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Canada's legally binding climate change targets appear unattainable, new data released by Environment and Climate Change Canada shows.
The department's greenhouse gas emissions projections are an important signal of whether a country is on track to meet its climate goals.
Report Forecasts show Canada will fall far short of its 2030 climate target – only halfway toward its goal of cutting emissions 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels.
Thanks to the government's current climate change efforts, Canada is on track to reduce its emissions by 21 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. The report predicts that if the government implements additional climate policies, the country could see a 28 percent reduction in emissions.
The news comes just months after an unprecedented warning from Canada's leading climate think tank which found that the country will not meet its 2030 target.
The country is on track to cut emissions 20 to 25 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, according to a September forecast from the Canadian Climate Institute.
Reacting to Wednesday's post, The institute said that it is visible the country has “deviated from the intended path and needs immediate policy implementation.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney also predicted the news in year-end interviews, including Wednesday with CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton.
Wednesday's update from Environment Canada is the first since Carney took office.
Carney has since removed key items from Canada's climate plan: cutting the consumer carbon tax, suspending the electric vehicle mandate, supporting additional LNG exports and potentially supporting another bitumen pipeline to the Pacific coast.
As a result, this report is worse than in recent years. Under Carney's predecessor, Justin Trudeau, the country was on track to cut emissions 34 percent below 2005 levels.
The report comes ten years after the landmark Paris Agreement, an international climate pact that committed the world to limit the rise in average global temperatures above 2°C and continue efforts to keep it to 1.5°C.
While these numbers may seem small, every fraction of a degree of warming, according to international climate scientists, accelerates deadly heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods like the scenes seen in Abbotsford, British Columbia, last week.
