The global energy transition is a moment of opportunity \u201cfor countries that are prepared to step up,\u201d and Canada has \u201cso much of what is required to lead,\u201d economist and climate policy specialist Diana Fox Carney told the opening session of Toronto Climate Week June 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is not whether change is coming, it already is. The question is whether Canada will lead that change or react to it,\u201d declared Fox Carney, who said she would \u201cleave it to members of the government\u201d to speak for the policies that government has enacted since her husband became prime minister just over a year ago. \u201cNow we need buy-in, we need practical and targeted action, we need investors and businesses to accelerate, we need people to believe in the pathway forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Outside the University of Toronto building where Fox Carney delivered her keynote address, climate activists circulated leaflets decrying rollbacks in past federal climate policies and urging Prime Minister Mark Carney to deliver on his Budget 2025 pledge to invest $40 million in a Youth Climate Corps<\/a> pilot project. One of the leaflets included suggested questions for Climate Week panelists, but the session format Monday (as several panelists mentioned onsite) did not include time for Q&As.<\/p>\n Youth Climate Corps organizer Minh-Ly De Reboul said the new budget commitment would only be enough to cover about 350 jobs, and even those funds have been delayed. The bigger vision for the Corps and for the government was \u201csupposed to be [about] nation-building, doing big, bold things, building Canada,\u201d she added. But Ottawa\u2019s recent policies are \u201cnot building Canada. This is not making us sovereign against the U.S. It\u2019s bringing us back to extractive fossil fuel pipelines.\u201d<\/p>\n In the session hall, Fox Carney traced a career that brought her from a degree in agricultural economics to rural development projects in parts of Africa dealing with a \u201cdeeply precarious environment\u201d. After seeing Western countries send grant money for development projects \u201cwhile simultaneously contributing to a degree of climate change that was simply unmanageable,\u201d she said she shifted her focus to \u201cwhat actually moves the needle\u201d on climate change and sustainability. Today, she advises investors on climate impact, governance, and risk.<\/p>\n The first lesson learned from that career trajectory is that \u201creal progress now is worth more than idealized answers or aspirational targets for the future,\u201d in a moment when \u201cmoral arguments do not get us to where we need to be,\u201d Fox Carney told participants. \u201cIn a more volatile and uncertain world where affordability and now security are the dominant concerns, climate action often falls off or fails to reach the list of priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n To reverse those losses and increase the momentum already building for the energy transition, \u201cwhat\u2019s important is to meet people and pools of money where they are, not where we wish they were,\u201d she added. \u201cWe need solutions that are practical, affordable, adaptable, and capable of improving people\u2019s lives right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Much of that momentum is coming from global clean energy investments that are now running far ahead<\/a> of fossil fuels, despite or because of deep geopolitical uncertainty.<\/p>\n