We’re prepared to lead global climate action. For our economy, for our children, for our planet.
The climate crisis is here. According to the 2018 report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we must reduce global CO2 emissions by at least 45 per cent by 2030. Some say that means we have less than 11 years to hold the global temperature increase to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. But we do not have 11 years. Decisive action must be taken in the next two or three years to allow the transformative changes that are required, to work together and reduce our carbon emissions.
The climate emergency is the single most dangerous health and security threat Canadians will ever face. We can hear it in the growing alarms from leading climate scientists; we can see it in Canada’s increasingly severe natural disasters – in storm surges on our coasts, in our melting Arctic ice-caps, in the wildfires that consume our forests.
The other parties – and the corporate interests that influence them – would have Canadians believe that our domestic economy can’t shoulder ambitious climate action. Greens know this narrative is tired and wrong. The world’s top economists and scientists have proved that the Green economy is nimble, competitive and rapidly growing.
Ambitious climate action is the only way forward. Greens aren’t willing to risk our survival for the profits of the obsolete fossil fuel economy. As Canada’s only political party committed to bold, transformational climate action, we know we need to encourage Green innovation and move our energy sector to renewable sources by 2030.
Our only possible future is low-carbon. Greens have launched “Mission: Possible - The Green Climate Action Plan” to map a course to a post-carbon, prosperous and safe world. Here’s how we plan to take action:
- Slash greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent by 2030 and to zero by 2050
- Establish an inner Cabinet, akin to the Second World War “War Cabinets” to ensure we take partisan politics out of the fight for our survival
- End all fossil fuel industry subsidies
- Implement a bold Canadian climate and energy strategy that includes robust plans to build and sustain the green economy
- Lead a movement to divest from fossil fuels, starting with the federal government
- Invest in a Canadian Grid Strategy to deliver 100 per cent renewable electricity across Canada
- Give incentives to Canadians to retrofit their homes and prompt our entrepreneurs to develop green technologies
- Retrofit all buildings in Canada – residential, commercial and institutional to high energy efficiency standards
- Introduce a revenue-neutral price on carbon pollution through a fee and dividend system
- Rapidly phase out coal-fired electricity and transition to a prosperous decarbonized economy
- Develop a global plan to reduce emissions from international aviation and shipping
- Launch a massive tree-planting initiative in our hinterlands and in our urban centres
- Prepare for those levels of climate crisis we can no longer avoid. Assist farmers, fishers and others in vulnerable sectors to adapt and thrive.
- Buy water bombers. Build fire breaks. Fortify dikes and dams. Protect Canadians from climate emergencies of all kinds.