Last week, the United Kingdom did something all too rare: it chose leadership by backing science and prioritizing public safety. The Labour government announced it would ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, strengthen a windfall tax and accelerate phasing out of fossil-fuel subsidies.
These are not symbolic gestures. They are an acknowledgment that the global energy system is shifting and that mature economies must shift with it.
And they came in the same week that catastrophic floods swept across south-east Asia, killing more than 1,000 people and displacing over a million. The real-world imperative to transition off fossil fuels has never been so urgent.
But, at the exact moment the UK stepped forward, Canada stepped back.
Ottawa signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta to support a new oil sands pipeline that would facilitate increased production of fossil fuels. The deal would delay methane regulations, cancel an oil and gas emissions cap and exempt the province from clean electricity rules. All this comes as leaders are lifting environmental-assessment requirements for major projects, preparing to weaken greenwashing laws and suspending Canada’s electric vehicle sales mandate. The MP Steven Guilbeault resigned from Mark Carney’s cabinet rather than defend the retreat.
The contrast could not be sharper: while climate effects intensify and economies pivot, Canada is reinforcing the very industries driving the crisis.
Internationally, the commitment is crystal clear. At COP28, in Dubai in 2023, Canada, the UK, and 190 countries agreed for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels. You do not “phase out” something by building more of it. A pipeline enabling 1m additional barrels a day pushes Canada in the opposite direction of what it has already promised.
Carney built his reputation by warning that climate inaction threatens economic stability and that finance must align with the reality of a warming world. Instead, he is overseeing decisions that deepen Canada’s dependence on an industry whose expansion directly fuels the disasters already devastating communities.
Tzeporah Berman [author] is a Canadian environmental activist, campaigner and writer
Fuck you, Carney, I can't believe I voted for this jackass. I voted liberal specifically so shit like this DOESN'T happen.
Fuck this. Fuck their cuts to Healthcare, fuck their continued enabling of the housing crisis, fuck their trying to cut a deal with Trump, fuck their ineffective and extremely expensive (and unenforceable) gun bans and attacks on sport shooting, fuck their bill to make a patriot act style surveillance state, fuck their continued breaches of internet privacy. Just fuck this.
To be fair, you probably just voted Liberal. It's unlikely most people voted for Carney because he didn't have a seat until he was already leader, and then it would have been whoever was in the riding he was dropped into that voted for him in whatever byelection it was that he would have to have won. But yeah, I get it, fuck that guy.
That is correct. I did choose whoever the liberal candidate was on the ballot. But we all know what that means ultimately in a national election.
I should have abstained or voted NDP or voted symbolically.
I had the good luck of being in a Liberal safe seat riding, so I voted NDP with the comfort of knowing I wasn't splitting the vote for the Con candidate, but it sucks that these are the choices we're forced to make.