Catherine McKenna was Canada’s Environment and Climate Change Minister, then Infrastructure and Communities Minister, between 2015 and 2021. The official launch for her new book, Run Like A Girl, takes place September 16. In this feature interview with The Energy Mix Publisher Mitchell Beer, she talks about women’s experience in politics, the need to push back on online hate, and the importance of doing the work. The interview has been edited for length.

The Energy Mix: You have a few other things on your to-do list. What motivated you to write a book?

McKenna: It’s not just about climate or politics. It’s about how you make change. It’s just generally a hard time working on climate, working on human rights, working on really important issues, and I’m hoping the book inspires people.

I did things that were unrelated to climate before I got into politics. [But] a lot happened when I was in office, and some of it was hard to talk about. I wasn’t really sure what to do with it, but I decided to include the threats I got because I don’t think it’s acceptable.

I often get asked if I always wanted to be a politician. No, I wanted to be an Olympian. And I actually learned a lot from my swimming background about hard work, about setting long-term stretch goals, about getting up every day, working hard, then getting on the blocks, and if you don’t go fast enough, which of course you don’t, because it’s a large stretch goal, then you do more work, and you work with others.

So the book is for young people, women, and anyone who wants to make change. You will need to fight sometimes. Sometimes you’re just going to have to get through the day. It will be hard. But you can make a difference, and I want people working on climate or other big issues to know they’re not alone. There are people in other rooms, boardrooms, cabinet rooms, negotiating rooms, in the communities, on the streets, who do support them. They shouldn’t feel like they’ve got to take this on all alone—there’s a solidarity, and actually, we can make change.

The Mix: I’m hearing you say that kind of support is what it takes to get through all the challenges we’re facing internationally.

McKenna: I do really encourage my climate friends to, get out in the streets. That’s hard, and now [in the United States] it feels like it could be dangerous to do that. But we really need to call out heavy polluters, big polluters, and you need some strength when you do that.

I’m also working with women and women leading on climate, because women are 2½ times more likely to push on climate change, to raise climate change in a conversation in their community. If you have women on boards or in C-suites, they’re more likely to not only prioritize climate and ESG, they’re more likely to disclose their emissions. So I think that’s also a way of creating a network of people who are committed.

The Mix: You said you didn’t write about some of the things that you went through in office because you needed sympathy. But what are the lessons learned from some of those experiences in an era of misinformation, disinformation, hate, and let’s call it what it is, the rise of fascism in the United States?

McKenna: I taught a course at the University of Toronto in their Masters of Global Affairs program, and it was all about the rise of social media and the Twitter revolution to help make change. I got into politics, we had to promote what we were doing, and my campaign was fine. Then suddenly I became the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and it got bonkers, especially when we brought in carbon pricing. I felt like I was really on the front lines when it became really quite bad.

And Shannon Phillips, the [Alberta] Minister of Environment and Climate Change, I talk about her experience, too, where she got a tonne of hate. And then Katherine Hayhoe, a Canadian climate scientist in the U.S., who was getting the same. There was this concentric circle of climate denial and misogyny at the same time.

Speaking out about this is important because the number one way to deal with this issue is for Canadians to say it’s not okay. If you want legislation to hold social media companies accountable or more money for security for politicians, people have to realize it’s a problem.

We all also need to reflect on how we engage online. I was subject to personal attacks that would then be clipped, pushed out on social media, then the algorithms would be used to amplify them for rage farming through right wing channels. We need that to stop. As politicians, we can have vigorous debate, but personal attacks are not okay. We need to have online hate legislation and hold social media companies accountable, when they’re owned by billionaires who have their own agenda. And we need to take people’s security seriously, because someone will get hurt or killed or their family member or their staff member will…

These campaigns are organized. They’re not neutral. And they have real impact, because they’re intended to chase people out of politics. They’re meant to demean women, in particular, but you know, it can be anyone. If you’re racialized, or LGBTQ2+, or you’re Indigenous, it’s way worse.

The Mix: One of the rage farms showed up at one of your news conferences. The way we heard the story was that you pushed back on the name-calling, on them creating this “Climate Barbie” slur.

McKenna: It kind of annoyed me, because I never played with Barbies. And who cares? But I knew what they were trying to say: she’s a woman, she’s kind of a bimbo, and climate change is fake. But then I saw it in a tweet from [former Conservative agriculture minister] Jerry Ritz. I was at climate negotiations in New York, and… I posted a tweet. I said, ‘would you use that kind of language for your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, your daughter? We need more women in politics. Your sexist comments won’t stop us.’

It went viral. And I realized that most Canadians were appalled by this behaviour. I mean, we’ve gone a long way since then, but they were really not happy. And that was important.

The second time was at the end of a ministerial meeting. Just as I was going to the podium, I was told Rebel Media was there. And of course, they got the first question. So I said, ‘look, I’m happy to answer your question. But first, you have to commit to never calling me Climate Barbie. You guys use that term. It’s not okay…

I had to be really careful. If you’re a woman in politics, you can’t sound shrill, you can’t sound angry, you have to be very calm. And I was very angry.

But I just projected calm. I asked him to commit to never using that term. And then I answered his question, and that also went viral. And what was the nicest was that it wasn’t just [amplified by] climate people.

This is what I think is important to remember: that Canadians are actually pretty good people. I heard from a dad who said he used that video to show his kids how to deal with a bully. I didn’t go on Twitter and try to fight everyone who said things about me. But sometimes it’s important to remind people that it’s not okay.

The Mix: Do you want to generalize from that experience to how we gain ground against climate misinformation, against climate denial, against misinformation of all kinds? And the way the really destructive and damaging politics we’re seeing right now are keeping women out of politics?

McKenna: People who have a voice do need to step up and speak up. That’s why I feel like it’s on me: I have a voice, and I’m able to speak up. And it’s true that you’ve got to stand up to bullies.

We have a particular situation with the President of the United States, and that has to be managed. It’s a very difficult thing. I talk a lot about how we dealt with climate in the face of Trump One, which was very different. They were much less organized. And they had people who were, y’know, more rational. But it was still standing up, and it was also bringing together unusual suspects. So we created the Ministerial on Climate Action, which was me telling China, [Chinese climate envoy] Xie Zhenhua, and [EU Climate and Energy Commissioner Miguel Arias] Cañete that we had to do this. Saying that we’re not losing the Paris agreement after one year because we have Donald Trump, who doesn’t believe in climate change.

And we came together. We all stood up and said the Paris agreement is going ahead, and we’re all committed to climate action.

We really need people to do that now. It’s even more rational because the case to work on climate is even stronger now. The costs are so much more extreme, they’ve exceeded what we ever expected in the short term, and we’re seeing those costs in real time. We’re seeing the real risks to infrastructure, to people’s lives, but also the risk of not being insured. Insurers and reinsurers do not want to insure risks of litigation, because we now have attribution science. And meanwhile, the solutions are so much cheaper…

The politics are really hard, but that doesn’t change either the costs, and how it’s much cheaper to act than not to act. Nor does it take away from the economic opportunity to scale solutions that are far cheaper and more efficient and better, and are available to everyone. So we’re just going to have to move ahead, but it’s going to be bumpy. We need leaders to speak up, to actually say this is what makes sense.

McKenna said no one has ever done a post-mortem on Canada’s attempt at consumer carbon pricing—including groups that she said were ready to fight for it at the beginning, but didn’t stick with it over the longer haul.

The government hindered itself by saying we wouldn’t spend taxpayer dollars to advertise or explain our own policy. That was really moronic, to be honest. People said, it’s taxpayer dollars. But taxpayers are entitled to know about major policies, and in this case, that they would have to file their taxes to get the climate action incentive. That’s just explaining policy to people. And meanwhile, [Ontario Premier] Doug Ford was using massive taxpayer dollars to run a disinformation campaign.

The irony of all of this is that carbon pricing was working. It meant that low- and middle-income people were better off. Now people are worse off, and we’ve lost a tool in our toolbox that was very significant in terms of emissions.

It’s sad that we’ve lost this policy, and it’s not just sad for us. A lot of people [in other countries] were looking to Canada for pricing done in a revenue neutral way that seemed to be transparent. I had many [U.S.] Republicans coming to me to ask me about carbon pricing and how we did it.

But you have to have good communications, and you have to do it over and over. And then you have to have outside spokespeople…coalitions of the willing that bring diverse groups together who can speak to their own audience in a different way.

It wasn’t going to resonate 100% with everyone. But I hope we take some lessons from this, because we can’t have losses like this, losing hard-fought policies that actually get real emission reductions and also deal with things like affordability and inequality. We do not have time for that. We do not.

NASA scientist Peter Kalmus recently wrote that this is going to be one of the hottest years in our lives. And on average, it will be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives. The least fiery and smoky summer of the rest of our lives. I truly hate being the bearer of bad news, but physics doesn’t care. The physics says more fossil fuels, hotter planet. And I think that’s important. Physics doesn’t care about politics.