Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am aksha throti. This week Canada
Speaker 1: climate and trouble. Earlier this week, new tariffs imposed by
Speaker 1: President Donald Trump went into effect. They are astonishing. They
Speaker 1: imposed twenty five percent duties on Canadian imports to the US,
Speaker 1: and at the time of this recording, they've already sparked
Speaker 1: chaos in the markets and provoked retaliation from Canada. It
Speaker 1: all comes as Canada's government is in the middle of
Speaker 1: her reconnect The race to replace Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
Speaker 1: is fully underway. Next week the governing Liberal Party will
Speaker 1: announce Trudeau's successor, and before October, if not sooner, the
Speaker 1: country will have to head for a general election. If
Speaker 1: the Liberals lose that election, the opposition Conservative Party has
Speaker 1: promised to dismantle federal climate policies, much like Trump administration
Speaker 1: has done in the US. With so much change in
Speaker 1: the backdrop, last week I got a chance to sit
Speaker 1: down with Rick Smith, president of the Canadian Climate Institute,
Speaker 1: to talk about what shaped the country's climate ambitions might
Speaker 1: take in this new era. We discussed why Canada's oil
Speaker 1: and gas production has remained so high and what Trump's
Speaker 1: moves might mean for Canadian economic and energy policy. He
Speaker 1: also told me why he expects that meaningful climate policy
Speaker 1: in Canada will likely come from provinces and municipalities as
Speaker 1: much as it does from the federal government. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Showrick, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: We're talking as the Liberal Party is about to elect
Speaker 1: a new leader and Canada is set to head for
Speaker 1: a general election sometime before October. Before we get to
Speaker 1: the complications of now, tell us more about the Canadian
Speaker 1: Climate Institute, where you've been president for four years. What
Speaker 1: has it accomplished in its five year life that you
Speaker 1: are particularly proud of.
Speaker 2: Well, we were. I think the aspiration of the organization
Speaker 2: when it was launched five years ago has been realized,
Speaker 2: which was to create an independent expert climate change advisor
Speaker 2: for governments in Canada. So we were originally launched to
Speaker 2: provide good ideas, good research to our federal government. And
Speaker 2: since we've been launched, we've grown quite an extensive root
Speaker 2: system across the country. We now work with provincial governments,
Speaker 2: with the municipal governments, with Indigenous nations who have substantial
Speaker 2: constitutional rights in our country. So we're probably the most
Speaker 2: quoted climate change research outfit in the country. I'm very
Speaker 2: proud of the work we do, not just in the
Speaker 2: area of mitigation, but also adaptation. We have a whole
Speaker 2: team that worries about wildfires and flooding of course increasingly
Speaker 2: prominent climate driven effects across the country. We have a
Speaker 2: team of researchers that are focused on clean growth and
Speaker 2: so we're we're you know, as patriotic Canadians, we're interested
Speaker 2: in providing good ideas as to how the Canadian economy
Speaker 2: can prosper through this transitional period. And we actually just
Speaker 2: launched a dedicated Indigenous research unit to work directly with
Speaker 2: our indigenous nations. So we've deepened our work across the country,
Speaker 2: We've expanded it, and I think it's been very helpful
Speaker 2: to driving a climate progress across the country.
Speaker 1: So on zero, we've had the UK's Climate Change Committee
Speaker 1: feature a few times because it was one of the
Speaker 1: first ones to be created as part of a country's
Speaker 1: lead binding climate targets. Now the Canadian Climate Institute is
Speaker 1: a sister organization, though not a one to one in comparison. Right,
Speaker 1: the CCC here has quite a bit of power because
Speaker 1: it can tell a government off by telling them, look,
Speaker 1: there's a common budget that you've set as a legally
Speaker 1: binding goal. You're not on track, and here are the
Speaker 1: set of policies that are available to you to choose
Speaker 1: to get back on track. You don't quite have the
Speaker 1: same ability because of the way you've been created. So
Speaker 1: what are the differences and how do they manifest in
Speaker 1: your work?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you're right. I mean the CCC was created
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, so we're our country is
Speaker 2: a little bit behind. The Canadian version of the Climate
Speaker 2: Change Act was adopted in twenty twenty one. Actually, interestingly,
Speaker 2: we in the CCC and holleague organizations in about twenty
Speaker 2: four other countries launched an international network together at COP
Speaker 2: twenty six. What we have in common is we are
Speaker 2: expert advisors to our resis inspective national governments on climate
Speaker 2: policy specifically. And you're right, there are some differences between us.
Speaker 2: So some of our colleague organizations like the CCC, are
Speaker 2: creatures of Parliament. Some of our organizations like ours are
Speaker 2: independent charities. But what we have in common is we
Speaker 2: have a formal relationship of some sort with our national
Speaker 2: governments to provide good advice, to track progress and to
Speaker 2: suggest improvements in terms of getting back on track.
Speaker 1: So, talking of progress, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau
Speaker 1: has set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 1: by forty to forty five percent by twenty thirty relative
Speaker 1: to two thousand and five levels. And the latest check
Speaker 1: on emissions that you provided last year through CCI shows
Speaker 1: that the decarbonization of electricity is going well, but oil
Speaker 1: and gas sector emissions are rising. I had the pleasure
Speaker 1: to interview Justin Trudeau on invitation from the Canadian Climate
Speaker 1: Institute back in twenty twenty two, and my first question
Speaker 1: to him was that all the seven countries have grown
Speaker 1: their economies and reduced their emissions, Canada has not. Its
Speaker 1: emissions were at that time largely flat. Has there been
Speaker 1: progress since then?
Speaker 2: You've packed a heck of a lot into that question.
Speaker 2: Let me let me unpack that a little bit. Let's
Speaker 2: just start by looking at where Canada is at in
Speaker 2: terms of decarbonization. Yes, I'm delighted to report that there
Speaker 2: has been progress since since twenty twenty two. In fact,
Speaker 2: since two thousand and five, national emissions overall in Canada
Speaker 2: are down about eight percent according to our calculations. I
Speaker 2: think we're going to be down again in this next year.
Speaker 2: So you know, good news. For the first time in
Speaker 2: the country's history, we've inflected the carbon curve downward. But
Speaker 2: if you dig down a little bit, what you see
Speaker 2: is real differences between sectors. So fantastic news in our
Speaker 2: electricity sector. For instance, electricity sector emissions down about sixty
Speaker 2: percent since two thousand and five. Most provinces now off
Speaker 2: of coal. Significant uptake of renewables across the country, including
Speaker 2: in provinces governed by by conservative parties provincially, so great,
Speaker 2: great things happening, And clearly the regulatory framework driving decarbonization
Speaker 2: in the electricity sector is largely working. Buildings, some decarbonization
Speaker 2: happening again, a little bit variable by province. In terms
Speaker 2: of a transportation decarbonization, some variability by province, a big
Speaker 2: uptake of electric vehicles in some provinces, not so much
Speaker 2: in others. Where we see more progress needed is when
Speaker 2: it comes to oil and gas industry emissions. So those
Speaker 2: which increasing, So those emissions are actually increasing about ten
Speaker 2: percent up since two thousand and five overall. And you know, interestingly,
Speaker 2: as we see now emissions going down in other sectors,
Speaker 2: we see the percentage of oil and gas sector emissions,
Speaker 2: that chunk of the Canadian emissions pie increasing, and now
Speaker 2: over thirty percent of national emissions attributable to oil and
Speaker 2: gas production.
Speaker 1: And all this is before Donald Trump took White House,
Speaker 1: and since his election, of course, there's been a huge
Speaker 1: amount of focus now in Canada on energy security, on
Speaker 1: diversification of energy markets, which suggests that more pipelines will
Speaker 1: be built, perhaps not to the US, but to the
Speaker 1: East and West coast so that Canada can continue to
Speaker 1: export its fossil fuels. How concerned are you that the
Speaker 1: impact of whatever Trump does is actually going to increase
Speaker 1: Canada's reliance on extractive industries and further increase oil and
Speaker 1: gas emissions.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, it's inarguable that what President Trump is doing,
Speaker 2: what his administration is doing with respect to climate policy,
Speaker 2: is uniformly unhelpful. I do think that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of dust that has to settle over the next few
Speaker 2: months in terms of the actual impact of these things.
Speaker 2: You know, unclear, for instance, whether the president's administration can
Speaker 2: overturn without congressional approval, a lot of the very helpful
Speaker 2: tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. It is unclear
Speaker 2: the extent to which the Trump administration can overrule. The
Speaker 2: two dozen or so US states led by California, New York,
Speaker 2: some of the biggest states who've served notice that they
Speaker 2: are going to proceed with ambitious electricity sector decarbonization, electric
Speaker 2: vehicle regulated sales targets. The US Climate Alliance states represent
Speaker 2: about fifty percent of the US population, and what we
Speaker 2: see at the moment I mean with vehicles in the
Speaker 2: United States, for instance, is basically a bifurcated market where
Speaker 2: you have the California led group of states administering a
Speaker 2: European style ZEV mandate, and then you have the federal
Speaker 2: government tailpipe standards being followed by the other half of
Speaker 2: the US economy. You know, of course, the US, like Canada,
Speaker 2: is a federal country. States have substantial constitutional authority to
Speaker 2: regulate in areas relevant to climate policy. So, you know,
Speaker 2: as unhelpful as the Trump administration wants to be, as
Speaker 2: much as they want to impede climate progress, I would
Speaker 2: suggest it's premature to jump to conclusions about how far
Speaker 2: they're going to get.
Speaker 1: But if you're looking at the numbers from two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, levels emissions are down as of twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three by eight percent. They need to be down as
Speaker 1: a legally bound target by forty percent by twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: and so the piece has to pick up. But at
Speaker 1: this point, when the focus is being drawn away from
Speaker 1: climate and do much more carbon intensive industrial conversation, even
Speaker 1: if there is no right now on paper direct impact,
Speaker 1: doesn't that slow down progress at a time and it
Speaker 1: actually needs to accelerate.
Speaker 2: Well, it's certainly not going to help. I mean, you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right in a fact, according to our analysis, absent
Speaker 2: adding some new policies to the table, Canada is actually
Speaker 2: not on track for forty to forty five percent reduction
Speaker 2: by twenty thirty by our calculation, at the current rate,
Speaker 2: we're probably headed towards something like thirty five percent or
Speaker 2: slightly less. So we've provided to the federal governments over
Speaker 2: the last couple of years a variety of suggestions in
Speaker 2: terms of how to accelerate progress, how to both increase
Speaker 2: the effectiveness of existing policy and add some new policy
Speaker 2: to the table to get us on track. I do
Speaker 2: want to underline here the Canada's a federal country, and
Speaker 2: so one of the things that I suspect you're going
Speaker 2: to see in Canada over the next few years is
Speaker 2: climate change advocates. Regardless of what happens in our federal election,
Speaker 2: I think there's the acknowledgment in the climate policy community
Speaker 2: that more attention needs to be put on provincial action,
Speaker 2: on municipal action, partially because we've had a relatively sympathetic
Speaker 2: federal government over the last decade, Virtually all of the
Speaker 2: attention in terms of climate policy has been focused in
Speaker 2: the federal government, and in our system, there's only so
Speaker 2: far the federal government can get in many areas of
Speaker 2: climate policy and regulation. So in many cases, for instance,
Speaker 2: the federal government has tried to do something has been
Speaker 2: taken to court by provinces. That continues. My point here
Speaker 2: is that even in a Trump era that will extend
Speaker 2: for some years, there is substantial scope in the United States,
Speaker 2: in Canada for subnational action, and in fact it's already
Speaker 2: the case that some of those important subnational actors are
Speaker 2: creating cross border cooperation. So Quebec and California for since
Speaker 2: have long been part of a common carbon credit market,
Speaker 2: and I suspect we're going to see more of that
Speaker 2: continental subnational action in the years they had and some
Speaker 2: of these subnational actors very large. Of course, if California
Speaker 2: were its own country, it would be the fifth largest
Speaker 2: economy on the planet. So these are not small actors here,
Speaker 2: they're consequential.
Speaker 1: Point taking that provincial governments can do a lot, but
Speaker 1: when you do have climate policies at the federal level,
Speaker 1: they can add up to how much more provinces can do. Now,
Speaker 1: one of Trudeau's signature climate policy was to put a
Speaker 1: price and pollution and then give most of that money
Speaker 1: back to citizens. So the poorest people would get more
Speaker 1: money back from the government than they would potentially spend
Speaker 1: on higher costs and goods, and richer people who have
Speaker 1: more carbon intensive lifestyles will pay more. All the leaders
Speaker 1: in Canada who are now wanting to be power, we
Speaker 1: have the Liberal Party that's going through its own election
Speaker 1: that'll get concluded sometime in March, and then the Parliament
Speaker 1: will come back and at some point there will be
Speaker 1: a general election. All the leaders who want to be
Speaker 1: in power in Canada are now promising in one form
Speaker 1: or the other to roll back some of the price
Speaker 1: on pollution. Can you talk through what type of rollback
Speaker 1: are we likely to see.
Speaker 2: We've in the last couple of years in our country,
Speaker 2: we've kind of backed ourselves into this strange cul de
Speaker 2: sac when it comes to climate policy. By our institute's calculations,
Speaker 2: best case scenario, the contribution of the Canadian consumer carbon
Speaker 2: price to emission reductions by twenty thirty is at best
Speaker 2: ten percent. And yet, for a variety of reasons, political
Speaker 2: and otherwise, the debate surrounding the fate of the consumer
Speaker 2: carbon price has probably occupied I don't think it's an
Speaker 2: exaggeration to say that ninety five percent of the entire
Speaker 2: climate changesscussion in our country has swirled around this one
Speaker 2: policy for at least two years, and we need to
Speaker 2: get out of that. One of the things we've done
Speaker 2: over the last couple of years is pointed to the
Speaker 2: fact that we need to focus on climate policy progress
Speaker 2: across a range of policies, and there are many other
Speaker 2: policies that are far more consequential in terms of emission reduction,
Speaker 2: name the industrial carbon price probably thirty to forty percent
Speaker 2: of the solution by twenty thirty, partially because it just
Speaker 2: captures it applied to a much larger basket of emissions
Speaker 2: than the consumer carbon price. Continued electrification across the country penetration.
Speaker 2: You know, various policies meant to expedite the uptake of
Speaker 2: electric vehicles are methane regular because, partially because of oil
Speaker 2: and gas sector so large, methane regulations a huge part
Speaker 2: of the solution by twenty thirty. So there's probably a
Speaker 2: couple of dozen other policies that are important in terms
Speaker 2: of progress by twenty thirty that are relatively unexamined in
Speaker 2: the public debate, and that needs some improvement. And so
Speaker 2: if you know, obviously it's not ideal if the country
Speaker 2: moves off of consumer carbon pricing in an age when
Speaker 2: affordability concerns animate all aspects of politics. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: it's surprising, to be honest, but there are other policies
Speaker 2: that are far more important.
Speaker 1: So if the industrial carbon price is going to do
Speaker 1: so much of the heavy lifting going into twenty thirties,
Speaker 1: I know you can't comment on specific political parties, but
Speaker 1: at least one of the major parties, the Conservatives, are
Speaker 1: trying to push back against any form of carbon pricing
Speaker 1: which might even weaken the industrial common price.
Speaker 2: Right. Well, it's actually the industrial carbon price is actually
Speaker 2: quite a different system in our country than the consumer
Speaker 2: price now, I think it's important to note here that
Speaker 2: industrial carbon pricing, unlike consumer carbon pricing, has not been
Speaker 2: the topic of raging public discussion over the last few years.
Speaker 2: And one reason is that industrial carbon pricing was invented
Speaker 2: at a provincial level and then spread across the country.
Speaker 2: And this trajectory of public policy, or the move from
Speaker 2: a province to a national level phenomenon, is actually a
Speaker 2: hallmark of enduring, sometimes enduring Canadian public policy. This is
Speaker 2: what happened with our medicare system, our public healthcare system,
Speaker 2: for instance. So I think there's some basis to believe
Speaker 2: that industry. There's many heavy emitting industries across the country
Speaker 2: that are quite supportive of industrial carbon pricing because one
Speaker 2: of the things it does is create a lucrative credit market,
Speaker 2: and those credits now exist on balance sheets right across
Speaker 2: the country. So industrial carbon pricing, which only applies to
Speaker 2: exporting industries so there is no interface with Canadian consumers,
Speaker 2: meant to both reduce emissions and increase the competitiveness of
Speaker 2: Canadian industry. So I think that's a winning argument.
Speaker 1: After the break, more of my conversation with Rick Smith
Speaker 1: of the Canadian Climate Institute by the way. If you've
Speaker 1: been enjoying this episode, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple and Spotify. It helps
Speaker 1: other listeners find the show if it wasn't already. The
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three record breaking wildfires in Canada showed people
Speaker 1: the scale and the intensity that climate driven extreme weather
Speaker 1: events can bring. At the CCI, you also look at
Speaker 1: how Canada can adapt to climate change. Adaptation is often
Speaker 1: the forgotten cousin in the climate equation. People only think
Speaker 1: really about reducing emissions. How is Canada doing on the
Speaker 1: adaptation front?
Speaker 2: The adaptation is an increasing part of the debate in
Speaker 2: our country. In the last few years, the table has
Speaker 2: been completely reset in terms of the public understanding of
Speaker 2: climate driven extreme weather. Last summer alone, over a few
Speaker 2: days in August in southern Quebec, that province saw devastating
Speaker 2: flooding and actually the most expensive natural disaster in Quebec's history.
Speaker 2: Last August, in the west of our country, the beautiful,
Speaker 2: world renowned mountain town of Jasper essentially burned to the
Speaker 2: ground because of raging wildfires. The first stage of rebuilding
Speaker 2: that town almost a billion dollars Canadian. One of our
Speaker 2: strong partners of the Canadian Climate Institute is the Canadian
Speaker 2: insurance industry. The insurance industry fascinating to work with because
Speaker 2: as an industry there's structurally risk averse, but yet because
Speaker 2: of the product that they sell, they're being forced to
Speaker 2: grapple on a daily basis with the realities of climate change,
Speaker 2: the measurable realities of climate change, in a way that
Speaker 2: no other industry is, and so we work with them increasingly.
Speaker 2: And the Insurance Bureau of Canada calculated twenty twenty four
Speaker 2: to be the most expensive year in Canadian history, over
Speaker 2: eight billion dollars in insured losses across the country, mostly
Speaker 2: from climate driven weather. So you know whether it's wildfires
Speaker 2: in the west of our country flooding in the east.
Speaker 2: In some parts of our country over the last couple years,
Speaker 2: there's been both flooding and wildfires at the same time,
Speaker 2: as happened in Halifax in our East coast two years ago.
Speaker 2: This has transformed the Canadian understanding of climate change and
Speaker 2: in a very short period of time, rendered what used
Speaker 2: to be a kind of notional discussion of effects our
Speaker 2: children and grandchildren might have to deal with sometime down
Speaker 2: the road into a far more urgent discussion of you know,
Speaker 2: the security of my family and of my neighbor's family,
Speaker 2: and of our communities. So, you know, I think climate
Speaker 2: change in our country has been permanently moved from an
Speaker 2: environmental policy pigeonhole into a far more powerful public policy discussion,
Speaker 2: you know, in the same space that you see healthcare, crime,
Speaker 2: these other far more approximate threats to human security. You know.
Speaker 2: Does that mean that, you know, every decision maker across
Speaker 2: the country is motivated to make the right decisions on
Speaker 2: climate policy every day of the week. No, but it's
Speaker 2: always there, kind of lurking under the surface, a risk
Speaker 2: to be managed by political leaders. I think that's where
Speaker 2: we're at in our country when it comes to climate change.
Speaker 2: And so we spend a lot of time at our
Speaker 2: institute trying to quantify the damage of wildfires and flooding,
Speaker 2: how to come up with policy solutions to keep Canadian
Speaker 2: communities safer, and it's become a fundamental part of our argument.
Speaker 2: That's too often the climate change discussion is dominated by
Speaker 2: a fixation on the alleged costs of taking action and
Speaker 2: climate change, when in fact, the increasing measurable costs or
Speaker 2: the cost of our inaction and we're seeing that across
Speaker 2: Canada every day.
Speaker 1: Now, Canada and the US share the longest undefended border
Speaker 1: in the world. Canada has the US as its largest
Speaker 1: trading partner. Most of Canadian oil is going into the US.
Speaker 1: The connections run deep, not just culturally, but at an
Speaker 1: economic and at a carbon level. And so there is
Speaker 1: a very real danger that what happens in this administration
Speaker 1: derails Canada's climate plant. How are you going to start
Speaker 1: advising whichever politicians take power in the next government to
Speaker 1: deal with the Trump threat?
Speaker 2: The speed with which the Canadian national debate has changed
Speaker 2: since January twentieth. This is just unbelievable, since since Trump's
Speaker 2: inauguration and the focus of the national debate now is
Speaker 2: fully how to ensure the success of the national economy,
Speaker 2: given the United States has revealed itself within a matter
Speaker 2: of weeks to be a difficult partner to be polite.
Speaker 2: If the debate is as broad as the future of
Speaker 2: the Canadian economy, there are many carbon relevant factors to
Speaker 2: contribute there. Of course, one of them is that as
Speaker 2: Canada asks itself, okay, well, where if we can't reliably
Speaker 2: trade with the United States, to the extent that we
Speaker 2: have in the past, and we need to start accelerating
Speaker 2: trade with other countries around the world. Well, lo and behold,
Speaker 2: it turns out that a lot of those potential trading
Speaker 2: partners are implementing carbon border adjustments. Yeah, there is rapidly
Speaker 2: decard urbanizing.
Speaker 1: There was a joke made about Canada joining the EU.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, it turns out Canada had a very low
Speaker 2: level conflict with Denmark a few years ago that resulted
Speaker 2: in a very small island in the Arctic being divided
Speaker 2: in two. And Canada turns out shares a one point
Speaker 2: five kilometer border with Denmark on Hans Island in the Arctic.
Speaker 2: And so there's been actually a lot of somewhat serious
Speaker 2: suggestion in the Canadian in the Canadian media that we
Speaker 2: should look at joining the EU.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out technically the European Union has never
Speaker 1: defined what Europe really means geographically, and so yeah, it
Speaker 1: might just happen.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, so there you go. So we you know,
Speaker 2: we we speculate on geopolitics on this podcast as well.
Speaker 2: But but you know, so are there are many complicated
Speaker 2: questions bound up with this raging national debate about the
Speaker 2: future of the Canadian economy. But it it can't escape
Speaker 2: the notice of Canadian decision makers that regardless what Donald
Speaker 2: Trump is doing over the next couple of years, the
Speaker 2: medium and longer term decarbonization trajectory in the world is set.
Speaker 2: So a couple of weeks ago we saw seventy five
Speaker 2: percent of German voters supporting political parties promising massive climate
Speaker 2: change progress. The trajectory is set in Europe, it's set
Speaker 2: in the United Kingdom. We work with colleague organizations all
Speaker 2: over the world and so we're intimately familiar with what
Speaker 2: the decarbonization debate looks like in the two dozen major
Speaker 2: economies around the world. And yes there are hiccups, Yes
Speaker 2: there are stops and starts, but the trajectory is clear.
Speaker 2: I mean, decarbonization is an industrial imperative. This is the
Speaker 2: case that we and many others will be making in Canada,
Speaker 2: is that it's in the best interest of the Canadian
Speaker 2: economy to figure out how to compete with China when
Speaker 2: it comes to the manufacture of electric vehicles, to ensure
Speaker 2: or that we are mining critical minerals in Canada, to
Speaker 2: ensure that we are doubling down on perhaps the greatest
Speaker 2: Canadian industrial asset, which is dispatchable clean power at a
Speaker 2: time when the world desperately needs that, and every major
Speaker 2: investor in the world is looking is looking for that
Speaker 2: in jurisdictions in which they invest, And so there are
Speaker 2: some of Canada's most important assets revolve around the building
Speaker 2: blocks of decarbonization and we need to exploit those in
Speaker 2: the years ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, the last time Trump came to power, there were
Speaker 1: climate leaders like Trudeau and Germany's Angela Merkel, uk Is
Speaker 1: David Cameron and later Theresa May who were there to
Speaker 1: act as a force against the climate backlash that happened
Speaker 1: in the first term. This time around, there are few
Speaker 1: climate leaders in power. Trude is about to leave his position,
Speaker 1: and there are fewer climate forward parties in the ascendency
Speaker 1: around the world. So how exactly can leaders who understand
Speaker 1: the climate challenge meet the electorate at this moment and
Speaker 1: convince them enough that action on climate change is in
Speaker 1: their self interest so that they can get elected to power.
Speaker 2: Well that one of the advantages that we have now
Speaker 2: versus in Trump's first term is that some of the
Speaker 2: technology that we advocate for has matured and is cheaper
Speaker 2: than ever before, and So one of the things that
Speaker 2: we've measured across our country, for instance, is the relative
Speaker 2: affordability of low emitting electrical options like heat pumps electric vehicles.
Speaker 2: If you're do an apples to apples comparison heat pump
Speaker 2: versus fossil fuel heating, in most Canadian cities, heat pumps
Speaker 2: are the clear winner in terms of being a better
Speaker 2: deal for consumers. Why. Well, because they're more efficient machines.
Speaker 2: They're just better machines. Nobody has ever bought a heat
Speaker 2: pump and said, Wow, I really regret this. I want
Speaker 2: to go back to my clunky old furnace right Like,
Speaker 2: they're just better machines. And maybe I'm saying this as
Speaker 2: a gen X or who's lived through the transition from
Speaker 2: cassette tapes to CDs to streaming, and from rotary dow
Speaker 2: phones to mobile phones. Sometimes the new machines are just better.
Speaker 1: It's true of electric cars too.
Speaker 2: It's true of electric cars too. I mean, anybody who's
Speaker 2: driven an electric vehicle thinks the pickup's incredible, the handling
Speaker 2: is incredible, They're they're amazing. They're better machines. So I'm
Speaker 2: optimistic that this argument about affordability quite often, I think
Speaker 2: cuts against the grain for a lot of environmental policy experts.
Speaker 2: I think quite often as environment environmental policy people, we
Speaker 2: default to kind of hair shirt arguments. People to turn
Speaker 2: down the thermostat and wear a sweater and suck it
Speaker 2: up because it's going to be good for them. You know,
Speaker 2: at this moment in time, electric vehicles, heat pumps, these
Speaker 2: machines that are the foundations of a low emission's future.
Speaker 2: In many ways, they sell themselves and in fact are
Speaker 2: so much cheaper than the fossil fuel alternatives, even in
Speaker 2: completely deregulated marketplaces like Texas and Alberta on our continent.
Speaker 2: The only two fully deregulated electricity markets on the continent
Speaker 2: are in those two jurisdictions. And guess what when everything
Speaker 2: else is cleared away, when the only thing that matters
Speaker 2: is how much you can build your project for when
Speaker 2: the system is completely technology agnostic, the technologies that wind
Speaker 2: are wind and solar, because there's so much cheaper and
Speaker 2: that's why Texas is building some much wind and solar,
Speaker 2: and until recently Alberta was as well. So you know,
Speaker 2: in the years ahead, even with Trump creating, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever mayhem he tries to create. We have affordability arguments
Speaker 2: on our side, and we also have arguments about competitive
Speaker 2: necessity on our side. If North America wants to build
Speaker 2: the cars of the future at a time when fifty
Speaker 2: percent of cars in China are electric, we need to
Speaker 2: get a move on in terms of electric vehicle manufacturing.
Speaker 2: It's it's a competitive necessity, and so we need to
Speaker 2: resist this kind of future of luddism that that Trump
Speaker 2: is trying to drag us into.
Speaker 1: Well, you're in for a political ride this year, Rick,
Speaker 1: But thank you for coming on the shoe and giving
Speaker 1: us a taste of what might be coming in Canada
Speaker 1: on the climate front.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, Thanks for having.
Speaker 1: Me, Thank you for listening to Zero. And now for
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Speaker 1: like so many things these days, has become political when
Speaker 1: the usual polite Canadians booed the American anthem in a
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