Mark Carney, the climate expert at the head of oil power

This is a first for Canada: having a global climate expert at the head of the country.

Not scientifically, of course. Mark Carney is an economist. But in terms of financial solutions to protect the climate, the new Canadian Prime Minister has a recognized roadmap.

Over the past five years, before becoming Prime Minister, Mark Carney has been the special emissary of the United Nations Secretary General for the financing of climate action. From 2020, he was also the advisor to the climate finance of the then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, with a view to the United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow (COP26).

He has traveled the planet to explain to decision -makers around the world, why investments in the fight against climate change is paid for countries, and why it is essential to integrate the risks and climatic costs in political and economic decisions.

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I have crossed it several times in COPwhere we saw him hurry from one meeting to another.

An international reputation which, after the Canadian Federal Election, made Bill McKibben say one of the most influential environmentalists in the United States, thatIn the person of Mr. Carney, we now have the world leader who knows more than all his peers on climate change. This is what he wrote in his newsletter The Crucial Yearsin which he brushed a glowing portrait of his career.

He knows about 20 times more about the economy of climate and energy than any other leaderhe added.

It is indeed the first time that a Canadian Prime Minister has brought to know more about the solutions to be put in place to combat climate change than those around it.

It is also a unique situation within the G7 countries.

Outside this restricted group, there is the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, a scientific expert specializing in solutions to reduce emissions of GESwhich participated in the 5th report of the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on Climate Evolution (IPCC).

However, Mark Carney spoke very little about the campaign.

Faced with Donald Trump’s pricing hurricane, he rather emphasized the need to build a pipeline from west to east in order to transport Alberta oil to the Atlantic, and thus guarantee Canada’s economic sovereignty.

To the question Should we produce more oil? Posed during the debate of chiefs in French, he replied: Yes, more oil, to reduce our imports.

Some have accused him of offering a vision similar to that of the conservative chief Pierre Hairyvre, based on the development of fossil fuels.

It was not until four weeks after the start of the campaign – eight days before the election – that the Liberal Party published its financial framework and reveals its vision for climate and environment a little in more detail.

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Distance from the Trudeau era

We could divide the environmental program of Mark Carney into two categories: climatic policies which are continuing with those of the former liberal government, and those which seem to want to distance itself from it.

On the one hand, the liberal platform includes solutions recognized by science to help reduce emissions. For example, Mr. Carney is committed to:

• Invest in the infrastructure of charging stations;
• Return a credit for the purchase of electric vehicles;
• Press the storage of specific energies by means of batteries;
• financially support the development of public transport in rural areas;
• brake the use of fossil fuels in government buildings;
• Create 10 new national parks and 15 new urban parks;
• Act to protect 30 % of land and waters by 2030;
• Develop a national water safety strategy in the face of the appetite of the United States for this resource.

All that, and many other things.

On the other hand, measures from the Mark Carney platform aim to take some distance from flagship policies from the previous government. Two pillars of the climate policy of the Trudeau administration are targeted:

• carbon pricing;
• the imposition of a ceiling on GES of the oil and gas sector (a regulation which could not be finalized before the outbreak of the campaign).

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Carbon pricing

The very first gesture posed by Mark Carney after his sworn to the post of Prime Minister last March, was to drop the carbon tax for individuals. Even if a vast majority of Canadians received a royalty to compensate for this tax, Mr. Carney judged that she had too much division.

This measure would have contributed to around 10 % of the drop in emissions required to reach Canadian targets by 2030, according to the analysis of the Budget Parliamentary Director.

Does he plan to replace this tax with another measure?

In his platform, he promises that citizens will not have to assume the cost of achieving our climatic objectives. Rather, he plans to charge the big polluters their just partby improving the industrial component of the tax. The money collected will be used to help Canadians to make ecological choices.

This tax, at almost zero cost for consumers, was above all intended to make them aware of the fact that pollution nevertheless has a very concrete cost. Today, most of them pay their cheaper petrol, but the financial signal which indicated to them the price of this pollution has disappeared.

It is a decline for Mark Carney. In Value(s)the book he published in 2021 to explain his vision of the modern economy, he defended carbon tax as a tool to correct market gaps in this area and integrate the costs of pollution in the price of products.

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The ceiling on emissions from the petrogazier sector

The ceiling on emissions from the oil and gas industry was to be the flagship climatic measure of the Liberals of Justin Trudeau.

Former Minister of the Environment Steven Guilbeault has been working on these regulations since 2023, but he could not finalize it in time. The process was longer than he had planned, especially because he wanted to make sure that he would pass the court test in the event of a prosecution.

These regulations would have constituted a rare direct means of reducing emissions from the most polluting sector in the country. He would have imposed a ceiling of emissions of GES For the oil and gas sector, aimed at a reduction of 35 % compared to the 2019 levels by 2030. The ceiling was gradually introduced between 2026 and 2030, to allow installations to adapt.

However, it does not appear in the platform of Mark Carney. He has never spoken out against it, but he also did not officially support it.

In the discharge of Mr. Carney, it is possible that this absence is explained by the fact that he wanted to avoid giving the conservatives a perfect target for criticism. But now that he is elected, it would not be surprising that he will finalize the draft settlement.

He never said he wouldn’t.

In his platform, Mr. Carney promises to work with the industry To ensure that oil and gas become cleaner and more competitive, and that emissions decrease to achieve our climatic objectives.

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To do this, he plans to regulate methane emissions from the Pétrogazier sector, and support carbon capture and storage projects. According to the latest national inventory of GESthis technology made it possible to kidnap 3 million tonnes (MT) in 2023. If it wants to reach its reduction targets, Canada must reduce its 254 MT emissions by 2030.

In Value(s)Mark Carney writes that climate change illustrates A tragedy of the horizons : short-term economic decisions compromise future well-being.

This value he defends is subject to the test of reality. The new function he occupies forces him to confront the eternal dilemma of Canada: what to do to reduce emissions from GES From a country in which the geographic heritage of fossil fuels brings many families to life?