UN’s global climate-change strategy a house of cards

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Following report saying Canada will not be able to meet its obligations targets for reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions In its supposed fight against climate change, a new United Nations report has emerged that says the same is true for global emissions.

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The UN estimates that global emissions will fall 17% below 1990 levels by 2035, far short of the 60% needed to prevent what it says will be catastrophic global warming, meaning a rise in average global temperatures of more than 1.5 to 2 C.

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But even the UN figure of 17% is hopelessly optimistic because it includes emissions cuts introduced by former US President Joe Biden, while US President Donald Trump has vowed to pull America out of the decade-old UN Paris climate accord on which the calculations are based.

Moreover, many countries are including Canada — do not achieve the goals they presented to the UN. Canada's goal, for example, is to reduce emissions by at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 and by at least 45% by 2035.

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But recent reports from two of the country's largest energy monitoring agencies—the Canadian Climate Institute and the Trottier Energy Institute at the Polytechnique of Montreal—concluded that with Canada's emissions only 8.5 per cent below 2005 levels as of last year, the federal government will at best achieve only half of its promised emissions reductions.

Trottier's report states Canada's goals are unattainable partly because the Liberal government fudged the numbers.

“The interim emissions reduction target (2030) adopted by the federal government in 2021 was based not on careful bottom-up analysis but on political expediency,” the report said.

“(The emissions reduction plan) was not a feasible plan that identified specific emissions reduction requirements and then set incremental steps to achieve them. Rather, it was an ambitious modeling adjusted to show the desired outcome.”

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(As of 2023 The Liberal government has committed more than $200 billion to 149 programs. Climate Action, which is run by 13 government agencies and departments.)

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UNREALISTIC GOALS

The UN report that global emissions are far exceeding its stated national targets is not a surprise, given that the International Energy Agency reported that total energy-related emissions reached a record 37.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2024, up 0.8% from the previous year.

While this was lower than the global economic growth rate in 2024 (3.2%), which is good news, the bad news is that the emissions reduction plans presented to the UN by many countries, including Canada, are so unrealistic that far from being “ambitious,” they border on political fraud.

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The only positive outcome of all this will be that the so-called UN climate change strategy will collapse like a house of cards. At this point, member countries, including Canada, could give up their unattainable goals and start taking practical steps to reduce emissions.

This includes eliminating coal-fired electricity worldwide through the use of practical, low- and zero-emission energy alternatives such as nuclear, hydropower and natural gas—one of the most effective ways to dramatically and quickly reduce global emissions.

Another option is to shift money currently earmarked for wasteful climate policies that don't work (see Canada) to making both public and private infrastructure more resilient to climate change.

The reason is that there will always be severe weather regardless of whether it is caused by natural or man-made climate change.

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