Mark Carney seems like a nice guy, but he has abandoned the environment

Prime Minister Mark Carney's honeymoon period seems to be extending much longer than I had expected. Most liberals still seem to like him, and many conservatives have joined them (which shouldn't surprise us too much given that most of his policies are very much conservative ones, regardless of the party he is supposed to be leading).

Me, I'm feeling a bit sour about the guy. Perhaps the best that can be said is that he's not Pierre Poilievre. And he's been given a crappy job, to be fair, battling against the headwinds of Trumpism. But he has now abandoned too many liberal/progressive stances to be taken seriously as a Liberal. Most glaringly, he has abandoned the environment in general and the fight against climate change in particular. 

I said this to a Liberal friend and she insisted that, no, no, no, he hasn't abandoned it, has a plan, a long-term plan. But that's not at all evident to me. It seems to me that Carney - who once talked a good game on climate change and other issues - has decided that the economy is more important than the environment. And, short-term, he may be right, but long-term this will take some recovering from.

Anyway, someone else has done the hard work of keeping track of the extent to which Carney has dropped the climate change ball. University of Toronto prof and climate activist Laura Tozer lists the evidence in a handy little crib-sheet on her LinkedIn post:

❌ Suspended Canada's Clean Electricity Regulations in Alberta ❌ Weakened methane regulations ❌ Scrapped the Oil & Gas Sector Emissions Cap ❌ Abandoned Canada’s consumer carbon pricing system ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes retrofit program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended Canada Greener Homes Loan Program to electrify and improve household efficiency ❌ Ended the Electric Vehicles (iZEV) program ❌ Delayed Canada’s Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate ❌ Passed bill C5 ‘Building Canada Act’ to allow government to override 12 laws and 7 regulations, including the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, for designated projects ❌ Committed to clawing back Canada’s anti-greenwashing legislation ❌ Announced plans to eliminate a tax on private jets and yachts ❌ Weakened the Alberta industrial carbon price from the $170/tonne it should have been (if the federal government enforced its own policies) to $130/tonne

Not a very auspicious summary, is it? And I don't see much evidence of a plan there, long-term or not.