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Climate Change Politics in Canada and the EU: From Carbon 

Democracy to a Green Deal? 
 

Markus Lederer1 

 Technical University Darmstadt 

  

 

 

 

Abstract 

The idea of a green deal transforming industrialized societies’ climate policies in a sustainable 

manner has become highly popular in various countries. This article focuses on the politics behind 

green deals in Canada and the EU, raising four interrelated issues. First, on a descriptive level, it 

addresses what has so far been achieved regarding climate policy in both polities. Second, at an 

analytical level, making use of the concept of carbon democracy, the study provides a theoretical 

explanation of why, until recently, progress has been slow in the EU and hardly visible in Canada. 

Third, on a prescriptive level, it argues that the notion of a green deal can be transformative and 

can thus provide a road to progressive climate policies. Finally, in a comparative manner, the 

analysis reveals Canada is still highly reluctant to enact any form of green deal, while the EU, with 

its notion of a ‘just transition’ and the set-up of a transition fund, has made important progress 

towards an effective and legitimate green deal that could eventually turn the EU into a green 

democracy.  

 

  

 
1 Markus Lederer is professor of political science with a focus on international politics at T echnical University 

Darmstadt. 



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Introduction2 

Climate politics have changed quite dramatically over the last couple of years, but the question 

arises as to how truly transformative these changes have been. On the global level, the Paris 

Agreement of 2015 revitalized multilateral politics after the failure of the international negotiations 

in Copenhagen in 2009. It has also successfully kick-started new carbon governance initiatives at 

other levels of government (Falkner 2016). At the local level, various cities in both Canada (e.g., 

Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto) and in Europe (e.g., London, Copenhagen, and Berlin) have 

been hailed as new spheres of authority, and associations like the C40 Cities Climate Leadership 

Group (C40), the Covenant of Mayors, and the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) have 

undertaken notable initiatives in the environmental area (Bulkeley 2014; Fuhr, Hickmann, and 

Kern 2018). These governance experiments have been supported by transnational actors from the 

non-profit and for-profit camps (Roger, Hale, and Andonova 2017). Domestic climate politics also 

have gained more attention on the political agenda in countries as diverse as India, Vietnam, 

Ethiopia, France, and the United Kingdom. And even where official reversals have occurred, most 

prominently in the United States (US), but also in Brazil and China, new dynamics within society 

or within opposition parties have sometimes become visible. These new progressive approaches, 

whether in the US, the European Union (EU), or Canada, have been labelled ‘green deals’ that aim 

to advance climate policy ambitions and implementation in holistic and just ways. Green deals are 

thus presented as a panacea for solving or at least mitigating many of the current ecological, social, 

economic, and political crises human society must confront.  

This article focuses on the politics behind a green deal in Canada and the EU, raising four 

interrelated issues. First, on a descriptive level, it addresses what has so far been achieved 

regarding climate policy. Second, at an analytical level, making use of the concept of carbon 

democracy, it provides a theoretical explanation of why, until recently, progress has been slow in 

the EU and hardly visible in Canada. Third, on a prescriptive level, it argues that the notion of a 

green deal can be transformative, and can thus provide a road to progressive climate policies. 

Finally, in a comparative manner, the analysis reveals Canada is still highly reluctant to enact any 

form of green deal, while the EU, with its notion of a ‘just transition’ and the set-up of a transition 

fund, has made important progress towards an effective and legitimate green deal that could 

eventually turn the EU into a green democracy. 

But why look at Canada and the EU and compare a country with a regional entity? First, regarding 

their relevance, both polities are large greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. Canada is the ninth largest 

emitter in absolute terms, and fourth largest on per capita terms, within the Club of G20 countries, 

with almost 19 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per capita (tCO2e/capita) per year. The EU 28 

is the third largest emitter in absolute terms, and the 15th largest in annual per capita emissions 

within the G20, at about 8.07 tCO2e/capita.
3 Second, both polities claim to be leaders of 

progressive climate change politics. The EU has long and successfully portrayed itself as a global 

climate leader (Wurzel, Connelly, and Liefferink 2017), while, since 2015, the Trudeau 

government in Canada has tried to convince the world of the greening of its policies. Nevertheless, 

in December, 2020 both polities were still evaluated by the Climate Action Tracker as 

“insufficient”, although some signs of deeper change are visible, particularly within the EU 

(Climate Action Tracker 2020). Of course, both the EU and Canada are highly diverse polities, 

 
2 I would like to thank two anonymous reviewers as well as the editors of this special issue for extremely helpful 

comments on earlier drafts of this article. 
3 Data refers to 2017 and includes land-use; for details, see Climate Transparency (2020). 



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and it is important to differentiate between front-runners and laggards within each (Torney 2019; 

Boyd and Rabe 2019). Finally, both polities are highly decentralized and are thus perfect 

showcases for understanding multi-level governance. 

This article is structured as follows: the first part introduces the concept of ‘carbon democracy’ 

which posits that the extensive use of carbon laid the foundation for establishing democratic 

institutions in the first place (Mitchell 2011). Jason MacLean has already labelled Canada a carbon 

democracy, focusing primarily on the oil and gas industries’ ability to influence current politics 

even with a Liberal government in power since 2015 (2018, 54). The second part of the article 

builds on these insights but goes beyond them by describing Canada’s and the EU’s emission 

profiles, their ambitions, and the current policy instruments deeply enmeshed in the societal and 

political genome of both polities. The third part elaborates on the politics of a green deal, arguing 

that major distributive changes and some forms of compensation will be needed as the green deal 

will not always create win–win solutions, particularly not in the short run. The analysis shows that 

the EU is slowly moving towards a green democracy, whereas progress is much slower in Canada. 

The conclusion summarizes the argument and identifies possible future research avenues. 

 

 

The Concept of Carbon Democracy 

Decarbonization is possible, and at least in the medium to long run it reduces private and social 

costs when compared to a business-as-usual scenario (Stern 2015; The New Climate Economy 

2018). Why then has progress so far been rather slow? To answer this question, we have to look 

at how politics affects efforts to pursue green transformations. The literature on climate politics 

has advanced various explanations including veto-players (Ike 2020), the capitalist system (Brand 

and Wissen 2017), domestic politics (Sprinz and Weiß 2001), national-subnational interlinkages 

(Balthasar, Schreurs, and Varone 2019), and, most recently, energy cultures (Stephenson, 

Sovacool, and Inderberg 2021). The concept of carbon democracy nicely complements these 

explanations by focusing on the materiality of carbon and the repercussions its rising use has had 

for the development of specific political systems. Theoretically, the argument advanced is in line 

with historical institutionalism with its strong focus on path-dependencies. It also takes up 

elements of more recent materialist readings that have identified the strong influence of specific 

uses of energy on societies and politics (Morris 2015 regarding values; Smil 2018 regarding 

civilizations).  

Timothy Mitchell’s book, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2011), makes 

the simple but important point that, historically, carbon energy and democratic politics are closely 

interlinked, and that changes in how we made use of energy allowed and even determined the way 

mass politics evolved in Western Europe and North America (2011, 14). Not only has the burning 

of abundant and low-cost carbon in the form of coal, oil, and gas fueled accelerated economic 

growth, but also the extraction, transportation, and refinement of fossil fuels have shaped socio-

technical systems that have become very influential politically. This started with the massive 

extraction and use of coal that enabled large-scale manufacturing, modern cities, and those forces 

that pushed for democracy (2011, 8). Hence, democratic claims had a much higher chance to be 

realized in countries where large parts of the workforce were involved in digging up and 

transporting coal, as well as providing a whole new infrastructure for its use. Workers thus derived 

power from how energy extraction, transportation, and use were organized. This could be 

translated into alliances, and carbon could thus “assemble political agency, by employing the 



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ability to slow, disrupt or cut off its supply” (2011, 19). In short, the use of coal allowed workers 

to become a highly political force and this was, Mitchell argues, more important politically than 

class culture, ideology, or organization (2011, 27).  

In the following article, the concept of carbon democracy is used as a prism to interpret the 

evolution of climate policy-making in Canada and the EU, and to understand why progress in 

moving away from fossil fuels has been rather limited. This approach neither neglects the role of 

specific actors, nor denies the influence of capitalism. Rather, it goes one step further and analyzes 

the strong role of the carbon centered, socio-technical systems found in both polities. Three aspects 

will merit specific attention. First, the influence that the development of large infrastructures for 

energy extraction, production, transportation, and consumption have had in empowering some 

actors, as well as practices, and not others. Second, that these actors are represented in specific 

sectors or regions with consequences for policy-making and specific political structures. And third, 

that the particular context of infrastructures, actors, and sectors has given rise to a carbon centered 

worldview that has underpinned and strengthened carbon democracy. 

 

Carbon Democracy at Work: Comparing the Status-Quo of Climate Politics in Canada and 

the EU 

This section provides a short overview of climate politics in Canada and the EU, focusing 

particularly on their current emission profiles and policies. In the second part, these developments 

are examined by taking the concept of carbon democracy into account. 

 

Describing the Status Quo: Emission Profiles and Policies in Canada 

Canada’s climate policy-making has seen various ups and downs and has been rather inconsistent, 

particularly regarding its international aspirations and domestic actions (Macunias and de Lassus 

Saint-Geniès 2018, 2). In the 1980s and 1990s, Canada was one of the most active countries 

pushing for international climate action, but divergence between its international stance and 

domestic climate legislation became visible after the turn of the century (Macunias and de Lassus 

Saint-Geniès 2018). Starting in 2006, when Stephen Harper became prime minister, the country’s 

international position on climate action increasingly aligned with its domestic policies, such that 

on neither front much happened (2018, 6). Canada was in no way close to fulfilling its Kyoto target 

of reducing its GHG emissions by six percent of 1990 levels by 2012; rather its emissions in 2008 

were 24.1 percent higher than the 1990 base year. It was thus no surprise that Canada withdrew 

from the Kyoto Protocol in 2011.  

After the Trudeau government won the election in 2015, Canada became an active negotiator 

during the climate negotiations of 2015 that generated the Paris Agreement, mirroring the position 

of the US (MacNeil and Paterson 2016). For example, Environment and Climate Change Minister 

Catherine McKenna said after the meeting that “Canada is back” (King 2015). In its Nationally 

Determined Contribution (NDC), Canada promised to reduce its GHG emissions by 17 percent by 

2020, and 30 percent by 2030, against a 2005 base year. However, its own projections show that 

it will be hard to achieve these goals (Government of Canada 2015; 2019). Currently GHG 

emissions are 17 percent higher than they were in 1990, more or less at the same level as they were 

in 2005. In short “despite a change in tone in Paris, Trudeau opted to keep the national GHG 

emission reduction targets set by the Harper government, which aligned with US targets” (Boyd 



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and Rabe 2019, 242). The Canadian government has officially distanced itself from Donald 

Trump’s anti-Paris Agreement rhetoric, but on a per capita basis Canadian emissions are even 

slightly higher than those of the US (Climate Transparency 2020). Partially thanks to fracking 

(which has other highly problematic environmental impacts) the build-up of renewables, and 

reduction in the use of coal, the US has been able reduce its emissions considerably over the last 

ten years.  

As various authors have pointed out (Schreurs 2011; Boyd and Rabe 2019, 252f; Boyd 2019), 

there are significant differences between the Canadian provinces. Alberta alone is responsible for 

about a third of Canada’s GHG emissions, and emissions from Alberta and Saskatchewan are still 

increasing. Ontario and Quebéc, meanwhile, have managed to reduce their emissions quite 

substantially and are cooperating with progressive US states. They are also adopting best practices 

from the US. To fulfill its Paris Agreement obligations, the Canadian government launched the 

Pan-Canadian Framework (PCF) on Clean Growth and Climate Change in 2016 and the 

Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in 2018. The PCF is highly flexible in allowing the 

provinces leeway on how to tackle climate change as long as something is happening that puts a 

price on carbon. Thus, British Columbia (BC) and Alberta introduced a CO2 tax, whereas Ontario 

and Quebéc started to set up an emission trading system (ETS), which Ontario abandoned in 2018. 

In April 2019, the federal government introduced a carbon tax on fossil fuels in four provinces 

(Ontario, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Saskatchewan) after the provincial governments did not 

establish legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

Evaluating Canada’s 2030 pledge, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims the country’s 

current plan will not be sufficient. Additionally, a recent World Bank report on carbon pricing 

calculated that to achieve the Paris goal, Canada’s CO2 tax would need to increase from 15 

Canadian dollars per tonne of CO2 today, to between 75 and 150 Canadian dollars per tonnes in 

2030 (2019, 19). According to the dominating perception, Canada is backtracking on its Paris 

Agreement commitments and is “falling back on the centrality of its bilateral relationships with 

the United States and contending that it could only consider acting if America was moving in step” 

(Boyd and Rabe 2019, 254-255). Currently, deep decarbonization is not on the federal 

government’s agenda. The country has introduced some new policies but will most likely miss its 

own NDC target, which was not very ambitious to begin with (Kuramochi et al. 2019, 32).  

 

Describing the Status Quo: Emission Profiles and Policies in the European Union 

If one compares the EU’s domestic track record with that of Canada, the EU is doing better, having 

built up “the world’s most advanced and comprehensive regulatory frameworks, encompassing 

both EU-wide policies and targets to be achieved by the member states” (Delreux and Ohler 2019, 

2). The EU has overachieved its Kyoto target of eight percent below 1990 CO2 emission levels 

during the first commitment period 2008–2012 by delivering a reduction of 12 percent. The bloc 

has also fulfilled its pledge for 2020 (20 percent below 1990 levels). The main reason for the EU’s 

success so far, besides the financial crisis and the de-industrialization of some parts of Eastern 

Germany, has been a tremendous increase in the use of renewable energy sources: between 2005 

and 2015, there was a 71 percent increase of renewable energy capacity within the EU.  

Still, some serious problems persist. In 2017, there was a 0.6 percent increase of GHG emissions 

within the EU, even within those sectors covered by the EU ETS. This was due to an increase in 

the use of lignite for power generation. In 2018, there was a reduction of emissions by 2.1 percent, 

but this happened almost solely due to changes in the power sector, and the transport sector 



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witnessed a slight increase. In 2020, the slowdown due to the various pandemic lock-downs has 

led to further and substantial decreases in GHG emissions, but it is questionable whether these will 

be permanent (for a more positive reading, see Schreurs and Schott 2020 this issue). Of course, 

the EU is not a monolithic bloc. Some countries are doing more than others; for example, Sweden 

and Denmark, according to the 2019 New Climate Institute’s Climate Change Performance Index, 

are the two global front-runners regarding their path toward the Paris Agreement’s targets (Burck 

et al. 2019). Countries like Estonia, Bulgaria, and Poland, on the other hand, are doing much worse. 

In the EU, the European ETS has so far been the main instrument in mitigating climate change; it 

covers about 40 percent of the EU’s emissions in six sectors and in about 11,000 installations. 

Non-ETS sectors like agriculture, transport (except air transport), or buildings are in the domain 

of the member states, with each one having a specific target. The EU ETS has been perceived as a 

success, as it has not only facilitated the reduction of GHG emissions, but has been more successful 

in those industries that are covered by the scheme than those that are not (Ellerman, Marcantonini 

and Zaklan 2015). Additionally, the ETS has not reduced competitiveness of impacted companies 

(Joltreau and Sommerfeld 2019). The EU ETS, which was reformed in 2018 to avoid a growing 

surplus of emission rights (Wettestad and Jevnaker 2019; EU 2018), will also lead to further 

reductions. Its phase four, beginning in 2021, includes a yearly reduction of the cap of 2.2 percent 

(Oberthür 2019, 19). Nevertheless, problems are still visible, and they have to do with the various 

exceptions for specific industries and the grandfathering of a still large amount of emission rights. 

Furthermore, the hard nuts to crack – transport and buildings – have not yet been included, and 

only recently has much progress has been achieved in these sectors (Delreux and Ohler 2019, 11).  

Interpreting and Comparing the Status Quo: Carbon Democracy at Work 

The EU and Canada have taken divergent paths and it is evident that the former has produced more 

progressive climate policy-making. Nevertheless, both polities have historically featured the major 

characteristics of carbon democracy. In Canada and the EU (or, more historically correctly, in its 

member states) broader mass participation in politics was influenced by the extensive use of first 

coal and later oil. During the “great acceleration” (Steffen et al. 2015) after the end of World War 

II, Canada and Europe extensively relied on the socio-technological system of fossil fuels, and 

they partially still do. In both polities, it was not only that economic growth depended on the 

burning of coal and oil, but a huge fossil fuel energy infrastructure was also formed. This 

infrastructure supported and strengthened powerful fossil fuel-based sectors, primarily energy 

companies in Canada and the automotive sector in Europe, that came to dominate their economies 

and fed into the development of a worldview that entrenched the use of fossil fuels.  

First, regarding energy extraction, production, transportation, and consumption, Canada and the 

EU have both strongly relied on the digging up and burning of coal, oil, and gas. In both regions, 

infrastructures have been set up that have locked in the use of fossil fuels for the next generation. 

This has been most evident in the discussions about new pipelines. For Canada, the “pipelines for 

Paris” suggestion (MacLean 2018) implied that the Paris Agreement could only gain enough 

political support in Canada if its ratification would not lead to a shut-down of pipelines. This might 

not have increased the government’s popularity, particularly in Alberta, but it certainly entrenched 

the power of the fossil fuel industry. Former Alberta Premiere Alison Redford stated, “Alberta’s 

oil sands are the lifeblood of our economy.” Indeed, if realized, the GHG emissions of the Pacific 

Northwest Liquid Natural Gas project would make up about 10 percent of Canada’s remaining 

carbon budget if calculated on a per-capita emissions basis (2018, 52). Even more worrisome, the 

upstream GHG emissions  caused by the Trans Mountain pipeline, which the government 

purchased in 2018 and which is estimated to work over a period of 50 years, will by itself consume 



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about 83 percent of Canada’s share of its carbon budget if we take the Paris Agreement’s more 

lenient target of two degrees Celsius as a benchmark (100 percent if a 1.5°C target is taken) (2018, 

58). Bill McKibben (2020) thus claimed that “Canada, which is 0.5 percent of the planet’s 

population, plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget.” Furthermore, 

the Canadian government is, all rhetorical claims withstanding, deeply embedded in the fossil fuel 

age, as demonstrated by the various direct and indirect subsidies of about 40 billion dollars to oil 

and gas in 2015 (Green 2019).  

For the EU, Nord Stream 2 is to transport natural gas directly from Russia to Germany. This will 

at first reduce Germany’s, and thus the EU’s, carbon emissions, as natural gas will primarily 

replace lignite. But in the medium to long run, it will have serious environmental impacts in Russia, 

and will lock the EU into a new infrastructure set to deliver 55 billion cubic metres of natural gas 

that will produce about 106 million tonnes of CO2 – the equivalent of the annual emissions of the 

Czech Republic (Stoczkiewicz 2017). Similar to Canada, though on a smaller scale overall, the 

EU is thus partially locking-in its dependence on natural gas. As for coal, in the PCF Canada 

committed itself to a national phase out by 2030, although some leeway is provided on the 

provincial level (Boyd and Rabe 2019, 248). Within the EU, Portugal, Greece, Hungary, France, 

Germany, and now even Poland announced the phaseout of coal. However, the closing of all coal 

fired power plants will most likely not happen before 2038 when Germany and Poland have 

finished their respective phaseouts. 

Second, Canada and the EU still have sectors that are hard to green, which has given rise to a 

variety of veto-players. For Canada, this is evident in the case of utilities and energy companies, 

including the huge field of mining and extraction. These sectors represent a form of “prairie 

capitalism” that Richards and Pratts (1979) identified as a trend for Canada in some Western 

provinces more than four decades ago and that Kellogg (2015) recently ‘revisited’ for the oil and 

bitumen industries. The argument behind prairie capitalism is analogous to carbon democracy in 

that it stresses the important influence of large-scale ownership of specific extractive assets. The 

claim of prairie capitalism is that it is not foreign capital that advances capitalist practices, for 

example in Alberta’s bitumen industry, but rather a regional bourgeoisie, and that therefore Canada 

should not be understood as being part of a colonial periphery but rather of the capitalist center. 

Canada exported fossil fuels worth 134 billion Canadian dollars in 2019 (Government of Canada 

2020) and the export-oriented agricultural sector is also highly dependent on fossil fuels. These 

exports go primarily to the US market, leading to a high level of vulnerability to what happens 

there, but these industries are largely owned by Canadians. A restructuring of these sectors would 

be very cost intensive (Boyd and Rabe 2019, 242) and would impact the social fabric of Canadian 

capitalism. But it is not only the ‘bourgeoisie’ that is profiting from Canada’s carbon democracy; 

unions are particularly strong in the fossil fuel-dependent sectors. Workers in these sectors often 

enjoy wages far above average and are reluctant to give up their privileged position (MacArthur 

et al. 2020, 5).  

In the EU, the fossil fuel sector is less entrenched than in Canada, but industrial policy is strongly 

influenced by companies and unions which depend on fossil fuels; this starts with Airbus and 

includes the automotive sector with its strong union culture. Furthermore, the strong welfare state 

in both polities, and the corporatist politics in the mentioned industries, make ambitious reforms 

with redistributive effects hard to implement (MacArthur et al. 2020). Both Canada and the EU 

strongly rely on economic growth, and any policy that does not take this into account might face 

massive opposition. In Europe, this became evident with France’s ‘yellow vest movement’ 

opposing President Macron’s increase of gas prices in 2019. Also, in late 2019 the German right-



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wing party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) announced its intention to contest the financing of 

renewable energy and any plans to further reduce GHG emissions. Climate thus became the third 

major topic of the party.  

In Canada and the EU, these policies also face strong subnational/national actors that have 

substantially entrenched veto positions. In both polities the ‘federal’ level has only marginal 

competences to actually bring change to the socio-technical infrastructure in place. For example, 

Alberta in Canada and Poland in the EU can be considered spoilers of progressive climate change 

policies. These actors cannot simply be sidelined. Alberta strongly depends on revenues from the 

oil and gas industry which is responsible for over a third of Alberta’s emissions (Boyd 2019, 2). 

Despite the fact that Alberta is a leader in installing wind power installations, with an installed 

wind energy capacity of 1,685 Mega Watt (CanWEA 2020), it is a “reluctant actor” that moves 

only when external pressure, usually from the US, is present (Boyd 2019, 2; MacDonald and 

VanNijnatten 2010). Thus, within Canada’s strong federalist tradition, “Ottawa has limited 

capacity to control or direct Canadian climate policy” (MacNeil and Paterson 2016, 556), and it is 

particularly at the provincial level that more progressive action is being held back. 

Poland, which depends on coal for its power sector, has emerged as the main spoiler of climate 

change policies in the EU. The EU has repeatedly compromised on its policy frameworks due to 

Polish pressure (Skjærseth 2018). The EU might have some leeway on climate policies but is 

historically lacking the power to regulate energy issues (Szarka 2016) and has only recently started 

to engage in regulating traffic. The EU 2030 Framework also shows that the European Commission 

could not set binding energy efficiency or renewable energy targets on the member states, although 

it could strengthen procedural obligations of member states regarding their energy and climate 

plans (Oberthür 2019, 24). 

Finally, Canada and the EU are carbon democracies not only in that both polities rely on energy 

in a material sense, but also in their worldviews (for a general debate on worldviews and climate 

change, particularly mobility, see Chuang, Manley, and Petersen 2020; Sovacool and Griffiths 

2020). Canadians’ and Europeans’ respective identities are to some extent shaped by a tradition of 

resource extraction and high mobility. In Canada, this is part of the pioneer mentality, where nature 

is understood as a “hinterland” whose purpose it is to provide goods for its citizens, while European 

populations might perceive of nature rather as countryside that is also available for human use 

(Dalby 2019, 103). In both polities, a culture of high mobility has evolved that relies on 

individualized transport. In Canada and the EU, legislation has introduced higher emission 

standards, and both polities have started to subsidize electric mobility, fostering some discussions 

on smarter mobility (Barr 2018), but neither has so far started to rethink transport more 

fundamentally.  

 

Transforming Carbon Democracies Through Green Deals? 

Canada and the EU are carbon democracies, but could this be changed through domestic pressure, 

as foreseen in the Paris Agreement (Falkner 2016)? After all, various actors within civil society 

are pushing for more progressive climate policies, resonating with a more general attitude within 

the population. For example, in Canada, more than half of the population supports the introduction 

of market-based mechanisms to stop climate change and this holds true even for provinces that 

have historically been reluctant on mitigation actions (Pew Research Center 2017; Mildenberger 

and Lachapelle 2019). Furthermore, the youth activist Fridays for Future movements are active in 



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both polities even though they have resonated more within the EU. Greta Thunberg was invited by 

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, when von der Leyen presented the EU’s 

new climate law in March 2020. Thunberg, nevertheless, criticized the EU’s position as a 

“surrender” because it failed to keep up with the 1.5 degree target of the Paris Agreement (BBC 

2020). Similar to the student protests of the 1960s which called for democratizing Western 

societies, the current youth movement calling for more radical climate policies might have a 

chance to actually make an impact (Marquardt 2020). Fridays for Future is an indicator that climate 

change has become politicized in the sense that conflicts in this policy field are becoming more 

intense and visible (Schattschneider 1960; Hutter and Grande 2014). This implies that climate is 

gaining in salience with more actors being involved, more polarization in viewpoints, and more 

alternatives being developed (for a discussion of these elements of politicization, see Grande, 

Schwarzbözl, and Fatke 2019; Hoeglinger 2016).   

Many alternatives are currently being envisioned under the term ‘green deal’, a label which refers 

to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ which unleashed various public works and investment 

programs in the US between 1933 and 1939 to counter the effects of the Great Depression, when 

the unemployment rate ballooned to 25 percent. This governmental involvement in the US 

economy was unprecedented, and it made the government the largest employer in the country. 

Furthermore, Roosevelt’s New Deal also increased the power of the federal government in relation 

to the states (Patterson 1969). The metaphor of the New Deal is today advanced by very different 

camps. In academia, for example, there is a group of scholars who argue that a green deal must be 

radically transformative, and to be successful it will have to overcome capitalism (Pettifor 2019; 

Klein 2019). Others have stressed that a green deal could be part of ecological modernization and 

a green economy (e.g. Jänicke 2012; Pahle, Pachauri, and Steinbacher 2016; UNEP 2011; Rifkin 

2019).  

Politically, the notion of a green deal was most prominently promoted by Democratic 

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the US, who became a figurehead for progressive 

climate policies in America in 2018. She builds on debates that had been around, at least within 

the Democratic Party, since 2006 (Bang and Schreurs 2011) and that at the same time also had 

gained a lot of traction in some parts of the Labour Party in the UK. In the US, the green deal 

offers to provide a political, as well as economic or societal, answer to the climate problem. 

Although President Biden was hesitant to endorse the notion of a green deal during the campaign, 

his “Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice” contains many of the major 

economic, social, and ecological elements of what the proponents of the green deal have 

demanded, such as a massive roll-out of new energy infrastructures (Biden 2020). Hence, the US 

example shows that climate issues are no longer just another environmental problem, but rather a 

challenge to how the economic system is structured. Furthermore, proponents have a very strong 

focus on social justice and are trying to reach out to blue-collar workers. How are these ideas taken 

up in Canada and the EU, and do they have a chance to provide an alternative to carbon democracy? 

The Green Deal in Canada: A Variety of Bottom-Up Movements 

In Canada, the idea of a green deal has been embraced by various civil society organizations (e.g., 

Greenpeace, North 99) as well as by local communities and Indigenous groups who are pushing 

for transformative policies that would end Canada’s dependence on fossil fuels (MacArthur et al. 

2020). In 2019, many grassroots initiatives which were opposed to the North American Free Trade 

Association (NAFTA) have turned their attention to environmental issues and started to campaign 

for a ‘New Green Deal’ (Coalition for a Green New Deal 2019). This campaign serves as a rallying 



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cry that unites various political agendas. For example, the movement of “The Pact for a Green 

New Deal” was developed through town hall meetings which gathered a diverse set of demands 

ranging from Indigenous rights to green infrastructures. The resulting list was labelled a “Green 

New Deal”. The movement for a green deal is particularly strong in Quebéc, where a “Pacte pour 

le transition” was introduced and signed by more than 285,000 people in April 2020 (Shields 

2019). At the federal level, Member of Parliament Peter Julian submitted a motion for a “Green 

New Deal for Canada” in December 2019, a legislative initiative advocating for a green deal in 

Canada which stressed the notion of a just transition (Julian 2020). What is evident is that in all 

statements and formulations of the broader movement, the issue of social justice is a major demand 

and the notions of Indigenous knowledge, as well as climate justice, are particularly stressed (The 

Council of Canadians 2019).  

Evaluating the various attempts to bring about a green deal in Canada, Jessica Green (2019) 

suggests that so far it “is more aspiration than legislation. But the momentum for decisive action 

on climate change is growing.” One can thus conclude that the idea of a green deal in Canada is 

an attempt to move beyond carbon democracy from the bottom up, building on grassroots 

movements and stressing justice as well as local and Indigenous forms of knowledge (see also 

MacArthur et al. 2020). A new worldview is being promoted, but there is still not enough 

momentum for a new socio-technical infrastructure to evolve. Neither are the existing power 

structures of the fossil fuel industry – particularly the energy sector – being replaced, nor are the 

veto positions of fossil fuel dependent provinces being challenged. At least for the foreseeable 

future, it thus seems unlikely that these bottom-up processes will evolve into a game changer to 

Canada’s carbon democracy and prairie capitalism. 

The Green Deal in the EU: Top-Down Approaches in Times of COVID-19 

In Europe, the idea of a green deal has been advanced in a top-down fashion more than it has in 

Canada. The concept was promoted by the EU Commission, which announced that Europe will be 

the first carbon-neutral continent and which promised to “transform the EU into a fair and 

prosperous society, with a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy where there are 

no net emissions of greenhouse gases in 2050 and where economic growth is decoupled from 

resource use” (European Commission 2019, 2). The Commission’s president, von der Leyen, 

announced a plan worth one trillion euros that over a period of 10 years will massively restructure 

Europe’s industry toward decarbonization. The first objective was initially set to 50 percent 

reduction of the EU’s emissions by 2030 (taking 1990 as the base year); however, this target was 

increased to 55 percent in December 2020 by the European Council in order to provide new 

momentum to the stagnant European economy. The green deal is also much more ambitious in its 

scope compared to former policy announcements, as it focuses not only on carbon pricing through 

the EU ETS, potentially supported by a carbon border tax to avoid leakage, but also on sustainable 

investment, e.g., in the fields of buildings, mobility, industrial policy, and a just transition 

(European Commission 2019). In particular, the notion of a just transition fund of about 100 billion 

euros to compensate those regions and sectors within Europe that lose out from decarbonization 

and to counterbalance adverse distributional effects, potentially through compensation 

mechanisms, has been perceived as an innovative way to get countries like Poland on board 

(Claeys, Tagliapietra, and Zachmann 2019, 15f).  

The EU’s green deal has been criticized for the fact that not much of the money is actually new or 

additional but rather represents a reshuffling of existing funds, generating only 7.5 billion euros in 

new commitments (Varoufakis and Adler 2020). It is also highly questionable how green the 



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contributions really are, such as those regarding farm subsidies. Furthermore, most of the money 

is supposed to come from private-sector investments, but the private sector is still under-investing 

in green technologies. To reach the targets of the green deal, about 25 percent of all new 

investments will have to go into sustainable technologies, up from only 12 percent now (Geinitz 

2020). Finally, the EU reached an agreement on its future budget for 2020–2027, which includes 

a COVID-19 recovery fund and which foresees 30 percent of allocated resources being used to 

finance various aspects of the EU’s climate objectives. However, so far in all G20 countries the 

money spent in the context of COVID-19 has supported high-carbon economic production, 

although the EU is the polity investing most in low-carbon production measures (UNEP 2020, 38).  

Despite numerous challenges, the overall outlook is positive. First, the green deal will lead to some 

climate mainstreaming as is already visible with the EU stability pact, where – before the COVID-

19 crisis and the factual cancellation of the pact – the idea was floated that climate measures would 

not count as fiscal deficits. This is relevant as it allows EU member states to invest more in 

sustainable technologies and practices without having to fear that austerity measures from the EU 

Commission will follow. The green deal also targets the common agricultural policy and 

infrastructure investments that so far have not been front-runners of decarbonization, thus 

developing a strong multi-sectoral component.  

Second, the European measures might have some leverage on the member states, which is not only 

true for potential buy-in by Poland but also due to provisions of ambitious parameters for the front-

runners. For example, the German energy transition might get a necessary boost through tougher 

European regulations (Löschel 2020). Other players who tried to stop the Commission’s work on 

the green deal, like the Czech president Babis, were simply sidelined and could not stop the deal 

nor the recovery fund (Oroschakoff and Mathiesen 2020).  

Third, the green deal is supported by the European Central Bank, and some policy-makers have 

brought up the idea of green bonds which would, for the first time, provide the EU with revenues 

independent from the member states (Taylor 2021). Likewise, the European Investment Bank will 

continue to restructure its financing to make it greener. Similarly, the green deal is going beyond 

the piecemeal attempts that characterized earlier European approaches (Harvey and Rankin 2020). 

The green deal will be particularly important for European clean-tech companies which need to 

scale up within the larger European market in order to be on an equal footing with the competitors 

in the US and China that often underprice European companies due to having gained experiences 

in larger domestic markets (Claeys, Tagliapietra, and Zachmann 2019, 14).  

The green deal could, therefore, evolve as a first step for the EU to move beyond the characteristics 

of a carbon democracy. The EU member states’ phase out of extracting and burning coal, and the 

concurrent investment in renewable energies, allows the build-up of a new socio-technical 

infrastructure that is no longer based on fossil fuels. Important sectors like the European car 

industry and even whole countries like Poland are now being pressured by the European 

Commission and civil society to make the changes they had long avoided (Oroschakoff and 

Mathiesen 2020). A new momentum has been created that will make obstructive policy-making 

much harder to succeed. Finally, with the attempt to integrate progressive climate policies across 

the whole spectrum, and addressing recalcitrant sectors like traffic, agriculture and building, the 

EU can no longer be criticized for shallow green-washing.  

 

  



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Conclusion: From Carbon to Green Democracy? 

The gist of this article can be summarized in two arguments. First, Greta Thunberg’s warning at 

the Davos World Economic Forum in January 2019 that “the house is on fire” came right on time. 

Indeed, the science showing the negative impacts on our planet of anthropogenic climate change 

is extremely disturbing (IPCC 2018). As this article has argued, contrary to official claims, neither 

Canada nor the EU has so far been a successful firefighter. The socio-technical infrastructure 

behind the extraction, transportation, and consumption of fossil fuels is still to a large extent 

structuring their economies, societies, and politics in profound ways. Carbon democracy has been 

deeply entrenched in both polities. Too often policy and academic debates on how the climate 

problem can be solved are framing the issue as another environmental disturbance that needs a 

technical solution, but ignoring the deep-seated entrenchment of carbon democracy.  

Second, not all hope is lost. Fridays for Future and other civil society movements are contributing 

to a strong politicization of climate change. And at least for the EU, the politicization has found a 

rallying cry in the idea of a European green deal. This could lead to what Meadowcraft and others 

have labelled a “green state” (Bäckstrand and Kronsell 2015; Duit, Feindt, and Meadowcroft 2016; 

Meadowcroft 2012). However, for Canada it is evident that much has to happen to overcome the 

deep-seated practices of prairie capitalism and carbon democracy. As Canada has traditionally 

aligned its climate policy with that of the US, there is hope that the government may again align 

its policies with the new US administration that plans to engage more constructively in global 

climate talks and to change some elements of its fossil fuel socio-economic infrastructure. Whether 

the more positive evaluation of the EU is due to the fact that the EU institutions are more insulated 

from public pressure, and thus can force decarbonization more strongly than can their counterparts 

in a country like Canada, is an open question that merits further research. In conclusion, 

decarbonization and the attempt to leave the socio-technical infrastructure of our carbon 

democracies behind us have slowly evolved into a political and social project that could lead to 

the much-needed green transformation. 

  



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28      Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies, 14(2) 2020: 9-28 
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Available online at: https://ojs.library.carleton.ca/index.php/CJERS/index 

 

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ISSN: 2562-8429 

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