Climate change & energy policy

How BC’s oil and gas industry sidestepped carbon pricing

Jun 27, 2024
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When BC first introduced a carbon tax in 2008 the point was to apply it to all emissions causing climate change, but start at a low rate and increase it over time. Yet, as the carbon tax has increased for households at the gas pump and to heat homes, large industrial players—including the oil and… View Article

Thanks for a great ride

Apr 26, 2024
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Twenty years ago, an insect attack of biblical proportions in British Columbia’s forests became a hot-button topic.  Thanks to unusually warm winters (guess why), mountain pine beetles exploded in number in the province’s interior forests killing millions upon millions of lodgepole pine trees.  The provincial government responded by approving huge increases in logging so that… View Article
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Getting to Net-Zero in Canada: Summary

Feb 8, 2024
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Scale of the problem, government projections and daunting challenges The urgency of mitigating climate change through significant emission reductions is globally recognized—most recently with the call to transition away from fossil fuels at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP28). Canada has long accepted this challenge: its latest pledge… View Article

Knives out for Clean BC

Jan 25, 2024
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It’s taken sixteen years of incremental policy change in BC but you might have noticed that climate policies are starting to take hold.  Electric vehicles are widespread, new building standards with much higher energy efficiency are being introduced and heat pump sales have surged as people replace home heating equipment.  Nonetheless, the long knives are… View Article

Fires and farmworkers: Climate justice means improving protections for migrant farmworkers

Sep 15, 2023
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The impacts of the climate crisis are socially and geographically uneven: the wealthiest regions contribute disproportionately to the destruction of the planet while the poorest regions suffer the heaviest consequences. In this context, migrant farmworkers find themselves doubly displaced, facing droughts and inundations in their home countries, then heatwaves, fires and floods where they come… View Article

Failure to act means failing dikes

Sep 13, 2023
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  Province must take responsibility for flood protection infrastructure Provincial and municipal officials were warned repeatedly that the dikes in one of the cities hit hardest by the floods that paralyzed southern British Columbia in 2021 were structurally unsound and could fail should water levels in local rivers rise quickly. For years preceding the disaster,… View Article

The Energy Action Framework and BC’s carbon crossroads revisited

Jul 25, 2023
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Since first starting down the pathway of climate action in 2007, the BC government has both developed policies to reduce carbon emissions domestically while simultaneously promoting a growing oil and gas export industry. These contradictions are evident in the March 2023 announcement of a new Energy Action Framework, which tries to balance the interests of… View Article