I suppose we have to talk about cars again. The Canadian government announced its new auto strategy and reactions varied wildly, even among climate wonks. If you are confused whether the whole thing is good or bad, there’s a very good reason for that — government officials don’t know either.

The most telling revelation about the announcement came during the technical briefing when government experts admitted they haven’t done the modelling yet to know how much more, or less, carbon pollution will spew from the tailpipes of the nation.

We’ve had the grand announcement. There was a lot of talk from the prime minister about being “relentlessly focused on results,” and setting a “new, more ambitious sovereign path to reduce automobile emissions.” He promised to double the stringency of greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and to achieve emissions cuts equivalent to a 75 per cent adoption rate for electric vehicles in a decade. All told, it was a large and complicated package of initiatives — but the announcement came before the homework was done.

Technically, this is probably not breaking the rules. The federal climate accountability act doesn’t require projections of impacts on greenhouse gases for every new policy, just the overall package of climate-related policies. And while a standing Cabinet Directive does require an assessment of emissions, that only kicks in once policy proposals are translated into regulation.

But it tells you quite a bit about the purpose of an auto strategy when it makes wholesale changes — scrapping the existing electric vehicle standard, introducing a new system of incentives, and a new approach to fuel-efficiency rules — without assessing the probable impact at the tailpipe.

So, let’s survey the spectrum of reactions and see if we might spot any........

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