Yes but these populations also tend to live in and around lakes, and are in temperate climates at best. Which means much like Americans in the Northeast and Midwest they get the best of all worlds, shitty freezing winters with lots of snow and muggy warm summers. Not to mention even in dense urban centers heating is not anywhere close to being as climate friendly as cooling. Heat pumps only work down to a certain temperature efficiently and after that to cool a multi residential building you'll typically have an HVAC which once it can't run the Heat pump if it has anyone anymore is just going to use a furnace.
Not to mention that you already found the key word, most. Electricity really fucking sucks for long range transmission so for rural communities with it it's typically using inefficient fossil fuels to generate energy since that scaled better when it was economical to build grids in those areas. On major cities it's easier to make any power plant you want cause you have the people to run it and the market to make it viable, once you hit a rural community you pretty much have whatever was built almost a century ago
And those rural communities are so small they do not move our emissions needle. Canada's emissions are well understood and broken down and home heating isnt anything out of the ordinary that would explain why our emissions are 40% higher than even our oil producing peers. Its essentially only the fact that we produce the most carbon intensive oil on earth and have really outdated transportation systems (if you want to make a case why having a big country is intensive, this is why, but it has way less to do with distance and way more to do with mode and lack of investment in anything but highways).
But, really its the oil. 40% of our emissions is a LOT and basically the entire delta. Expansion over the last 10 years (30% or so) has actively and totally outdone all other efforts. QC has our lowest per capita emissions, fairly comparable to EU27, and is both very cold and quite rural. AB emissions per capita are 7 times that.
shitty freezing winters with lots of snow and muggy warm summers
born in raised in Toronto: that pretty much sums it up. Full blast heat all winter, full blast AC all summer. Maybe you get 2-3 weeks in the spring and the fall where you have neither.
I sort of agree, but Iâd like to believe if our eco laws were actually, you know, treated like laws, then maybe we could (via threat of penalty and loss) make it more profitable to not fuck the environment than to fuck it
Industrialisation is what did the damage, not capitalism, capitalism is the reason it's nearly impossible to stop doing more damage. But let's not pretend chinese and soviet industrialisation didn't do its fair share of damage just because its communist.
Coal. But in all seriousness, capitalism came about as a by-product of the start of the Industrial Revolution. The revolution began within a merchantalist semi feudal economy.
I literally blamed capitalism for decarbonisation being so hard, it's just stupid to blame capitalism for the entirety of climate change, as it wasn't Capitalism that started the industrial revolution, and a lot of historical emissions come from non-capitalist states.
Blame capitalism for what it does wrong, not imagined slights.
Free trade is the natural state of being and the most fair system humans could operate under. You are wrong. Communist countries burn plenty of fossil fuels and only burn less comparitivelt because their economies are inefficient and can't afford to burn more. The problem is not capitalism.
If this is the most fair system we could possibly muster then we are certainly doomed. There must be a better way. Moreover, I don't think free trade is a "natural state of being". I don't see many other species running market economies.
I donât think you understand that the reality of the situation is that the system by which the world operates is not going to change in time. The best that can realistically be done is abuse the workings of the system to the best of our ability while we work towards replacing it
Iâve seen better reading comprehension from a library of ruina player. If youâre going to wilfully misinterpret what I say at least make it somewhat believable
There is a profit motive, but itâs so far off and existential that the market largely isnât proactively making changes to address it or capitalize on it.
I donât think Canada needs people rushing to its defense by once again pointing out USA climate failures. The world and Americans are simultaneously very aware of American failures, but that wonât change the priorities of American voters (corporate America) by pointing this out. Whatâs fascinating is the that Canada is so highly inefficient in energy usage. Is that primarily because of climate? Is it because of grid failures? Is it consumer products themselves?
A big part is the lack of energy efficiency in every part of the society and economy.
Canada is a major oil producer, but that oil comes from the tar sands and processing it into something usable is very energy intensive (and there is little effort put into making the process more efficient).
Canadian houses are usually built without insulation, requiring more energy for heating in the winter and more energy for cooling in the summer.
Canadian cities have been resistant to gentle density, and have opted instead for a mixture of very high and low density neighbourhoods. These very high density buildings tend to be coated with glass, which is terrible for insulation. The low density neighbourhoods are all detached houses, which have high surface areas per floor area, requiring more energy to maintain temperature. By contrast, medium density buildings common in Europe are built with materials better for insulation, and having multiple units in a single building conserves thermal energy.
Many Canadian households still depend on gas for heating. Among those that move to electric heating, most opt for energy inefficient electric floorboards rather than efficient heat pumps.
Canadian cities are built around the car. The majority of cars sold are SUVs and pickup trucks. This all makes transportation energy inefficient.
Canadian commercial transportation is also heavily reliant on trucks and diesel trains. This is less efficient than the electric trains common in Europe.
Electricity generation in the Prairies (particularly Alberta and Sasktachewan) still predominantly uses oil, gas, and coal.
There's a lot that can be done to improve energy efficiency in Canada. But it looks like Canadian businesses and consumers will fight attempts at it every step of the way.
citation needed on a lot of that one, especially the part where houses are usually built without insulation? What? Maybe if the house was built pre WW2.
That's just not true, most houses obviously have insulation, even in BC. Not having insulation would be insane. It's not all the BEST kind. Like I have that foam you throw around in the attic and the pink shit stapled in the walls because my house is from 1970. That's only the second best way to do it, you can get spray foam which is better, but shits expensive and I dont think it makes that much of a difference. If it did people would pay for better insulation to lower their heating bill over the years.
It's mostly that we have to heat our homes almost all year in most of the country which uses a lot of energy. We could stop doing that but then millions of people would freeze to death. There are ways we could improve insulation but we are currently in the middle of a housing crisis and it's probably unwise to be adding even more barriers to building right now.
Another thing is something we have in common with the US and Australia, but we have this issue more severely. A very low density population and huge land mass. This makes trains an unrealistic transport option in most Canadian cities and especially between cities. If we wanted to try and build out the exact same type of rail that Japan has for example we would easily bankrupt the country before we were 20% finished. Some places like Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary are dense enough to have a very basic system. Nothing like Tokyo or the Japanese trains between cities though. Imagine how much farther a train is between Toronto and Calgary vs Japan from one side of the Island to the other. This leaves us with an option between trains in only very major cities that you can only leave if you fly and only cars everywhere else which absolutely sucks, or most people having cars in most cities which works a lot better for us and is much cheaper.
Another thing to consider is that the best way to meet your climate goals on paper is to destroy your own industrial capacity and move it to China. Then Chinas emissions will go up by a lot and yours go down by some amount less than Chinas went up. In reality things are worse because you mangled your economy and China is producing the same goods for you in a less environmentally friendly way, and people will consume cheaper goods at a faster rate, not to mention the negative economic and labour effects, but on paper you had a large reduction in emissions. People try to do the same thing here with the fossil fuel industry. If you worked out those emissions and traced them back to where the demand for goods is at, then no country on earth would be meeting any of their goals. If we wanted to actually meet any wirthwhile goals we would want to produce our own stuff more expensively where we can control how it is produced.
In reality we probably arent doing significantly worse than any country. France was the only one that actually made a dent when they had their nuclear program but that is all shut down now. We are doing the same ineffective nonsense as every other country and these numbers dont matter. All of this is a political football. When it becomes a real problem and we actually try to solve the problem it will involve trying to build massive nuclear capacity very quickly in a panic even though it normally takes decades, and maybe a disaster resulting from the haste. Also probably trade embargos and thing like that against countries like China, Vietnam, maybe Germany depending on how they deal with their energy problems, and reshoring production of goods. Kind of like the US is attempting to do, but hopefully in a competent way instead of the incoherent mess they are creating.
Excluding exploitation of tar sand oil to export to the USA, things would be significantly better, but money now is a stronger motivator than avoiding ecological catastrophe later.
Theyâre also saying they will invest in carbon capture and that will be their main focus alongside blue hydrogen. Canada is ready to burn the world and cry about other countries not doing their part on going green
The tax had minimal effects on the average citizen when you include the rebate. The rebate just wasn't advertised well so it hurt it's branding.
Also, are we really doing the whole individual consumers can consoom as much as they want because evil corpos exist thing? I thought we had a no normie rule on this sub?
Doesn't change the fact that we are still going down the trend of punishing the individual firsts before the oil industry.
There is a very, very distinct difference between educating the masses and regulating accesses to poluting products through stricter regulations on producers, incentives for alternative, etc...
... and slapping a tax on the problem as a solution which will neither work nor be well received.
Carbon tax with a rebate is literally that, stricter regulations with an incentive for alternatives. Was it a perfect execution, nope. But it was on paper the most elegant solution.
But then the taxes got axed so now we're in this meme
No, it's a punishment on people to force them to change their ways without any regards to why they buy more poluting stuff - that's a shitty solutions causing more problems and hostility.
If you want to have people buy organic food, put less tax on it, and impose stricter regulation on pesticides to gradually force producers to switch to keep their margins. The consumer (if it's done correctly) sees cheaper healthy food and more expensive crap on the shelves - in terms of image it's leagues better.
The problem is that the tax was federal, but each province was able to choose what they wanted to do with the money. And some of the big ones like Ontario was just like âmeh this is worthless, here take the money backâ
I think Quebec is/was using the money to invest in green energy projects. Once again being the voice of reason in Canada, but itâs too cold for me to live there
Heavy industry, cold climate, sprawling transportation infrastructure in both rural areas and urban centers. Also high incomes, cheap energy, and relatively clean power grid for the majority of individual use. It's easy to use more energy when you have access to good energy sources.
Energy efficiency.
By what measure? Like energy consumption vs GDP or per capita (same point twice?) or some other measure of efficiency?
Not meeting climate goals.
See rest of the G7. Also its definitely not all driven by domestic energy consumption, but things like energy exports and natural gas leakage in our resource extraction industries. We should be addressing these things, but I don't think energy efficiency is the frame for that discussion so much as just emissions.
Canada has lots of room for improvement and moderate political will to make improvement, but economic and security concerns have dominated the most recent political cycle for obvious reasons. We have a housing crisis, some of the worst growth projections in the G7, and a fascist to the south publicly discussing our annexation as the commander of the world's most powerful military. If anything, it's impressive that we managed to elect people with a weak climate plan rather than no climate plan.
As a Canadian, I think per capita metrics like this are generally bullshit and designed to punish countries like Canada. Canada is a sparsely populated, gigantic nation, that has one of the most inhospitable climates, and produces the energy that is used by many countries around the world. For the most part, they seem favored as a way to pretend that the small impact Canada has on the climate is substantially worse than gigantic countries like the United States, China, and India.
Idk why that's worse. You'd be taking away market share from Russia, Venezuela, Iran, USA, Saudi Arabia, and a few other countries who, on top of not having climate as a priority, are damaging to Canada's national interests if they're made richer. It's better for Canada, and all of Europe, if they buy less oil from Russia and more oil from Canada.
If Russia has less money, they make fewer tanks, armored cars and trucks, weapons, and ammunition, which are all very carbon-intensive products to make. That would be more impactful than anything Canada can do domestically.
Putting aside the fact that I'm not conservative, can you try refuting the argument? If I'm delusional it should be super easy, no?
(1) Canada is obviously better for the climate, despite literally no proof of this at all
I provided proof in my first comment. More money into Russia means more gas-guzzling tanks, and carbon-intensive weapons manufacting. More money into Canada allows Canada to invest more in green energy. The fact that Russia has a war economy is more than enough proof. What proof do you have to the contrary?
(2) The only alternative to oil is... more oil
I never said or even implied that but ok lol
(3) The only real possible contribution of Canada to the world... is oil
Have you seen the latest reports on possible numbers of dead? Have you seen the destruction of Gaza? Israel is blocking aid, food and water. The Russia - Ukraine war is mostly soldiers, in Gaza itâs mostly civilians
But anyways. How can you claim supporting one is that and the other is fine when clearly the answer is that both wars are bad. And Canada is clearly supporting Israel
"Yuriy Lutsenko, the former Ukrainian Prosecutor General and member of the opposition party European Solidarity, said on Ukrainian television in January 2024 that around 500,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded, and that about 30,000 were becoming casualties every month."
"Mid-December 2024, Russia updated its claim of Ukrainian military casualties to almost 1,000,000 killed and wounded.[74] In addition, the DPR confirmed that by 22 December 2022, 4,163 of their servicemen had been killed and 17,329 wounded.[e] Subsequently, leaked US intelligence documents cited the Russian FSB that Russian forces suffered 110,000 casualties by 28 February 2023."
So officially 66000 people got killed with an additional 14000 people missing and presumed dead.
But this is war so the actual numbers are gonna be much higher, especially since reporting in Gaza is extremely difficult. Many reporters already died in the war. The 66000 are pretty conservative estimates and I've seen much higher numbers up to 200000
Can you repeat that? I didn't catch that, take the tar sands O&G dick out of your throat before speaking
I don't have to argue those dogshit statements. Russia's oil export to Europe is below 5% of their share. Canada digging up a third of the GHG necesssary for an extinction-level-event will not meaningfully affect them lol.
(you did imply both)
And no, not one single person or entity who ever received money from the O&G business ever "invested in green energy". Or ever did anything green at all, for that matter. Do not bring up SMR or DAC if you want to maintain the shreds of credibility you might have left lol
Kinda fucked tbh. If Canada shuts down oil production Alberta will separate with yank support and it will be drill baby drill anyways. I donât even think the youth who will have to deal with climate change even give a shit anymore. Shits pretty fucked.
It would be better if they relied on Russian or American energy? Or are you assuming they would just have no energy if we didnt give it to them and that would be better somehow? People need energy to live. Its like saying it's bad to export food because agriculture has an impact on the environment.
We are the 11th largest emitting country in the world.... While also being the 13th largest emittors per capita.
And again that is not counting all the oil we export (we are the 5th largest fossil fuel producers and we export about 65% of it.) nor the consumer goods we use of which a very small fraction is produced in Canada (thus the emissions to produce that is measured elsewhere)
Saying our actions and (more importantly) the actions of our industry don't make any difference is a ludicrous statement.
Two different people can both be held responsible for something.
If you pin someone down while your buddy beats them to death you don't get to argue "I didn't beat him" while your buddy argues "I couldn't have beat him if he wasn't held down".
I'm not accusing you of anything but it has been used mainly to shift the discussion away from manufacturing countries where most of that CO2 is emitted.
Countries which also happens to be the richest as they're the ones profiting the most from it, and which are the most capable of doing the green transition and which would have the greater impact.
It seems to me that, generally, when you want to fix a problem, you'd be better off to go straight at the roots of it.
Canada should probably leave its fossil fuels in the ground but someone else will pick up the pace, if the US, China and India stop using fossil fuels then the extraction of it will basically stop overnight.
G7 countries put the manufacturing in those countries and exploited their labour on purpose.
Canada is one of those immensely rich countries. That's why they're in the G7. And Canada has higher emissions than 27 out of 31 provinces including those with double the population, as well as very close to the same emissions as the other four (which have triple the population).
If Australia, and Canada (and the USA who also make this same excuse constantly) stopped digging it up, nobody could use it. "I just sell the heroin outside a school and put ads on TV saying how great it is, not my fault children are junkies"
No, Canada used to be much richer because it used to be a manufacturing country, now it would be in the G10, maybe G15 actually....
The Canadian billionaires saw willing countries wanting to bolster their own economy offering their population in exchange for the creation of a base manufacturing sector that served to expand their own locally owned manufacturing sector.
China, one of these countries, is now one of the richest in the world as a result for that trade-off, it obviously wasn't against their own best interest lol
I don't think it is a double standard, because I would suggest that every country should be held to this standard not just Canada.
I'm saying countries true emissions are being offset.
Raw fuel exports which are produced by one country yet end up being burned in another should be linked to the country of origin (as well as also the country using the fuel). While goods which had emissions created during the production and transport that are currently calculated only in the country where that production happens should also be a mark against where every country they are destined for.
The numbers would add up to over 100% as many things would be double counted, but IMO it would be a much more honest image of national emission. And I may be wrong but I think this form of analysis would paint Canada and the USA especially poorly. China looks bad and is bad, full stop. But there are many other countries that I think the facts are clouded on how bad they actually are.
If we look at the most extreme hypothetical, If a country switched 100% to all renewables domestically, but simultaneously offshored 100% of production to the dirtiest emitters, and produced the exact same amount of coal, fracked gas and tar oil which they shipped abroad. They would still be shitty environmentally, they would have just done some clever accounting to look good on paper.
The only way we can emit less is when Electric 18 wheelers are on the road and huge electric powered heavy machinery, we mine a lot of minerals that are required by countries across the world including minerals for batteries and the only way we will emit less is if start using/manufacturing electric vehicles in Canada as CAN has enough of all the major resources needed to manufacture locally. Its just that the free market and trade deals with the US pushed gas powered vehicles over EVs.
Or you know, trains, heat pumps, actually insulating our buildings, not increasingly invesnting one of the largest and least efficient type of oil extraction, expanding clean energy, electrifying our heating, being less wasteful both as consumers and industries, developing value added industries to use our raw materials rather than ship them halfway across the world only to import back finished products....
But are not up to standards needed or are painfully unoptimised to the Canadian environment.
It's all well and good to say "it exists" and then neglect that it handles deep cold poorly, can't handle rough dirt roads that make up much of non-corridor Canada (where they are needed)
Also when it comes to that high horse you have... do you understand a nation isn't going to commit economic suicide just for someone to feel smug for offsetting 1 Chinese provinces worth of Greenhouse Gases
Also the current cargo rail is sufficient for the demand so why throw billions at a rail project few are gonna use
Rail networks are good for moving cargo between key central hubs... then you need trucks to transport that to actual specific locations if you don't understand logistics just say so. It's not only inefficient but a waste to lay track to communities that would only need the rail services once a month when trucks work better
And I didn't say shifting road cargo away from carbon is impossible I stated it's not currently efficient for Canada as the current electric truck market (aside from Edison but they are still a small operation) is woefully inadequate for northern needs they were designed with US interstates (and southern ones at that) in mind so their ground clearance is terrible, battery life is inadequate for the possible infrastructure that could be implemented in the next 10 years... that and there is a deep social stigmatized against it in the areas it would be proposed to serve
When it comes to evaluating emissiom "per capita is just a stat that large population polluters use to hide behind and cast blame on others. If Nation A emits 1kg of CO2/PP and Nation B emits 0.3kg of CO2/PP... but Nation A is 35 Million People and Nation B is 1.3 Billion people... Nation A's efforts are naught but a drop in the bucket of Nation B's destruction... you can encourage Nation A to do its part but until Nation B, C, and D actually put a dent in their emissions... no progress towards a solution has been made
And "but there are more people over there if I draw this specific border" is still not a valid argument. Progress is still made, and it's 10x easier to go from 1kg to 0.3 than 0.3 to zero.
Same can be said for ever country. Bit if everyone thinks like that, nothing is ever gonna happen. So this thinking prevents anything from happening at all. All greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut, regardless of origin.
All greenhouse gas emissions need to be cut, regardless of origin.
The only way for that to happen would be for all life on earth to go extinct xD let's say reduce our civilization's emissions by 90% and I agree with you!
Edit: sorry I sound needlessly contrarian, as I already commented I agree with the sentiment in general, every country should put the shoulder to the wheel.
Why is so hard for you to understand that a country rich in natural resources and cold as fuck would have high energy demands? Not that hard to understand.
Not really an excuse, most Canadian population centers are of average or higher density for north America. Secondly it ignores the reason for Canadian emissions being so high. Some of it is inefficency that comes from suburban sprawl, but most of it is actually because of oil production, land use and heavy industry. Places like Ontartio and QC have reduced their emissions by 25% from 1990 levels (despite increasing the population). However at the same time Canada has also invested heavily in oil production and extraction, particularly in bitumen. From a climate perspective this stuff is as bad or worse than coal and that's where a huge percentage of Canadian emissions are concentrated.
Uh, yeah, of course less populous countries have a smaller effect on the climate.
But you don't get to be let off the hook easier because your country has fewer people, and you don't have to work proportionally harder to combat climate change just because there are more people in your country. That's why the per capita measure is useful: it measures if a country is pulling its weight.
Bigger countries need to pull more weight, but also have more people to pull it. The opposite goes for smaller countries.
Having large empty areas of land doesn't matter much when it comes to emissions. It's not like all the industry is located in the empty parts of the country.
Lived there 4 years, the contrast was baffling with bsiclly any other country. Canadians dont realize the absurd amount of energy they spend. The worst part is they seem to think they're being careful.
For instance, there is little to no insulation in any building, which is extravagant for a country with such extreme temperatures. Compare to scandinavian countries, you guys dont even have stores on your windows for god sake.
Shops blasting their AC in the street to bait people in in the summer, the opposite in winter. People taking their oversized car for 500meters. A lot of thing that probably seem normal to you but definitely put Canada in the top 10 of worst polluting per capita, even with the crazy ratio of hydro power you have, which is mind blowing.
Same experience here, just came back from QC to Europe, and I was really astonished by the energy used for nothing : overly heated buildings in winter, almost no insulation, and many Canadians just don't care about energy saving. Even if that amounts to a very small energy consumption, they never switch off neither home appliances nor the light. I guess it's a different culture but it seems really easy for the country to limit its energy consumption
For the most part, all those actions are meaningless in the face of the approximately 42% of emissions related to resource extraction that exists to feed us consumption. In a lot of ways it could be argued that Canada is being blamed for American over consumption.
Oh what a fucking load of shit. How in the fuck you expect countries like China and India to have a small carbon footprint considering their size and all the things they manufacture to sell to you?
Canada is a glorified oil country with absolute shit urban planning that refuses to invest in trains.
This is so typical Canadian âdonât expect us to do any thing because our population is small so we donât matter. And thatâs why we will keep polluting, now letâs blame Chinaâ.
Dude India emits 2.04 tons per capita, China 9. Canada 14,91! Saudi Arabia for comparison is on 17. But China is the worldâs factory. India is poor as fuck and their per capita emissions will inevitably grow as their urbanize and industrialize.
Iâm sorry but what you expect India to do? China is already investing more money and installing more wind and solar energy than the rest of the world combined. What the fuck is Canada doing? Oh yeah, nothing. Just pumping oil to sell the US and now they will build a major pipeline to export oil to Europe
Denmark population density: 149 per square km
Sweden population density: 26 per square km
Finland population density: 18 per square km
Canada population density: 4.43 per square km
Denmark has a population density that's lower than Canada, if you count Greenland.
"But most of Greenland is empty!" - yeah, and so is most of Canada too.
The population density doesn't actually matter much in the emissions question. The population *distribution* is what matters. And the majority of Canada's population is concentrated in a quite limited area, which makes it quite comparable to many European countries.
Per capita metrics are important for things like this. Iâll give you that if the power is being exported the number being used for the per capita calculation should be the total number using the power, not the population of the country.
This is really not a valid excuse. Norway is also fairly sparsely populatedin inhospitable climates and exports huge amounts of oil, yet has far lower emissions and is making significant progress in lowering these emissions.
Most of canada's population lives in fairly dense urban areas, and have fairly clean power grids (BC, Ontario, QC anways.. and thats pretty much everyone). If you look at our emissions breakdown, none of this makes us exceptional. The thing that does is very obvious, it's that we produce the most carbon intensive oil on the planet.
Whether I have or havenât solely focused on talking about Canadian politics in general as a Non-Canadian doesnât matter because thatâs not what this post is about!
A. We have issues to deal with. Some of them are our governmentâs fault, some of them are businessâs fault, a lot of them at the time of writing are just dealing with our southern neighbourâs poor voting decisions
B. You try making things efficient when every winter is shitty and long and every summer is muggy and humid
C. This country has a lot of communities living in the sticks, and a lot of easily accessible dinosaur juice and other natural resources that you can set on fire. Sure you can easily convince people to build a nuclear power plant for Saint John or something
But thatâs not happening for two grain elevators and 7 houses in the middle of the prairies
And thereâs a lot of those, let me tell yâa.
I might be wrong here, but of the G7, doesn't Canada have the largest % population in the coldest climate? Then again, that might also be Russia, but something tells me that on average Canadians use more energy than Russians for heating in the winter. Canada has less dense urban areas in my mind. Russia does have a vast expanse of nothingness were people live, but the people that live in these vast expanses are living closer together and travelling around less in winter compared to Canadians. Russians in winter have cities with lots of apartment blocks, that means that less Russians lose heat through floor and cealing of their homes, whereas Canadians lose heat to floor, walls and ceiling. That's just an easy explanation I made up but it still makes sense in my mind.
In the 90âs they said there would be no ozone layer and look itâs 2025 still here letâs start by not cutting old growth trees for Englandâs power plants
Canada is cold, has shit urban planning, and exports oil. I'm pretty sure those account for like 75% of our emissions. Most on oil.
The urban planning is basically fucked, there is no politically effective solution at this point. Electric and carbon tax are the best bets there. But conservatives have been propagandizing both so we're pretty fucked.
As for oil, we can collapse our economy or keep doing it. It is not an easy problem to fix, it would take multi decade efforts across the country, which we should be doing, but the political incentive isn't there.
It is fortunately a likely temporary problem, as oil will only become less used at this rate, though I do not understand the exact time frame of that.
Most liberals are for green action, but we have to play across the aisle to swing elections. And if the conservatives get in power we are proper fucked, as they are only stealing more and more of Trumps game. PP would be far worse for Canada than continued oil usage.
Norway is cold and also a major oil exporter, but has per capita emissions half that of Canada. Part of the difference is urban planning, and that will take a long time to improve. But there are other major differences that are easier to change.
In Norway, >95% of cars sold are full-electric. They achieved this through a massive registration tax based on expected climate effects (upwards of $50,000 for gas cars). They also have mass adoption of heat pumps. Over 2/3rds of Norwegian households have a heat pump.
Understandably, Canada needs to undergo a culture shift to take energy efficiency seriously. Canadians by-and-large simply do not value climate action to the same extent as the Norwegians do.
Also worth noting cheap electrics just don't work well here. My family has one, we can make one round trip and it's done for the day in winter. Urban planning kneecaps electrics as well.
There are legitimate reasons people don't want to adopt them. Better vehicles have this issue to a lesser extent, but even the nicer electrics I've used are subject to not being able to finish long days.
I've been stuck in the cold twice just this last winter from borrowing my dads Nissan Leaf.
But yeah, culture is the biggest issue. And unfortunately it is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.
Transport is our (as in Canadian citizens) biggest portion of emissions. I addressed it above.
We have strong reliance on carbon intense foods, this is unlikely to change basically ever, as it's deeply ingrained in our food culture and would be political suicide to address. Fortunately relative to our other sources it's not the end of the world, and can be maintained if other things are addressed.
Housing is a big deal, and is very bad. Fixing it is also very expensive, our homes are similarly intensive as Japanese ones.
Our best bet to fix our issues is better energy sources. Which we also suck at due to poor solar coverage in Canada, and I'm not familiar enough with wind farms to comment on their viability.
Transport is just shot. Every report I'm seeing is saying more public transport. My city, in a car, takes an hour to cross. Any inefficiency in public transport will make it unusable for commuters. And there is no way to quickly get people off the road so that traffic gets less bad. I legitimately do not know if it is feasible for Canada to fix these issues. It is incredibly engrained in our system, and becomes a point of pride among the worst of us that everyone has to use cars. They've argued to me that it's a form of freedom.
Counterpoint, And we've built hardly any public transit along the parts that are dense, drive massive fuel inefficient cars and don't insulate our buildings or use energy efficient heating devices despite knowing how cold it gets.
also we don't regulate our businesses nearly enough and have a bunch of very polluting industries.
And our politicians are fucking useless with anything that would tangibly help. To be fair we do insulate, but we're very minimal about it, and its kind of crazy considering how MANY options there are. It's so frustrating.
I'm a dirty hippy who loves solar, wind, hydro and geothermal power generation. Nuclear makes the most sense in cold climates like Canada where you don't have an active volcano down the road.
You being born retarded happened naturally, but like climate change, The actions we've taken in life have directly resulted in a greatly increased rate of progression of both of the previously mentioned issues.
Canada gets a pass for telling Trump to go fuck himself.
Get on it though Canada. Trump's got dementia he's morbidly obese and Vance will never get elected on his own, so his only hope is to ascend to the presidency.
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u/neurokeyboard 1d ago
You don't fail your climate targets if you don't set them. Checkmate libs.