GWYN MORGAN: Net zero is collapsing — why is Canada still clinging to it?

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.After decades spent pursuing net zero dreams at great cost to their economies, many of the world’s industrialized nations are waking up. War, geopolitical instability, and the threat of disrupted oil and natural gas supplies have refocused attention on energy security. More and more governments are adjusting accordingly.Canada’s Liberal government, however, is among those that are not. As the climate change policy responses of countries increasingly diverge, it is worth reviewing how we even got here.What began nearly half a century ago as a primarily scientific concern soon evolved into a sweeping political project. At the 1979 World Climate Conference, delegates called on governments to “foresee and prevent man-made changes to the climate that might be adverse to the well-being of humanity.” By the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, that caution had hardened into a global mandate to combat “dangerous human interference with the climate system.” The chief villain behind this alleged interference? The oil and natural gas industry.From Rio, the movement accelerated. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and subsequent agreements imposed emissions targets primarily on Western economies. Meanwhile, many of the world’s largest emitters — including China and India — continued expanding their energy use and the associated greenhouse gas emissions, without comparable constraints. The result was a fundamental imbalance: countries like Canada accepted economic sacrifice for a negligible global effect.For years, governments could sustain this contradiction. They imposed carbon taxes, subsidized wind and solar energy, and promised that technological innovation would reconcile environmental ambition with economic growth. That illusion is now breaking down.Recent events have exposed the fragility of the global energy system. Conflict in the Middle East and threats to critical shipping routes have sent oil prices soaring above US$100 per barrel. Countries that once championed rapid decarbonization are now demanding that supply lines be restored and fossil fuel flows maintained. The same governments that pledged to eliminate crude oil and natural gas (along with dirty coal) are now scrambling to secure more of it..Even some of the climate change movement’s most committed voices are retreating. As prominent climate journalist Lucy Biggers was forced to admit: “Solar and wind production just aren’t as energy-dense or reliable as oil and gas.” Despite trillions of dollars spent on renewables, Biggers noted, fossil fuels still furnish 86% of the world’s primary energy.That is the reality policymakers in net zero obsessed countries like Canada have tried to ignore.Energy forms are not readily interchangeable. Modern economies depend on sources that are reliable, scalable, and energy-dense. Wind and solar, while useful supplements, cannot yet replace oil and natural gas at the scale required. Attempts to force that transition prematurely have led to rising costs, supply instability, and, increasingly, public backlash.The consequences are visible everywhere. Even in places once held up as models of green transition, governments are quietly reversing course. The recent collapse of energy supply in Cuba — where electricity shortages have become widespread — offers a stark illustration of what happens when energy systems fail to meet basic demand. Net zero, when it actually arrives, is a lot less pleasant than promised.Yet Canada continues to pursue policies that ignore these realities.The federal government may have removed the consumer carbon tax, but this was largely cosmetic. The industrial carbon tax remains, hidden from public view — and is scheduled to rise to $170 per tonne of CO2-equivalent emissions within a few years. These costs do not disappear; they are passed through the economy in the form of higher prices for goods, services, and energy..At the same time, Canada’s share of global emissions remains small at a mere 1.6%. Even drastic domestic reductions will have no measurable impact on global climate outcomes. What they will do is weaken Canada’s economy.This is not theoretical. Years of restrictive policy have already contributed to declining capital investment in all critical sectors of the economy, with mounting pressures on productivity, unemployment, and affordability. For an energy producing and exporting nation, the consequences are particularly severe.Meanwhile, the rest of the world is moving on. The shift is practical. Governments are recognizing that energy security, economic growth, and human welfare cannot be subordinated indefinitely to emissions targets that are neither globally coordinated nor technologically feasible.Canada, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, has yet to make that adjustment.Instead, his Liberal Cabinet remains committed to a net zero framework that is increasingly detached from global conditions. Industrial carbon taxes continue to rise. Public funds are directed toward energy sources that cannot deliver consistent reliability. And the assumption persists that domestic sacrifice will meaningfully influence global emissions. It will not.Canada’s energy policy must begin with a basic fact: the world still runs on crude oil and natural gas. Until alternatives can match their scale and reliability, attempts to force a rapid transition will impose ruinous costs without delivering real results.The global retreat from net zero is already underway. The only question is how long Canada will wait before acknowledging it.Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

GWYN MORGAN: Net zero is collapsing — why is Canada still clinging to it?

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