This article was written by Taylor C. Noakes and was published in the Toronto Star on May 8, 2023.

Rarely is the full picture of our incompetence concerning the climate emergency so perfectly captured in a single image.

A promotional blitz by the Pathways Alliance — which includes wrapping streetcars in advertisements boasting the slogan “our net zero plan is in motion” — is worse than false advertising, but deliberately misleading greenwashing.

Among other problems is the insinuation that Pathways has any kind of relationship with the TTC. They don’t, according to spokesperson Stuart Green, who was quick to point out the transit agency can’t refuse ads unless they violate certain standards.

One wonders if “buses suck, buy a truck” ads are next.

Pathways Alliance is a consortium of Canadian oil producers preaching “industry knows best” when it comes to decarbonization and combating climate change. Their goal is to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, chiefly through the extensive use of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology.

No part of the plan involves powering mass transit systems.

Pathways is a classic example of greenwashing: advertising or marketing spin intended to convince the public, often deceptively, that an organization’s policies or products are environmentally friendly.

Advertising in mass transit systems they have nothing to do with isn’t new for Pathways. What’s far more insidious is that they’ve been manipulating search results, and, in consequence, distorting public information. According to a recent investigation by DeSmog, Pathways Alliance has been paying Google to link their website to hundreds of climate-related search terms.

The alliance’s primary aim is not to support already-green mass transit in Toronto or any other city, but to secure public support for what it terms “government co-investment” and “supportive fiscal/ regulatory systems.” Given ever increasing investor flight from the fossil fuel sector, the industry is growing increasingly dependent on already exorbitant government subsidies to stay in business. Expensive and wasteful carbon capture projects are the “Rube Goldberg device” Big Oil believes will allow for increased oilsands production while simultaneously achieving net zero goals.

And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Carbon capture, which Pathways claims is “safe, proven and reliable” is in fact none of those things. According to Mark Z. Jacobson, the eminent Stanford University researcher, “carbon capture is a useless technology (that) requires both energy and equipment and doesn’t reduce any air pollution, fossil fuel extraction or related infrastructure.”

“Because it requires energy to run, it increases all three of those and hardly reduces carbon dioxide.”

Jacobson explains that, even if powered with renewable energy, CCUS removes less carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than simply using renewable energy sources as direct replacements for fossil fuels. In addition to exacerbating the climate emergency, CCUS is neither proven nor reliable, particularly in Canada, where there are only a few commercial carbon capture plants. One of these, Shell’s Quest plant in Alberta, emits more carbon than it captures.

While Pathways talks about CCUS as key to decarbonization and achieving net-zero goals, environmentalists, industry watchdogs, and other experts have long countered it’s all just a smokescreen.

And an expensive one at that: the oil and gas lobby in Canada has managed to bamboozle politicians and bilk taxpayers out of billions of dollars for inefficient, unnecessary, and essentially hypothetical CCUS technology that only serves to provide the fossil fuel sector a social license to continue driving the planet towards apocalypse.

The principle impediment to successful decarbonization is the continued manipulation of public opinion and the political class by the fossil fuel sector, which has had the effect of diverting scarce public resources away from developing tried, tested, and true renewable energy sources — like wind and solar — as well as the electrification of transit and transport.

We should expect nothing less from an avaricious industry that fiddles while the world burns.