New IPCC report | Our Ministers of the Environment have no more excuses

The report could have been called “Instructions to Save the Earth”, all in 3675 well-packed pages.

The brick released Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) outlines scenarios for getting us out of the climate crisis. Sector by sector, with many details.

We can choose to be discouraged by the scope and urgency of the reforms to be deployed. But there is also a great dose of hope in this document. The IPCC tells us that it is still possible to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C. That the technologies to do so exist. And that it is economically viable: the cost of acting is lower than the cost of inaction.

The IPCC goes so far as to show us how to do it. Benoit Charette and Steven Guilbeault, respectively Ministers of the Environment in Quebec City and Ottawa, could each draw lessons from the recent report.

Here they are.

“Yes You Can, Benoit Charette”

To Benoit Charette, the IPCC comes to say a little: “yes, my friend, you can go further”. Quebec has only found half of the reductions needed to meet its 2030 target, a 37.5% reduction from 1990 levels.

The Minister says it is “impossible” to exceed this target. The IPCC report denies this claim of impotence.

Let us be clear: Mr. Charette is right to say that we need a credible plan to achieve our current commitments before improving them. Bowing to pressure from environmental groups and raising our targets without changing our approach would achieve nothing.

But the IPCC comes all the same to highlight how our ambitions are modest and insufficient compared to what science requires. It shows that it is perfectly possible for the planet to halve its emissions by 2030, and that this is necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C.

Quebec is a rich nation, which has technological means and which pollutes much more than the world average. It can and should do more, not less than this overall 50% effort.

The problem is that Quebec still believes it can make the shift to a carbon-free economy without fundamentally changing its ways of doing things, simply by swapping gasoline vehicles for electric vehicles.

However, it is rather by reviewing the development of the territory, by focusing on more efficient buildings, by changing our behavior in transportation, food and consumption that we will achieve this. The details are described on hundreds of pages.

“Refuse Bay du Nord, Mr. Guilbeault”

Federal Minister Steven Guilbeault finds himself in the situation of the undecided who has a little angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, each arguing over his conscience. He must decide within a week if he approves a new oil project in the country: Bay du Nord, in Newfoundland. For him, the message of the IPCC is very clear: this project is incompatible with the objective of limiting global warming.

The report includes long passages on the risks of “lockdown”, that is to say of building new infrastructures which will pollute for decades and undermine our efforts.

One would also have thought that the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, was addressing Steven Guilbeault directly when presenting the document on Monday.

“Climate activists are sometimes portrayed as dangerous radicals, when the real dangerous radicals are the countries that increase fossil fuel production. Investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure is, morally and economically, folly,” he said.

No matter how much Mr. Guilbeault does all the semantic pirouettes he wants, the message is clear and Canadians are not fooled.

By publishing a guide to limiting global warming, the IPCC is sending a strong message to politicians. A message that says: you have no more excuses.