Ideas - Can we have new pipelines and curb climate change, too?

Episode Date: October 7, 2025

For the past decade, Canadians have been split 50/50 on new pipelines — that has changed. Two recent opinion polls found three quarters of eligible voters in Canada want at least one new pipeline built to export more fossil fuels. Yet, 70 per cent of people consider climate change a serious threat. IDEAS producer Tom Howell explores the incompatibilities and future scenarios.Fill out our listener survey here. We appreciate your input! 

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It's like he's trying to date you all of the sudden. Yeah, and I do look like my mother. Love Me. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. The fact is we all want to... Of course we all like to... We've got four to five billion people on the planet who want...

Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyat. Five billion people on the planet want the same quality of life that we have. We all want to believe that we can just... Of course, we would like to have this chance. It can be dangerous to ask people what they want. But I want to get back to something you said about 70% of Canadians. We want to be a strong economy in the G7. No, we want the best scenario that we can have.

Civilization depends on people suppressing their desires. Sure. Some of them anyway, some of the time. Sorry to be such an academic about this. And the news is full of people suggesting what they think. We might want. If people want to have the same lifestyles as they have today. If we want a stable climate and we want to meet Paris goals.

Or perhaps it's what they want us to want. You said during the campaign you want to make Canada an energy superpower. We want to be a player in that future world. We really do not want to go beyond the most optimistic scenario. We really do not want to go beyond the most optimistic scenario. All I want here is a logic. I want to know what people want. Wouldn't that be great? Opinion polls from Enveronics and Nanos suggest roughly three quarters of eligible voters in Canada

now want to see at least one new pipeline built to help us export more fossil fuels. For the past decade, the public's view on that question had seemed to be split 50-50. Meanwhile, a poll by the Angus Reed Institute shows 70% of Canadians consider climate change as seriously. threat. People want different things. Individually, each person wants different things at the same time. I was hearing that we can have both. I was hearing so many different, often very conflicting things. And so as someone very curious and wanting to understand the quote unquote truth or try to understand how these competing perspectives are reconciled or not, that's what kept me going and pushing through the research. Amy Janswood teaches political science

at McGill University. Her new book is called Mega Pipelines, Mega Resistance. It traces the recent history in Canada of campaigns for and against new oil and gas infrastructure. So fresh is in its pre-press galley's forum here? Ideas, producer Tom Howell met Professor Janswood at her office. Okay, and then

here's the summary for policymakers. He's hoping to understand the logic that can justify a new pipeline now. I assume you're somewhat familiar with what this document is. Yes, I make my students read it, so I have some idea of what it contains. That being said, I'm a political scientist, not a climate scientist, but it's pretty distilled for your lay reader. Amy and I are looking over a 36-page booklet with a not exactly catchy title. It's called the Summary for Policymakers, and it's authored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I'm meeting Amy about an hour before she teaches her first class of the academic year at McGill.

This is a class in international relations, but we focus on problems of cooperation, action around big, complex problems, including climate change. Why do you make all your students read the summary for policymakers? I try to intentionally give my students the opportunity to understand where things sit, even though I don't teach science class, I teach classes that are related to the social science of these problems. It's important to understand where the science sits, and the science is very clear. So the question is, what do we do with that information? In Canada, both major political parties at the federal level agree on one aspect of what we

should do. That's to build new oil and gas pipelines. I assume their policy makers have also read the summary for policymakers, but, and have looked and looked for this, they never spent all of the logical steps that take them from reading the summary to wanting the pipeline. What is the best argument you've heard in favor of constructing more pipelines in Canada? I think the main argument, as it boils down to, is that we are oil-producing country, and we need to get our resources to market, and pipelines are the best way to do that. Okay, I noticed that that's only part of an argument if you've started off with what the IPCC tells us about this century. I mean, that sounds like an argument that could exist at any point

in time, really, as long as the technology exists. It's like an argument in the, it could be in a lab. It could be, you know, but in the context of the time we're in the year 2025 when we're recording this, how does that argument join up with the context? Yeah, it's a great question. Things have changed very dramatically from 2008 to 2015 to 2025, right, to where we are now. You know, to answer your question, there's no logical pathway between building new pipelines that would require more and faster expansion of the tar stands or oil sands. And what would be compatible with either our domestic targets would require some gymnastics, and we can get into that around the politics of the emissions cap. But with our international, the international climate goals, around one and a half

or two degrees, right, we are not on track. We've already breached temporarily, one and a half degrees last year, but certainly even in a two-degree world, investments in new oil and gas infrastructure are not aligned. Politically, it's been very difficult to have those conversations and to make those linkages. One of the recurring themes that I heard in my interviews and my research when I did ask about climate is that folks have this very acute sense that there is this incompatibility, right? I think there's a lot of need to have honest conversations about what these compatibilities and incompatibilities are. First you say you'll do, and then you don't,

and then you say you will, and then you won't, you're undecided now, so what are you going to do? Deciding what one wants can be the project of a lifetime, but according to this 36-page-long document, I keep mentioning, we're supposed to decide what we want quite quickly. Tempting as it may be to spend one's time messing around. So the question is, what do we do with that information? What do we do we do?

In hopes of hurrying us along a little, the world scientists didn't just boil down all their cumulative climate research into these 36 pages available for free online. They went one better. They included a menu of five scenarios. for the final two decades of this century. The implication, the authors never make it explicit, is that we, citizens of planet Earth,

should read these pages, pick the scenario we want, and comport ourselves accordingly. As for how many of us have heard of this report, let alone done the reading, when I left my bubble of researchers, I saw that ultimately very few people around me knew about the IPCC. or they had only a vague idea of what it was.

Iris Amatardillon, a climate scientist in Toulouse, France. Even today, when someone asks me what I do, and I say I'm a climatologist, they ask me, oh, so is it true, global warming? Faced with these reactions from non-scientists, Iris teamed up with an illustrator, Xavier-Oriand. Together, they adapted the summary for policymakers as a graphic novel.

The hope make it more sugary and appealing. There's this story, the scenario, with two characters and a bond that develops. They serve to help the reader

get to the end of the reading following this journey. And I think the illustrations create a kind of closeness with the reader, like with the reactions, the expressions, and the colors.

I was really looking for a tool to make the general public aware of the IPCC and above all to make them know the contents of the IPCC's reports and all these problems relating to what's at stake. So which of the five IPCC scenarios, in your opinion, is the most important, the most desirable, the goal for you when you think of the future and what you want to aim for? Well, really, the question seems it's a very simple answer. The one I want to follow is the SSP-1, the most optimistic, the one which follows a just transition, respectful of the planet's limits, based on a profound transformation of our energy systems, our social and economic systems. I think we shouldn't even pose the question of whether we want one of the other scenarios.

But which scenario do you want is, judging from the report, exactly the question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is posing to humankind. There five scenarios relate to the average temperature near the surface of the planet between the years 2081 and 2100. So that's starting about 56 years from when I'm recording. Case it helped, that's also currently the age of Jennifer Aniston, a famous actress from the sitcom Friends. Okay, okay, okay, okay. How did this happen to me? How did this happen to me?

The scenarios go like this. First scenario, 1.5 degrees Celsius globally hotter than the 19th century. Second scenario goes up to about 2.4 degrees. Scenario 3. Up towards 3. Fourth scenario is 3 and a half to 4 and a bit. And scenario five, no one's alive! No, it just is even hotter. We have cities awash. Countries emptying out, certain crops not growing.

Maybe we adapt. Who knows? When we look? When we look at least, we're just the risks associated to each. When we look at just the risks associated with each scenario, and even with the most optimistic scenario, we really don't want to live in that. It amounts to a terrible catastrophe. And like, already, are we going to be able to adapt ourselves for scenario one and bend the curve

enough to achieve these temperatures and save the other living beings between now and 2030, 2050? 2100? I know that sometimes I do look at the results of the other scenarios. I know that sometimes I do look at the results of the other scenarios. When we see the current human trajectory, in 2100, the entire tropical region will have deadly heat waves for about 365 days of the year. So it's really the entire population that won't be able to live there anymore, not to mention the other living beings.

Besides, it's one of the major of Group 2 of the Giac who said that today 3.3, 3.6 million of persons live in these conditions very vulnerable.

Besides that, today 3.3 to 3.6 billion people already live in areas very vulnerable to climate change. We know that we won't be able to avoid 1.5 degrees

of warming at the global scale and above that, we really must rise as little as possible. So there, I don't know if I responded to the question, but the question seems to me, the answer seems obvious. Maybe I'm going to find people who, for them, they admit that the goal really is four degrees.

For them, that seems realistic. So they're going to base all their ideas on this goal. For you, this would be just crazy? Yes, for me, it would be just crazy. Yes, I'm not certain that these persons have conscious of what it means yes for me that would be crazy i'm not certain that these people really know what that means that four degrees it doesn't mean four degrees in the town where you live it means four degrees at the scale of the annual global average that means in other areas when it comes to local temperatures

seasonal temperatures there will be temperatures that go up much more than four degrees we see these consequences already today. We see these consequences already today. We observe the frequency and intensity of extreme events is only growing. And according to the different scenarios, they're going to grow even more. So more heat waves, more fires, forest fires, or even the rainfall, the floods that grow in frequency and intensity. And if we look at the different, trajectories. We really do not want to go beyond the most optimistic scenario. The scenario the most optimist.

There is so much catastrophic flood damage. Okay, what do I need to bring with me and what can I leave behind? The fire is growing rapidly, already at more than two square kilometers in less than a day. Search and rescue efforts are ongoing. New research has found last year's wildfire season in Canada, released more carbon emissions. than all but three nations on Earth. Why can't the Canadians get those wildfires under control? Canadian officials say this is the second worst season.

In drought-ridden fields, farmers dig up to 300 meters before finding a drop. Even then, it can be contaminated with salt from the seeping ocean water. Perhaps they put hope in some technology. Perhaps they put hope in this. some technology. And still, really, if they're aiming for four degrees, it's because they perhaps don't understand what that would subject them to,

or what it would put the rest of the planet through. A moment ago, Iris was describing a scenario of her own. The scenario, with two characters, a bond that develops. one of the IPCC scenarios, this one's the fictional premise of Iris's graphic novel, Horizon Climatic, Climate Horizons. I called it an adaptation of the summary for policymakers. Essentially it is, but also it's a story about two young adults named Iris and Xavier. Yes, same names as the book's two creators. This pair go on a journey, paying visits to nine authors of the latest IPCC report.

The character of Xavier represents a little the lector, it's to say the character of Xavier, he sort of represents the reader, meaning this whole coming into awareness that one goes through during the reading. And in parallel, there's the character of Iris,

who is a climatologist. She has more the role of opening a door for Xavier and the reader, into the world of research, presenting the climate. climate change experts in their various areas of study, whether it's the economy, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and so she accompanies Zaviers' character through his encounters. The tale takes its structure from a version of the psychological model known as the stages of grief.

Xavier, representing a non-expert facing a pile of climate science, goes through them all. He goes through the shock, the cholera, the sadness, then acceptance. It's quite important for me to speak about emotions in this work. Partly because I myself went through all these emotions during my studies and I still go through them when I learn new things about climate change. But what I wanted to underline most of all as a message is that an emotion is important. It's useful. It helps you move forward to action. In this model theoretical, so the core of doy, when we're in this phase of anxiety or of

deserpoor, we're in this theoretical model of the stages of grief, when you're in this phase of anxiety and depression, our shoulders sink down. We tend to not really get moving, not be active, and more to stay paralyzed, and tell ourselves everything's totally screwed up. The next emotion is acceptance. Okay, it's screwed up, but what am I going to do now? And then, experimentation. I'm going to try to change my practices at the individual or collective level. I'm going to try all these different things and then take the decision,

okay, this thing I'm going to integrate into my life. I'm going to talk about it with the people around me. I'm going to ask my neighbors how we can change things. and I'm going to plunge myself into this or that to try to understand. In fact, we know today that solutions exist, but they require major changes in every sector of activity. Here in Canada, we've found a solution. It's to build pipelines, to grow our fuel industry and so on.

Is it a good solution? From the point of view of the IPCC report, I think this idea is not coherent. And we know today that 100% of the re-shortment climatic observed in the last decade of those activities human. And we know today that 100% of the observed global warming in the recent decades is due to human activities. We also know, and it's made very clear, in the IPCC report, that we must reduce immediately and severely the extraction and use of fossil fuel energy if we want to respect the climate agreements. The impression I have is that some governments or industries use a partial reading,

even an opportunistic one, of the reports, in putting as a first priority the world. for the world's short-term energy demands. And for me, there's a strong dissonance in the fact that we know the facts. In that we know the facts, we know the seriousness of the situation. It's the gravity of the situation. And in the same time, we continue to

act as though we have the time. At the same time, we keep acting as though we have time. I think there has been a major change of heart on the part of Canadians and a major change of heart that they expect to see represented in their government. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith on a recent episode of CBC's Front Burner. She's commenting here on the Federal Liberal Party. They're leader only one because he was saying many of the same things I'm saying,

that we need to be an energy superpower, we need to support conventional and new energy, we want to be a strong economy in the G7, and we've got to be practical about how we balance emissions. reduction targets with economic growth. I think that the country is with us. We've got four to five billion people on the planet who want the same quality of life that we have. And to be able to do that, you need reliable sources of energy.

Traditional hydrocarbon fuels are the kind of energy that we need. Have you ever heard a coherent argument or one that's in any way convincing to you for constructing more infrastructure for fossil fuel energy? There are many arguments, but convincing ones? No. I imagine there are many factors that explain why someone might want that,

notably the fact that we're extremely dependent on fossil fuel energy, which is a familiar story. Our whole society, our way of life, our infrastructure, the economy is structured according to fossil fuels. And so like, it can seem perhaps pragmatic or realist to defend what we already know. Or yeah, that's one thing. And the other thing is there is a lack of knowledge, I think, in the sense that when one knows the gravity of the situation, when you know the risks for social inequality, when you know the possible alternatives, you tend to really strongly want to not go in the direction that's so counter to human well-being, and survival, in fact.

In a direction that will nuir to the health human and of living, in fact, the energy possible, they are synonymous also of... Fossil fuel energy is seen as synonymous with a life of comfort and economic growth, albeit a very short-term vision, and in fact an illusory vision, when you think about the long-term impacts. Often it's the elites who have the strongest interest in keeping the model the same, to feed their wealth or their power, and also it's these elites who feed into this type of way of life

and of consumption that other people want to imitate, even if it's unsupportable for the planet. I find it very important to underline that, to remind us whose needs that system really serves. That's really important. And to realize that it's a dominant discourse that opposes ecology and economy, as if we have to choose between saving the planet

and maintaining economic activity. In the different IPCC scenarios, we can easily see that this transition is both possible and morally just. We just have to arrange things differently. Thank you very much for this conversation, and congratulations on your book, Horizon Climatic. Thank you. Will I be able to listen to it somehow? You certainly can. Listeners in Toulouse, France can hear ideas on World Radio Paris

or on the CBC Listen app or wherever they get their podcasts. Erice Amatadillon is a French climatologist. She was speaking with producer Tom Howell for his documentary called So Who Wants a Pipeline? This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayat. All right. It is October. It is officially spooky season, which is great timing because there is a new Canadian thriller series out. It's called Wayward, and I think we should be talking about it. My name is Alameen Abdu Mahmoud and I love pop culture. And this week on my podcast, Commotion, I called up some of my favorite critics to get into the show about a school for troubled teens and then things start to go wrong.

It is just wonderful. And it's bringing something new and interesting to the thriller genre. For that episode and a whole lot more, you can find and follow Commotion with Alameen Abduhmoud on YouTube. or wherever you get your podcasts. So far on this episode, we've heard from a political scientist and a climate scientist. And neither has set out a strong logical case in favor of pipelines. There's no logical pathway between building new pipelines. They would require more and faster expansion of the tar stands or oil sands. And what would be compatible with our international goals, around one and a half for

degrees. In July 2025, the editorial board of the Globe and Mail took issue with pipeline critics. The newspaper accused them of, quote, myopia, short-sightedness. In all their criticisms, the editorial said, pipeline opponents are exploiting this country's endemic lack of ambition. The day before this editorial came out, the Globe published an opinion article with the headline, yes, absolutely. Canada needs more oil and gas pipelines to our coast. Its author was Jackie Forrest. I head up the Arc Energy Research Institute, where a group that looks at energy research on behalf of a private equity firm that invests in energy in Canada, both clean energy and traditional oil and gas. Jackie Forrest is speaking with ideas producer Tom

Howell. What sort of decisions would you be helping to contribute to with that work? Well, we take investors capital and decide, you know, become equity investors in energy companies. So, for example, companies that produce things like solar panels or biogas or produce oil and gas. And so we have to look at the future in terms of what commodity prices could hold, what policies could impact these companies, and if we think we can, you know, put the money in and grow the money for our investors. So one thing that sounds exciting to me about that is that whereas, you know, I might work very hard on opinions of mine that then don't ultimately matter very much. In your case, it sounds like you can actually end up making some decisions that actually

will have an impact essentially on what happens and what doesn't happen in the world of energy. Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, it's not just me. There's a whole team. But I will say I spent over 10 years being a consultant for energy where I would write reports and give them to people and never really know, you know, what decision they ultimately made. But here at Arc, I have to make the decision and live with it, too.

And sometimes, you know, the future doesn't pan out like you think it will. Jackie is not your archetypal drill-baby-drill oil industry enthusiast. She drives an electric car. She's excited about solar. And she agrees some of the projected global temperatures for the coming century are concerning. For sure, I'm concerned about the climate and some of those projections for long-term warming and what that may mean. But I've also been equally concerned over the past 10 years, really, in that the world. and this is sort of a general thing, if you look at these big UN meetings or these projections

for the future, they seem to be kind of bought into what I've viewed as an imaginary future. I don't think we can reduce our oil and gas demand as quickly as needed to meet these 1.5 degrees scenarios. And so I am feeling more optimistic, actually, over the last year and a half where I feel like there's a growing conversation that, you know, we are going to be using oil and gas for a while. It's going to take longer to transition. And what are we doing to prepare for a world? where we may use oil and gas more.

I think it's better to plan for something that a scenario that actually seems realistic than what I would call an imaginary scenario, which I think the last 10 years have really been focused on. What do you think is realistic to aim for within the last two decades of the century? Yeah, and if we go out to 2050, I think more realistic will be similar oil and gas demand to what we have today. And that may surprise you because we have electric cars and other things that are attacking oil demand and gas demand to some extent through electrification.

But we also have growing needs for energy. The developing world is growing in their demand. We have AI data centers. Electrification doesn't come without the need for base load energy, which will require some hydrocarbons. So I think a scenario where we stay sort of flat to 2050 actually is a real success. And in that scenario, I think we need to do some things

to prepare for a warmer climate. And that would include mitigation, geoengineering, carbon capture storage. Like there are solutions to climate even in a world where we consume more oil and gas than those net zero scenarios. As I understand it, a warmer world is actually just built into whatever we do at this point up to 1.5 or 2 degrees, depending on, you know, but then the question is between a world where the global average is, you know, 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels versus 4 degrees, 6 degrees, you know. What do you think is your impression of the sort of realistic scenario to aim? for versus perhaps the nightmare scenario to avoid.

Right. Well, if you think about the IEA, which is the International Energy Agency, they're a group out of France, supported by many countries, they put out scenarios, and they have one called their stated policy scenario. So these are basically the policies that countries around the world have stated and are implementing, and some of them actually aren't all in law yet, but they've kind of put forward that they are going to put these plans forward. That would be, you know, that kind of flat to slightly up in terms of oil and gas demand by

2050, and that correlates they view to a 2.4 degree C world. I think, you know, it's possible that we're higher than that because, you know, that in itself is actually pretty difficult to achieve. But, you know, I think that's probably a more realistic scenario. And in that case, we should be thinking about how do we adapt to that level of warming. How do we really ramp up our investments in carbon capture storage and direct air capture, which can offset some of the impacts of the CO2 associated with that scenario? Maybe it could be less than that if we really ramped up those technologies. Even geoengineering is a new area of research that really has a very little investment, but it's how do we cool the planet in that scenario. So I think the

conversation is changing, and I think that is really positive in terms of, you know, if we're going to be in a world like that, what are we doing to mitigate the impacts of the warming? Right. So we should be aiming roughly for a 2.5 to 3 degree scenario. It sounds like, what to you sounds like the nightmare scenario. Is it 4.5 degrees? degrees. Where do you start being like, okay, let's not go there? Yeah. I mean, I think, yes, we're still growing in oil and gas, but not as fast as we would be if we hadn't had all these advancements, you know, wind and solar and batteries and electric cars. They've come a long ways in the last 10 years and I think they're going to grow even more in the next 10 years. And so I

kind of think that that scenario going much, much higher than that, you know, I don't worry too much about that. I think technology is going to help us stay within the bounds of that because it is taking off. A lot of these technologies they work. Look what's happening in China, electric cars. You know, I think we're going to continue to see clean energy advance. We're still going to use a lot of oil and gas, but the growth may come more from renewable and clean energy, which mitigates the impact of those really high scenarios. So you see that not only are we probably aiming at like a three degree warmer world or so, but that's... I think probably north of two and a half, if you look at that step scenario from the IEA. Okay, between two and a half and, yeah.

And that without, you know, drastically changing our lives, making personal vehicles illegal, you're only allowed one flight every two years. I don't know, whatever drastic rules you could come up with to sort of really bend the curve. We don't need to do any of those as long as technology kicks in. So it never really goes to four, five, six degrees. Is that? And I mean, if we look at wind and solar, it took 10 to 15 years for those technologies to advance and become commercial and competitive.

and now compete against fossil fuel energy. You know, many of these technologies we're talking about are still quite nascent, right? We've seen a huge wave of investment over the last three, four years. The money that's going into them will result in them being more affordable and more practical than they are today, just like wind and solar were, and electric cars. So given that goal, essentially, fill out for me the steps that justify building more pipelines in Canada right now.

Right. Well, we are still going to use a lot of oil and gas in that world. And someone has to supply it, and why not have it from Canada, which is, you know, compared to a lot of of the other places in the world that produce oil and gas, we do it better. You know, would you rather get your oil from Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Canada? I think a lot of countries would like to get it from Canada. What we've been doing over the last decade is actually constraining our production of oil and gas and forfeiting that economic opportunity and others have just filled the void.

A great example is natural gas. 10 years ago, we had more projects proposed than the Americans. Today, the Americans ship 16 times more gas overseas than we do. And they're expected to double their exports between now in 2030. And so we are just a very tiny player. We actually just started shipping our first gas in July of this year. We've foregone a huge economic opportunity in this country. And it hasn't really resulted in any change in emissions because other suppliers, like in this case, the Americans, have just filled in the void. And I would actually argue the climate emissions are worse because American LNG is more high carbon than what Canada would have been. So I think we should be

maximizing our exports of oil and gas while the world still needs these products because we have a better product on many different dimensions than many other countries in the world. We should use the money that we get from those exports to help reduce our own emissions and advance some of these technologies here in Canada. Why is it so impossible, given that The IPCC says it should be possible. Why is it so impossible to go for those low emission scenarios, the 1.5 to 2 degrees? What makes you so sure? Well, I will just narrow in on the automobile industry.

We have over a billion light duty vehicles in the world driving around. Most of them are on the road for 20 years. People are not going to just scrap these prematurely. We only sell 70 to 80 million a year, and that's the capacity we have to produce. Today, electric cars are just a fraction of that. We don't have the ability to replace a billion vehicles overnight. And so when you start modeling our energy systems and the equipment that's out there and the time it will take to raise the capital, to build the capacity,

and hey, when we're talking about electric cars, it's not just the automobile factories. You need to get the critical minerals. You need to produce the batteries. You know, it's just not feasible if people want to have the same lifestyles as they have today. When you do the math, to replace everything that consumes oil and gas, in the kind of time frames that are being talked about to 2050. Okay, Jackie Forrest, thank you very much. Thank you.

So here's one logical path from the IPCC's summary for policymakers to wanting more pipelines in Canada. Step one, reject the summary and its menu of five scenarios. I think it's better to plan for something that seems really. realistic. Then, pick a sixth scenario. Well, if you think about the IEA. From a different organization, which is the International Energy Agency.

This one maybe lets us have pipelines. That would be flat to slightly up in terms of oil and gas demand by 2050. And at what price? An average temperature later this century that's, say, 2.6. Probably north of two and a half. Degrees Celsius, hotter than the 1800s. That's hot. The Earth hasn't done that for 3.3 million years.

3 million years. But on the plus side, it's not as bad as 3.7 degrees hotter and rising. That scenario going much, much higher than that. You know, I don't worry too much about that. I think technology is going to help us stay within the bounds of that. That's a gamble, but logically coherent, if we're okay with that first step of tossing aside the menu offered in the summary for policy makers. Because if we keep the menu, then what Jackie's talking about means picking their scenario three. The middle-of-the-road scenario, no drastic measures, no hitting net zero mid-century, pipelines maybe. But there's a catch. Scenario three offers a world of uncertainty.

Compared to that other scenario Jackie was talking about, the one from the IPCC admits a much wider range of likely outcomes. We might land at 2.6 degrees hotter by the end of the century, or we might get 3.7 degrees and horizon. Which some of us don't want to risk. A 3 to 4 degree world means a world that is uninhabitable for most people on the planet. Sappora Berman chairs the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative.

She's been campaigning for environmental and climate pauses for a long time. I've been doing this for over 30 years now. You must have encountered presumably one person in all this time who genuinely believes that scenario three is what they're aiming for, right? Or have you never heard anyone say that they would like to aim for scenario two or three or four in the summary for policymakers? No, I definitely have never heard anyone say that.

I think instead what I hear people saying is, yes, of course, we need to ensure a fossil fuel phase out. But as long as the world continues to need more energy and is using oil, it might as well be ours. This, it might as well be ours. I've heard now from ministers and prime ministers from many countries around the world and every major company that I've talked to. They all have justifications around why theirs should be the last barrel sold. It's okay that they're increasing. But when you add it up, it means that everybody's increasing. And right now, it's not okay if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change

for anybody to be proposing new projects or new fossil fuel infrastructure like pipelines. But they're not saying, I recognize that we're on a pathway to two degrees, three degrees, four degrees. What they're saying is either mine's okay, or they're saying, well, technology will get better. Carbon capture and storage will get better, and we'll be able to capture those emissions that we're creating. That's a fallacy. We've been trying to do that for decades and pumping billions of dollars into carbon capture and storage. and it has been over-promised and under-delivered in most of the reports from the last two years

about 80% over-promised and under-delivered. Hang on, there's a beginning of what sounds like a coherent argument there. It just happens to rest on a wager. But if it were true that carbon capture technology will be able to essentially delete all of our emissions and we'll be able to set the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, just by moving a lever on our carbon capture machine. If that were true, then everything else that you're saying is essentially obviates the rest of the argument, right?

Then we don't need to worry about moving off fossil fuels or anything like that. Maybe 20 years ago. Maybe that's true. But what we have to remember is that today we are at anywhere in the world, if you test the air, we're at about 427 parts per million of carbon trapped in our atmosphere. It's generally recognized that about 350 parts per million is what's safe below 1.5. So we are in a position where we need to be drawing carbon out of our atmosphere. But to say that we can use the technology and that allows us to continue to pollute and to expand production is impossible now.

We need all the tools in our toolbox, but we also have to stop making the problem bigger. Okay, bear in mind here that what I'm trying to do is find out a coherent argument for building more pipelines. The machine I'm imagining is not only capturing what we're emitting right now, it's going up into the atmosphere and sucking out any gases we don't want there. So if we had that machine in the next, let's say, 10 years, we could still hit scenario one, right? If we just need a particularly good machine to appear. Yeah, particularly good machine. The scale of which is not viable at the level you're talking about. And in fact, this narrative has been attempted in some of the scenarios under the IPCC.

There is an analysis where we don't constrain fossil fuel production and it continues to rise. And instead, carbon capture is done through land. In that scenario, in the IPCC, we would need to plant an area the size of India twice every year, grow those crops, allow them to sequester carbon, harvest those crops, burn those crops, and then store the carbon underground. And in that scenario, the modeling works. How much of that are we doing today? Zero. So to get to that level, twice the size of India every year, that level of carbon. capture and storage is just not physically possible in the time frames that we have now because we already have so much carbon baked into the atmosphere and we're already experiencing climate change today. The longer we wait, every study shows, the longer we wait to constrain fossil fuel production and emissions, the more people will die.

It's hard to stare into the sun and it's hard to look at what those impacts are. And the IPCC has done a pretty impressive job of trying to show what a world looks like. We now know what a world looks like at 1.5 degrees. We're living it. And we have a tremendous capacity as a species to normalize it. Oh, it's fire season, as if it's smoke season, as if that was a thing. Wanting a new pipeline probably means wanting a future scenario towards which a pipeline

is a necessary step. The scenario is desirable because in it one has a good job, or Canadians have the money to pay for important things like hospitals or a treasured public institution or weapons. We may well need weapons and solar panels too. Boil all this down to its elements and you get a logical syllogism, something like, I must pay some bills. To pay these bills, I will need a pipeline. Therefore, a pipeline's what I want. And that is tight logic. As long as it fits into a larger scenario, you're also okay with accepting. All of those arguments just kind of ignore climate impacts and what will be happening around the planet if fossil fuels increase. Canada has the economic capacity to untangle its economy from

fossil fuels and phase out easier than many other countries in the world. A lot of the countries right now that are looking at increasing fossil fuel production or struggling to phase out fossil fuels, their GDP is far more wedded to production. Look at Malaysia, well over 67% of their GDP is dependent on fossil fuel exports or Ecuador, where they're drilling for new oil

just to feed their debt. Canada actually has the capacity to phase out fossil fuels quicker. Who would you most like to get talking to who at the moment? I'd love to see our prime minister, Mark Kearney, having a conversation with, for example, President Petro of Colombia. When Petro announced that Colombia was going to join the block of nations that are developing the fossil fuel treaty, which I chair, Petro said, we know as one of the largest coal mining countries in the world that every day we're making the problem worse. and it threatens the safety of our people and life on earth. And so we want to stop, but we can't do it without more cooperation between nation states.

You know, I think his speech was groundbreaking. And so I'd love to see some of the countries who are right now planning expansion like Canada or the U.S. or Australia to sit down and have a real conversation with leaders like the president of Colombia. This is Gustavo Petro speaking at a climate conference he was hosting in Colombia in 2023. He's saying it's not economic suicide for Colombia to swear off more fossil fuels, but in fact the only way to avoid an omniside all around the world, and there's no way around it. The alternatives are illusions.

Unfortunately, my phone call to the President of Colombia and Mark Carney inviting them over for dinner was not returned. Hello. Hello, Juan. This is Tom from CBC Radio. Hi, Tom. How are you? I'm very well. I'm sitting down in the foyer on the ground floor. So next best, I took a bus to Ottawa to meet Columbia's ambassador myself. Okay, great. See you there.

Okay, see you. Bye. One? Tom. Hello. You Ambassador Morales? Yes. Tom. Hi, Tom. Hi, Carlos Morales, Ambassador of Columbia. When you're the ambassador, do you get invited to dinner with the Prime Minister? Do you know, we We have been invited to many events with the Prime Minister office, especially at the end of the year. There is the Christmas, in some way, the Christmas celebration. And we have the chance, of course, to meet the Prime Minister. But frankly, this is not so common because we understand how is the agenda of the head of the State. And if we wanted to try to get the President of Columbia and

the Prime Minister of Canada to have dinner together, is that something that is likely to happen anytime soon? Or would that be very difficult? I think in this specific context that we are now living in the world, I don't think that is something I would like to, of course. Of course we would like to have this chance to have this kind of meeting, but we must be realistic in terms of the international agenda, not only for the Prime Minister, but also for our president. So two busy agendas, one of which has included signing on

for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative, and the other of which, namely the Canadian Prime Minister's agenda, has so far not. We have clear that we must go to the energy transition. It's not possible to continue with the fossil fuels, exploring fossil fuels in the future, because there is a danger for the future of the world. And that's why we must take actions right now.

What we do in the present would be the result. in the future. We are very vocal on that, not only in the multilateral mechanisms or organizations, but also internally to convince, do you know, people, because this is a process in terms of culture. What do you picture in Colombia at something like, let's say, three and a half degrees of warming? What do you picture Colombia might be seeing? I think it would be disastrous, a disaster for the human being, do you know? if we continue in the way and we don't try. So what has Colombia committed to when it has said it supports this fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty?

What does that actually mean? It means that we are advocating in order to ask help for other countries, you know, to have a big community in order to stop the exploitation of fuels in the future. We understand that it is the gold, it is aspiring gold, and we must work in order to that, because everything in the life is a process. Does that mean no more drilling, no more exploration for fossil fuels, or does it mean just something more vague?

No, it means no more in the future. But now, for example, we are in Colombia. When's the future? The future is as soon as we can, as soon as we can, because, for example, in Colombia, we still have explorations. of oil exploration, but not for the new contract. We say, now, do you know, we will not give contrast to any company or even for our state oil company to explore new worlds.

We have to stop that. We must look for another alternatives. But since we signed and we authorized in the past some concessions of mining and exploration of oil and gas, that's continue operating. is we cannot stop. But the policy of the government now is in the future. We must avoid to continue exploring. And so the IPCC has given us these five scenarios, the one that's 1.5 to 2 degrees, and then they get more scary after that. Which scenario does Columbia want to see out of those five? No, we want the best scenario that we can have is, of course, the 1.5 scenario. This is, you know, our goal.

We understand that there are difficulties. There's a very huge commitment. But we are the right, the right path in order to convince those that they are not yet convinced that we must work together in order to avoid disasters. What do you make of the claim that the 1.5 to 2 degree scenario is simply unrealistic and therefore harmful, really, to focus on? Could be realistic, could be realistic if there is, do you know, a strong commitment from the countries, especially for those who are contaminated more. If they just, do you know, made that commitment, I think we will get it. It means resources for those countries that they don't have, the economy. leverage in order to make the transition and to limit, do you know, the emissions,

if there are resources and not only for big countries, but also for the international financial institutions. Together, I think we will get the result. Okay, well, thank you for that. No, thanks to you for this opportunity to explain, you know, our Colombian policy regarding climate change and our commitment with the well-being of the world. In the business world, the customer might always be right, but that doesn't mean they're going to get what they want. Sometimes there's a gap between what we want and what we can afford. But in that situation, we might say we didn't really want the thing if in reality we could only get it at such a cost.

In a way, it's less about the thing itself and more about the scenario that follows. Knowing what one genuinely wants, in a restaurant or in the 21st century, probably depends on deciding which scenarios one is willing to believe in. And that was Tom Howell's conclusion to his documentary called So Who Wants a New Pipeline? Lisa Ayuso is the web producer for ideas. Technical production Sam McNulty. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich.

Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyad.