“Faster, stronger” is how Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau promised his new government would move on issues such as climate change in a press conference on 29 September. Less than a week later, on 4 October, his government invoked a 44-year-old treaty to prevent the US from shutting down an oil pipeline.
The dissonance between lofty rhetoric on climate action and a penchant for pipelines that is out of sync with global commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions has long been a problem for Trudeau. And attempts to keep fossil fuel giants and environmentalists on side are only going to get trickier. The prime minister, whose Liberal party managed to stay in power with another minority government following a bitterly fought snap election last month, is entering his third term leading a country even more divided on the question of climate change.
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