebecers (89%), who say they hope “to see governments and businesses invest more in it”.
The only discordant note, in 20 years, the percentage of Quebecers who say they are ready to accept “more pollution” in order to preserve jobs has risen from 8% to 31%. A trend that we would do well to examine… and defuse.
Because we will limit the rise in the temperature of the earth to 2 degrees Celsius only at the cost of major efforts.
The verdict is implacable: for great evils, great remedies. This is why the experts who contributed to The state of Quebeclike those of the IPCC, dream of a revolution.
Extract
What we come up against the most is certainly people’s attachment to their usual way of life. On the side of the business community, it’s the same: we do things in the name of a certain economic development that we don’t want to call into question. This is the case, for example, with industrial development. […] In short, everyone is for the protection of the environment, as long as it doesn’t change their own life, their habits or their wallet, and that’s a challenge.
Evelyne Beaudin, Mayor of Sherbrooke
What is the New World Institute?
The state of Quebec, an often very relevant annual work, is “designed” by the Institut du Nouveau Monde. It is a “non-profit and non-partisan organization whose mission is to increase the participation of citizens in democratic life, in particular by contributing to the renewal of ideas and by leading public debates in Quebec” . It was founded in 2004.
The State of Quebec 2023
New World Institute
All in all
224 pages