Climate Change Politics in Canada and the EU—from Carbon Democracy to a Green Deal?

Abstract

The idea of a green deal transforming industrialized societies’ climate policies in a sustainable manner has become highly popular in various countries. The study takes up this notion focusing on climate policy initiatives in Canada and the EU, raising three interrelated issues: (i) on a descriptive level, the study asks where we stand and what has so far been achieved regarding climate policy; (ii) analytically, the study provides a theoretical explanation of why progress has been slow in the EU and hardly visible in Canada, making use of the concept of carbon democracy; (iii) on a prescriptive level, the study explores what will be needed to make a green deal successful, arguing that one has to accept that a green deal is a deeply political project that will create winners and losers and that not all losers can be compensated under the label of a “just transition”. The argument advanced is that the EU and Canada represent a form of carbon democracy in which the extensive use of carbon laid the foundation for establishing democratic institutions and strongly shaped them. The paper shows that the extensive influence of carbon-related activities not only empowers specific non-state agents but is rather deeply enmeshed in the societal and political genome of both regions’ polities. The claim that follows is that climate politics in Canada and the EU will have to be deeply transformative and therefore disruptive in order to be successful.