The Way to Net Zero

In the midst of two crises - the pandemic and climate change, it’s easy to forget the promises that goverments made re the latter - to bring carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 - that’s thirty years away. It seems a long time except we also promised to be half way there by 2030 - and we are not even close.

I heard Isabel Turcotte, The Pembina Institute’s Director of federal policy speak at a seminar of the University of Toronto’s Department of the Environment late last year - and she has recently written a good article for Corporate Knights, outlining some principles that the corporate world needs to follow - reminding us that goals are not solely about government initiatives.

• Carbon budgets are necessary to measure progress. We have to know where we stand and whether we are making progress or just talking

• We have to start early. It’s no point in having a long term goal and delaying putting it into action.

• We have to effect the reductions by using all the tools at hand - not just one.

• Corporation s have to work together and initiate policy - Turcotte terms it “turning up the heat.

  Good reminders.

Time for Reflection

In these days of withdrawal from our normal active lives, there are opportunities to poinder issues of importance now and those with implications for the future.

As I look from my 22nd floor at a freight train crossing through a dense part of the city, transportation of goods is even more important now. Since it is one of the major areas in need of rethinking to embrace climate change, here is what a new paper from the Pembina Institute has to say.