Throughout Mark Carney’s whirlwind first months on the job, two words have remained conspicuously absent from the prime minister’s messaging: “climate change.” Is it just his language that’s changed, or has the new job pushed climate change off his radar?
That’s been a major disappointment for many in the climate community, who expected a more vocal advocacy from the former UN special envoy on climate action and finance. “The G7 Leaders’ Summit was a test of Canada’s climate leadership, and Prime Minister Carney failed,” wrote Caroline Brouillette, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, in an emblematic statement following the Kananaskis summit. Brouillete was responding to the G7’s avoidance of climate change, including in a joint communique on the rising danger of wildfires.
“It’s a serious omission, and that’s being very polite,” wildfire expert Mike Flannigan told Canada’s National Observer at the time.
So what happened? Where’s the guy who dedicated two entire chapters of his book, Values, to the climate crisis? Why is the same person who used his platform as governor of the Bank of England to warn the world’s financial elites about the risk of stranded assets and carbon bubbles now flirting with new pipelines under C-5 and invoking oil-industry jargon like “decarbonized oil”?
