Some climate activists see Justin Trudeau as more sinister than Donald Trump.

While Trump is transparent about his love for fossil fuels, he hasn't followed through on his 2016 campaign promise to re-open Appalachia's coal mines.

In fact, the coal industry in the western United States has even gone into decline as renewable energy has become far more affordable and easily stored.

Trudeau's government, on the other hand, has pushed for the completion of the Keystone XL pipeline, approved the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, approved the Trans Mountain pipeline, and approved the LNG Canada project in Kitimat.

Canada's prime minister is a North American kingpin when it comes to fossil fuels.

And he's done this while professing fealty to the 2015 Paris Agreement. It aims to keep the average global temperature low enough to avoid feedback loops from kicking in that would doom humanity on Earth.

Today, environmental writer and 350.org cofounder Bill McKibben shone a light on Trudeau's doublespeak in a Guardian article entitled "When it comes to climate hypocrisy, Canada's leaders have reached a new low".

It focuses on the likelihood of the Trudeau government giving the green light to Vancouver-based Teck's Frontier Project, which would emit up to six megatonnes of greenhouse gases per year.

"There’s obviously something hideous about watching the Trumps and the Putins of the world gleefully shred our future," McKibben wrote. "But it’s disturbing in a different way to watch leaders pretend to care—a kind of gaslighting that can reduce you to numb nihilism.

"Trudeau, for all his charms, doesn’t get to have it both ways: if you can’t bring yourself to stop a brand-new tar sands mine then you’re not a climate leader."

In 2017, McKibben excoriated Trudeau in another Guardian piece entitled "Stop swooning over Justin Trudeau. The man is a disaster for the planet".

The came a month after Trudeau won cheers at a Houston energy conference by telling delegates "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there."