Another day, another major climate policy watered down. On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that he is pausing the EV mandate created by his predecessor as part of a broader review aimed at creating a \u201ccarbon competitiveness\u201d strategy. Given the Trump administration\u2019s open war on renewable energy and climate policy and the Carney government\u2019s determination to make life easier for the business community, it\u2019s fair to wonder if that strategy will include more strategic retreats \u2014 and if any of Canada\u2019s signature climate policies will survive the next few years as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also fair to point out that Carney is operating in a fundamentally different political and economic environment than former prime minister Justin Trudeau ever was. Where climate policy under Trudeau\u2019s government was mostly about establishing moral and political leadership, Carney is facing a much more existential menu of choices. You might even call it a hinge point \u2014 and Carney almost certainly would, given that he was in the process of writing a whole book about them. While China races ahead in the development and application of key low-carbon technologies, from wind and solar power to batteries and electric vehicles, the United States has effectively abandoned that race in order to advance the interests of fossil fuels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Case in point: despite claiming that America is in the midst of an \u201cenergy crisis,\u201d the Trump administration\u00a0cancelled a nearly completed<\/a> $6.2-billion wind project off the coast of Rhode Island. It would have delivered power at 9.8 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is already cheaper than the average cost of electricity in New England, and locked that price in for two decades. They cancelled it, supposedly, because it was permitted\u00a0too quickly \u2014 despite the Trump administration\u2019s enthusiasm for permitting new oil and gas projects as quickly as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n The real reason, I\u2019d suggest, is because it threatens the political and economic hegemony of the oil and gas industry. That\u2019s something US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and the rest of his administration won\u2019t tolerate. His official social media account routinely posts false or misleading information about renewable energy and fossil fuels, all in an obvious attempt to boost the latter at the expense of the former. On Monday, for example,\u00a0he wrote that<\/a> \u201cthe U.S. is rapidly becoming THE powerhouse of the fastest growing energy source on the planet: natural gas.\u201d In reality, a place the Trump administration inhabits with ever-declining frequency, solar actually grew 10 times faster \u2014\u00a010 times \u2014\u00a0than natural gas did in 2024<\/a>. The United States, meanwhile, has been the world\u2019s\u00a0biggest gas producer since 2011<\/a>.<\/p>\n