Juno News - There's too much discussion about climate change this election

00:00:00.000 Canadian political discourse puts just a little bit too much time into discussions of climate

00:00:10.620 change. And I think it's to the peril of other important discussions that we are not putting

00:00:15.580 enough time into. And it's time to just step back just a little bit and reallocate that time and

00:00:21.480 step away from the climate change conversation just a little bit. I'll give you a case in point.

00:00:26.280 So we just had the first English language leaders debate in the Canadian federal election,

00:00:30.880 actually the only English language leaders debate. And there was a whole section devoted to climate

00:00:36.040 change. And it took a whole lot of time in that debate. It took up a large chunk of time, almost

00:00:40.780 half an hour. I mean, I'm watching and I'm like, oh my God, they're just going in circles on this.

00:00:44.360 They're going on and on and on. Now I had previously complained that it was unfortunate that there was

00:00:49.100 going to be no discussion of foreign affairs in the leaders debate. Now I will credit the moderators

00:00:54.280 and the people involved in the debate that yes, they did make time to discuss Afghanistan

00:00:59.020 and other important foreign affairs issues, but it didn't get anywhere near as much time as the

00:01:04.480 climate change conversation did. And it certainly didn't get its whole own section. I mean, why is

00:01:09.920 that? We got to reallocate things. We got to refocus here. And I would humbly propose one sort of shift in

00:01:16.720 our thinking that we need to do that will help us with this reallocation. So a lot of the time in the

00:01:21.760 leaders debate was spent talking about, we're not meeting our Paris goals. And this guy's plan meets our

00:01:27.680 Paris goals this way. And that guy's plan doesn't meet it this way. And Justin Trudeau has failed to meet the

00:01:32.380 Paris deal and et cetera, et cetera, so forth. I think we need to kind of rethink how we conceptualize the

00:01:40.160 Paris deal. I think people, even people who are, who are major advocates of dealing with climate change and so forth,

00:01:45.920 and think it's one of the top issues the country faces, they need to acknowledge that the Paris deal

00:01:51.720 is an aspirational stretch goal. That it is not, in fact, this hard and fast target that we must set

00:02:01.820 by this specific time, or we must punish ourselves and others and bring in more and more elaborate carbon

00:02:07.660 taxes and so forth. And that's not what it should be. And it never should have been like that. A lot of

00:02:11.960 people don't realize that Canada's actual targets are, are what they call nationally determined

00:02:16.800 contributions. It's not even, you know, we just, we made it up ourselves, the contribution and the,

00:02:22.360 the sort of target and the pledge that we make to the Paris deals. I'll give you a comparable example

00:02:27.220 of what an aspirational target is. Every now and then I've seen various municipalities have a press

00:02:32.300 conference where they say, we are coming up with this plan to end homelessness in five years or in

00:02:39.000 10 years or what have you. And who can complain about that? I mean, that's an admirable goal and

00:02:43.160 you should wish them well and all of that. And they're coming up with various programs and projects

00:02:47.280 and so forth. They get people off the streets and get them into homes and so forth. But let's be honest,

00:02:51.960 we also know that they're not going to end homelessness in five years or 10 years. They're

00:02:56.980 just shooting for the stars and they're giving a big target. It's an aspirational goal. It's something

00:03:01.700 for them to aim towards, even though they know, unfortunately, they're not going to hit it. And the Paris deal

00:03:07.540 is kind of the same thing. I mean, when Jean Chrétien signed the Kyoto Accord,

00:03:11.580 previous people who worked around him, they've admitted that they're like, yeah, we didn't

00:03:15.020 actually think we'd hit these targets. That wasn't the point of it. You just sort of meet on the global

00:03:19.200 cocktail circuit and at the UN events and you all sort of say, yeah, we're going to go ahead with

00:03:23.360 these goals and so forth. And you're just kind of seeing it as a gesture, a sort of long-term vague

00:03:30.220 objective, a bit of a feel-good project, because clearly people care about the issue and they would like

00:03:34.620 to, you know, do good things for the environment and the climate and reduce emissions and so on and

00:03:39.680 so forth. But the way we think of the Paris deal, it's become this obsession of hitting these exact

00:03:46.860 targets at these exact times, such that we're willing to bring in any sort of government measure

00:03:51.560 and punitive measure to any individual or business to get there. And you kind of lose sight of why we're

00:03:57.240 actually doing this in the first place. So by all means, lots of people are very passionate about the

00:04:01.280 climate change issue in Canada. And well, I think there's a lot to be said for all this R&D by

00:04:05.840 companies put into green technology and green industries. And they're making a lot of progress

00:04:10.740 there. And I can guarantee you, once these various products are available at a price point, the middle

00:04:15.340 class consumer will buy, they will start buying it. But this idea that we have to just obsess over the

00:04:21.800 Paris targets like they did at the leaders debate. I mean, come on, guys, let's just reassess,

00:04:26.640 reallocate, reconceptualize how we talk about this issue.

Juno News - September 14, 2021

There's too much discussion about climate change this election

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