BRUSSELS — Ask European Union leaders what they think of Mark Carney’s climate credentials, and you’ll get a gushing response. But this rosy view sidesteps a less comfortable reality: Canada is a major fossil fuel producer whose climate ambitions fall far short of Europe’s. And under Carney, those ambitions are weakening.
Last year, Canada produced more crude oil than any other country outside the big three producers, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States. Oil and gas are Canada’s biggest exports by far, and the industry lobby is an influential force in Ottawa. In his previous life as a central banker, Carney was considered a climate champion.
POLITICO even dubbed him an “eco warrior” in 2018. But since taking over as prime minister last year, he has weakened Canada’s climate policies at a rate few predicted, scrapping a national carbon tax and electric vehicle mandate and opening new oil and gas projects. The list of climate laws Carney has watered down, repealed and canceled makes the EU’s own recent backtracking on green laws look minor.
Some environmentalists argue it is comparable to U.S. President Donald Trump’s wholesale dismantling of environmental protections. Carney, he said, “seems to be all in on fossil fuels.” Keean Nembhard, a spokesperson for Canada’s Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin, told POLITICO the Carney government is “committed to fighting climate change and reaching net-zero by 2050 by taking a pragmatic and durable approach.” “This includes building major clean energy projects across the country, driving mass electrification, and making significant investment in the low-carbon economy,” he said.
But Gray argued that Carney’s support for fossil fuels and weakening of environmental standards may complicate Canada’s attempts to forge closer ties with Europe, which has some of the world’s most stringent green laws. Still, in Europe, Carney’s green image persists. Last week, Belgian member of the European Parliament Saskia Bricmont gave expression to this faith in Carney’s commitment to climate issues when she called on him to lead a global push to put climate back on the agenda ahead of next month’s U.N. climate summit.
Carney’s reputation as a climate champion is well earned. As governor of the Bank of England, he led a push among central bankers to take the economic risks of climate change seriously — memorably captured in his 2015 ‘Tragedy of the Horizon’ speech, in which he warned: “The catastrophic impacts of climate change will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors.” In 2021, after he’d left the Bank of England, he became a United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance and launched a net-zero financial alliance with some of the world’s biggest banks. But things changed dramatically when Donald Trump took back the White House, and Carney replaced fellow Liberal Justin Trudeau as Canada’s prime minister in 2025.
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