Canada would do well to produce its own version of the National Climate Assessment that rocked the U.S. climate community after national media published advanced drafts of the report earlier this week, according to Erin Flanagan, national policy director with the Pembina Institute.
“I’d like to see Canadian scientists do this same kind of research,” Flanagan told Canadian Press. Climate change “is something that will transform our economy and the places we live,” but those impacts are ” a missing part of our discourse.”
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Natural Resources Canada produced the country’s most recent national climate assessment in 2014, Flanagan noted.
“It’s time for an update,” she said, adding that without the “counterweight” of new data, the national dialogue “is often about the incremental costs of new policies like a carbon tax.” What’s missed is any discussion of “what happens if we don’t do enough, or what happens if we do nothing, which is certainly not a free pass on costs.”
Asked by email to comment on the U.S. release, Environment and Climate Minister Catherine McKenna said only that tackling climate change “is the right thing to do.
