People often ask me how to respond to climate deniers. When this comes up, I tend to offer a few tips. But truth be told, I am less concerned about outright climate deniers than I am about the new climate deniers.

I first wrote about the concept of “the new climate denialism” (with my colleague Shannon Daub) in 2016. And the idea later grounded my 2020 book, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.

The essence of the idea is this: while conventional climate denialism simply refuses to accept the reality of human-induced climate change (think US President Donald Trump), this new form of denialism has our political leaders assuring us they understand and accept the warnings about climate change — but they are in denial about what this scientific reality means for policy and/or continue to block progress in less visible ways. Others, perhaps more kindly, call this “all-the-above policymaking,” the inclination of political leaders to tell the public that we need not make hard choices. Whatever term one uses, the result is the continuing sorry state of Canadian political non-leadership on the defining challenge of our time.

Consider this historic comparison: When the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939, a line was finally crossed. Britain and France declared war on Germany in response. A week later, so did Canada. And then …. Not a lot really happened.

Historians have dubbed much of the first year of the Second World War “The Phony War.” Neither the UK nor Canada, nor any other nation actually came to Poland’s rescue. No immediate battlefront emerged. For the next nine months, there was not much fighting. Canada got off to a slow start, and then prime minister Mackenzie King was frequently criticized in those early months for failing to adequately prosecute the war. Indeed, in those early days, it remained an open question whether Canada would send troops overseas and, if so, to what extent.

The defeat of France in June 1940 changed things. It was a stunning wake-up call and shifted the national psyche. Suddenly, things got much more serious.

And so we find ourselves in a similar awkward interregnum today. Much like King’s government declaring war in 1939 but then not initially doing much, in July 2019, the House of Commons passed a Climate Emergency motion introduced by the Justin Trudeau government, and then proceeded to reapprove a large fossil fuel pipeline (the Trans Mountain expansion)........

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