Climate Change, Once a Big Issue, Fades From Canada’s Election

The fusion of ICECAP of the Arctic. Forest fires of records in several provinces. A country that, on average, is warming up the rate of the rest of the world.

And yet, as Canadians go to the surveys on Monday, climate change is not only among the 10 main themes for voters, according to recent surveys.

“That is not what this choice is about,” said Jessica Green, a politician from the University of Toronto that focuses on climatic problems.

What is the election about, almost everyone agrees, is to choose a leader who can face Donald J. Trump. The US president has been threatening Canada with a commercial war, if not the total annexation such as “State 51”.

Leading in the surveys is Mark Carney of the liberals, which has a pedigree of decades in climatic politics. For five years, it was specially sent from the United Nations on the action and finance of the weather, and headed a coalition of banks that promised to stop adding carbon dioxide to the environment through its loans and investments by 2050.

Despite that curriculum, Mr. Carney has not made the weather central in his campaign. When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned, one of Mr. Carney’s first movements was to discard one of the least popular policies of his predecessor, a fuel tax that included gasoline in the pump and was based on the intensity of the emissions.

I only thought that most Canadians recovered much of that money in reimbursement checks, Mr. Carney described the misunderstood politics and, therefore, “too divisive.”

That movement, together with what many see as similarities between their opponent of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre and Mr. Trump, have helped Mr. Carney as it has risen in the surveys.

“Carney did something really intelligent by repealing the consumer’s carbon tax, which was very unpopular and was basically the basic of Pailievre’s campaign against him,” said Dr. Green. “That was the wind of conservatives.” “

Mr. Carney is very aware of the dynamics. In a recently televised debate, he told Mr. Poilievre that “years was running against Justin Trudeau and carbon tax, and both have gone.”

Mr. Poilievre is a defender of the huge Canadian oil and gas industry. The country is the fourth largest oil producer in the world and the fifth largest for gas. But unlike Mr. Trump, he recognizes the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are promoting global warming.

“Canadian oil and clean natural gas should move coal and reduce emissions worldwide by allowing India and other Asian countries to use gas instead of dirty coal,” he said on a press conference path earlier this month.

But Mr. Carney’s proposals are not so different. He says he becomes Canada in “a superpower in conventional and clean energy.” Its platform proposes measures such as reinforcing carbon markets and accelerating the approvals of clean energy projects.

Perhaps the biggest difference between the two candidates is their position on the limit of oil and gas emissions in Canada, and a tax on industrial emissions. Both policies were defended by Mr. Trudeau.

Mr. Poilievre discarded them, in line with the demands of the industry, while Mr. Carney would keep them. According to the Canadian Climate Institute, the Carbon Industrial Tax reduces emissions at least three times more than the consumer tax and would make more than any other policy to reduce emissions between now and 2030.

Canada is one of the highest emitters in the world of greenhouse gases per capita and is out of place to fulfill its promises to reduce its emissions under the 2015 Paris Agreement. It has directed cuts of at least 40 to 45 percent from the levels of 2005 by 2030, but the latest national broadcasting inventory report shows a drop of only 8.5 percent to 2023.