On March 14, 2025, Mark Carney - the former governor of the Banks of Canada and England, boasting an extensive track record of climate advocacy - was sworn in as Canada’s 24th Prime Minister, replacing Justin Trudeau.
Few success stories came out of this year’s COP. Nevertheless, we’ve compiled COP29’s five (very modest) achievements and five of its most notable failures.
On November 12, 2024, the Hague Appeals Court overturned a landmark 2021 decision ordering oil giant Shell to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 45% from 2019 levels by 2030.
On October 17, 2024, Ontario’s Court of Appeal sided with a group of young climate activists in its Mathur v Ontario decision, reviving a case against the province which was previously dismissed in April 2023.
As the court wrote in its decision, “[a] government or political party can, in the words of Ontario’s Minister of Energy, “stick it to” another tier of government or political party as a matter of free speech in an election campaign…But a government cannot legislate a requirement that private retailers post a Sticker designed to accomplish that task. The mandatory fuel pump Sticker is an unconstitutional attempt to do just that.”
On July 31st, Ireland’s Supreme Court held that the Irish government’s current climate plan failed to meet the requirements set out in the statutory Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act of 2015. The ruling will require the government to (a) revise its plan to realise greater near-term emission reductions, and (b) better specify how Ireland will achieve the Act’s long-term objective of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
On June 23, 2020, the US Department of Labor proposed regulations to prohibit private industry pension plans, governed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), from investing in ESG investment vehicles if doing so would prioritize non-financial objectives over purely financial ones (i.e., increasing returns for plan beneficiaries).
