When Mark Carney laid out his vision for climate and energy policy for the country, the backdrop to his video said it all: a strange and sorrowful hodgepodge of despondent greenery.

On the eve of Canada Day, Carney put out a “Forward Guidance” video, where he explained that “the changes we have made will mean that our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were projected to be under the previous government’s plan.”

Prior to being elected prime minister, Carney dubbed climate change “an existential threat.” This week, he was calling the plan to fight climate change “unsustainable over the long term” and “too expensive.”

“We can’t afford to restrain the growth of an important part of our energy mix — oil and gas — to meet a short-term goal,” Carney said.

And, before the week was out, the PM had greased the skids for a suite of LNG projects and a new million barrel-per-day oil pipeline to the West Coast.

One major thrust of Carney’s video was to prepare the Canadian public for “higher emissions” — an impressively perverse accomplishment from a global perspective. Canada already has the worst track record in the G7. Every one of our peers has reduced climate pollution below 1990 levels. Even the US, the world’s largest fossil fuel producer, has managed to do it. Canada still spews a lot more.

But “higher emissions” is not surprising when you’ve axed the policies that could lower emissions. Less surprising still if you go on to build a series of new fossil fuel projects. Carney’s admission was........

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