What does the U.S. election mean for Canadian climate action?

The United States is the second largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in the world after China, and it is the country with the greatest cumulative responsibility for climate change.

Historically, the U.S., like Canada, has been a laggard on climate policy. It is among the most emissions-intensive countries in the world and it is a major proponent of coal, oil and gas expansion. Indeed, as a result of the boom in gas fracking under former presidents Obama and Trump, the U.S. is now the largest fossil fuel producer in the world.

However, the country has made some important strides on climate. Unlike Canada, total U.S. GHG emissions are lower today than they were in 1990—mainly due to a decline in coal-fired power generation. Clean tech is taking off in some parts of the country, including unexpected places such as Texas. And the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) under President Biden has kickstarted a major wave of green industrial development centered on renewable energy generation and zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) manufacturing.

Like the rest of the world, the U.S. is already experiencing the consequences of a warming world. Climate-related damages in the country are conservatively estimated at US$150 billion per year with that number expected to keep rising unless and until global emissions fall to zero.

The stakes of the forthcoming presidential election are consequently high not only for the U.S., but also for Canada and the rest of the world. Here are the key climate issues at play in a neck-and-neck race.

Harris: Steady as she goes

Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, is seen by many as a climate champion, though she has not made many specific new climate pledges during this campaign. Over the past few months, in particular, she has downplayed climate as an issue, potentially because it is not a political winner in key swing states. Harris has gone so far as to celebrate the boom in U.S. fracked gas.

Nevertheless, it can be expected that Harris will generally maintain the green industrial policy approach championed by Joe Biden over the past four years. That strategy has driven hundreds of billions of dollars into cleaner industry and created hundreds of thousands of jobs in the process.

The rapid turn toward ZEV manufacturing in the U.S. has forced the Canadian auto industry to try and keep pace. Huge new investment tax credits and other subsidies for battery manufacturing in Canada can be traced back to the U.S. IRA. Canadian manufacturers are in the process of retooling many facilities—and labour unions are working harder to reskill workers—based on the assumption of continued public support for the transition.

The Biden-Harris agenda has included strengthened vehicle emission standards and other regulations that have put pressure on Canadian jurisdictions to follow suit. And the U.S. has been an ally, more often than not, in international climate arenas such as the UNFCCC.

For Harris, climate is shaping up to be a backburner issue. While Republicans accuse Harris and the Democrats of having a radical left-wing energy policy, the truth is that a Harris administration—while likely to keep pushing the needle in the right direction—is unlikely to be radical enough given the urgency of the crisis.

Trump: Climate change is “not our problem”

Unpacking any promise made by Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, is fraught. The former president’s penchant for bald-faced lies is well-documented, not to mention his mercurial opportunism.

Yet, on climate, both Trump’s record and platform paint a clear picture of a politician who not only denies the physical reality of climate change but is also working to enrich the oil and gas extraction industry at any cost to the environment.

As president, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, rolled back more than 100 environmental regulations and stacked his administration with oil industry lobbyists and insiders. At best, his efforts delayed necessary climate action by four years and, at worst, his administration locked in oil and gas interests that may take decades to dislodge.

That is unlikely to change this time around. In exchange for campaign donations from oil and gas executives, Trump has promised to cut environmental regulations even further—a practically cartoonish level of corruption. Ironically, his “drill, baby, drill” approach goes beyond what even the fossil fuel industry is asking for. Nevertheless, Trump can be expected to further entrench coal, oil and gas production at precisely the moment we should be winding them down.

Trump has also promised to terminate the Inflation Reduction Act, though, in practice, he might find that difficult. One of the most interesting dimensions of the IRA—and one of its greatest lessons—is that red states have generally been the biggest beneficiaries. Republican governors have been unusually reluctant to criticize Biden on this file and may object to Trump gutting their job-creating subsidies.

A second Trump administration would undermine Canada’s climate efforts on two fronts. First, to the extent that Trump manages to hamstring green manufacturing and clean tech development, Canada will suffer the consequences in our own manufacturing and tech sectors, which are deeply implicated in cross-border trade. We will fall even further behind the rest of the world on this front, especially relative to China and Europe, which are pressing ahead with decarbonization.

Second, strengthened U.S. demand for oil will encourage continued expansion of Canadian fossil fuel production, including exports of oil sands crude to U.S. refineries. That may provide short-term economic benefits for Canadian oil producers, but it will delay our own transition away from oil and gas at great long-term public expense.

Climate action at the precipice

Even as reactionary conservative movements around the world have grown increasingly hostile to climate action, outright disdain for the environment is still rare. In the case of the U.S. presidential election, any pretense of environmental concern has been dropped entirely.

A Trump election would be unequivocally damaging to domestic, regional and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For Canada, our efforts to wean off of fossil fuels and to scale up cleaner alternatives would both suffer under a Republican administration.

A status quo Democratic administration, while still likely to come up short from a climate perspective, would be far more in sync with Canada’s own climate efforts. Having Kamala Harris in the White House gives Canada a potential partner and ally on clean energy issues.

Either way, the political volatility south of the border is a stark reminder for Canada of the need to reinforce our own climate policies and diversify our climate partners. We can’t afford to lose more time in the race to decarbonize.