“This is the roadmap out of climate crisis that Canadians have been waiting for.” — Naomi Klein, activist and New York Times bestselling author of This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine • One of Canada’s top policy analysts provides the first full-scale blueprint for meeting our climate change commitments • Contains the results of a national poll on Canadians’ attitudes to the climate crisis • Shows that radical transformative climate action can be done, while producing jobs and reducing inequality as we retool how we live and work. • Deeply researched and targeted specifically to Canada and Canadians while providing a model that other countries could follow Canada needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% to prevent a catastrophic 1.5 degree increase in the earth’s average temperature — assumed by many scientists to be a critical “danger line” for the planet and human life as we know it. It’s 2020, and Canada is not on track to meet our targets. To do so, we’ll need radical systemic change to how we live and work—and fast. How can we ever achieve this? Top policy analyst and author Seth Klein reveals we can do it now because we’ve done it before. During the Second World War, Canadian citizens and government remade the economy by retooling factories, transforming their workforce, and making the war effort a common cause for all Canadians to contribute to. Klein demonstrates how wartime thinking and community efforts can be repurposed today for Canada’s own Green New Deal. He shares how we can create jobs and reduce inequality while tackling our climate obligations for a climate neutral—or even climate zero—future. From enlisting broad public support for new economic models, to job creation through investment in green infrastructure, Klein shows us a bold, practical policy plan for Canada’s sustainable future. More than this: A Good War offers a remarkably hopeful message for how we can meet the defining challenge of our lives. COVID-19 has brought a previously unthinkable pace of change to the world—one which demonstrates our ability to adapt rapidly when we’re at risk. Many recent changes are what Klein proposes in these very pages. The world can, actually, turn on a dime if necessary. This is the blueprint for how to do it.

Canada’s Top Climate Change Risks identifies the top risk areas based on the extent and likelihood of the potential damage, and rates the risk areas according to society’s ability to adapt and reduce negative outcomes. These 12 major areas of risk are: agriculture and food, coastal communities, ecosystems, fisheries, forestry, geopolitical dynamics, governance and capacity, human health and wellness, Indigenous ways of life, northern communities, physical infrastructure, and water. The report describes an approach to inform federal risk prioritization and adaptation responses. The Panel outlines a multi-layered method of prioritizing adaptation measures based on an understanding of the risk, adaptation potential, and federal roles and responsibilities.

In fall 2015, the newly elected Trudeau government endorsed the Paris Agreement and promised to tackle global warming. In 2016, it released a major report which set out a national energy strategy embracing clean growth, technological innovation and carbon pricing. Rather than putting in place tough measures to achieve the Paris targets, however, the government reframed global warming as a market opportunity for Canada's clean technology sector. The Big Stall traces the origins of the government's climate change plan back to the energy sector itself — in particular Big Oil. It shows how, in the last fifteen years, Big Oil has infiltrated provincial and federal governments, academia, media and the non-profit sector to sway government and public opinion on the realities of climate change and what needs to be done about it. Working both behind the scenes and in high-profile networks, Canada's energy companies moved the debate away from discussion of the measures required to create a zero-carbon world and towards market-based solutions that will cut carbon dioxide emissions — but not enough to prevent severe climate impacts. This is how Big Oil and think tanks unraveled the Kyoto Protocol, and how Rachel Notley came to deliver the Business Council of Canada's energy plan. Donald Gutstein explains how and why the door has been left wide open for oil companies to determine their own futures in Canada, and to go on drilling new wells, building new oil sands plants and constructing new pipelines. This book offers the background information readers need to challenge politicians claiming they are taking meaningful action on global warming.

The impacts of changing climate are already evident in Canada and globally. Scientific understanding of climate change indicates that Canada will experience significant shifts in weather patterns over the period of a single generation, a trend that will likely continue for several centuries. Communities of all sizes will face many new risks and opportunities. Managing the impacts of a changing climate will require developing local strategies.

Pandemics, massive earthquakes, war, and other catastrophes inspire immediate action because their casualties and destruction are immediately visible. Climate change is an unyielding problem because its long-range dangers are hidden, and thus it is a global risk unlike anything in human experience. The federal government recently announced aggressive climate targets for Canada. We have committed to producing net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which will require major changes for our economy and way of life. Canadian citizens need to understand why our most distinguished climate scientists and our senior political leaders think that we must meet this target. Canada and Climate Change explains the importance of policies that will ensure we meet the net-zero emissions target. William Leiss provides a firm grasp on what climate change is and how scientists have described shifts in the earth’s climate as they have occurred over hundreds of millions of years and as they are likely to occur in the near future, especially by the end of this century. Leiss argues that citizens have a right to place their trust in what climate scientists tell us. Canada and Climate Change is an essential primer on where we stand on the issue of climate change in Canada and what will unfold in the years ahead.

This introductory text evaluates the visible effects of climate change and looks ahead to future outcomes, reminding us of the price of inaction while exploring potential solutions.

As the Earth veers toward a biological tipping point, as resources like water, fish, oil and natural gas become scarcer and as climate change threatens our survival, how is Canada responding? What kind of future can Canadians expect? What changes need to be made?