pc28¹ÙÍø

While emissions have been trending downwards over the past two decades, current levels put the city at a 36 per cent reduction compared to 1990. Its short-term goal is to cut 45 per cent by 2025.

“It is clear that the current pace of emissions reductions is unlikely to meet the City’s 2025 emissions target,” the report states.

The city would need to knock off 2.1 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to meet that intermediary goal on the way to hitting net zero by 2040, which is tantamount to taking more than 650,000 gas-powered cars off the road — more than half the cars currently out there, the report says. 

“pc28¹ÙÍøis not moving at this pace.”

Advocates say the city’s ultimate goals are not out of reach, and that we even have a “very good” chance of meeting the next short-term goal along the way, which is to cut 65 per cent of emissions by 2030. But we will need to accelerate our actions to get there. 

“We have a very good plan,” said How-Sen Chong, a climate campaigner with the pc28¹ÙÍøEnvironmental Alliance, calling the city’s net zero strategy, , “world-leading.”

“We just need to move faster.”

Toronto’s biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions is the natural gas used to heat homes. Another way to reduce emissions by the 2.1 megatonnes and hit the 2025 target would be to switch four out of every five homes from their existing gas furnaces to electric heat pumps.

The second-biggest source is gas-powered passenger cars. Chong noted the TransformTO goal to get Torontonians to walk or bike shorter trips — a goal made more difficult to reach, he said, by the province’s recent legislation to limit new bike lanes and rip out existing ones. 

“Biking is one of the cornerstones of the 2030 (TransformTO) transportation goals,” he said. “We need to make sure that we have infrastructure in place so that people feel safe enough to find other ways of getting around.”

Coun. Dianne Saxe also said that city’s ability to meet its climate goals is influenced by policies enacted by other levels of government — including the provincial government’s expansion of the use of gas plants in the provincial power grid, which is “going rapidly in the wrong direction,” and “getting in our way of trying to turn over more space to cyclists.”

Another , carried out by the pc28¹ÙÍøand Region Conservation Authority at the request of the city, warned pc28¹ÙÍøis getting “warmer, wetter and wilder” because of climate change. pc28¹ÙÍøused to get an average of 9.7 “very hot” days per summer, when the temperature rose above 30 C. In the most recent period they looked at, between 1991 and 2020, there were 14. In a scenario with very high continued greenhouse gas emissions — a scenario that is actually worse than the one we are currently on track for — the city could see 68 extra “very hot” days per year by the end of this century — more than two extra months’ worth, compared to 1980.

The report also noted an increase in short but extreme rainfall events, such as the one that flooded the city this past July. Including that downpour, the city has seen four extreme rainfall events in under 20 years that exceeded the threshold of a “100-year storm,” one so intense it historically had a one per cent chance of occurring in any given year.

“Every fraction of a degree of climate change that we prevent will protect more and more people,” Chong said.