OTTAWA — The federal government has released its long-term climate strategy with a caution that most Canadians — while sympathetic to the cause — don’t yet understand the “magnitude of the challenge.”
The document suggests the country should find a way to cut emissions 80 per cent below 2005 levels by 2050 in order to match the ambition of the international Paris climate accord.
That means ratcheting down Canada’s entire output of greenhouse gases to 150 million tonnes a year. The most recent Environment Canada inventory assessed the country’s carbon dioxide equivalent emissions at 732 million tonnes in 2014 — and slowly rising.
“Most Canadians recognize the need to mitigate climate change and limit the increase in the global average temperature, but the magnitude of the challenge is less well understood, with a requirement for very deep emissions cuts from every sector by mid-century,” says the 87-page plan, released Friday at an international climate conference in Morocco.
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