Climate change & energy policy

Failure to act means failing dikes

Sep 13, 2023

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

By Marc Lee

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

Protest sign reading "THERE IS NO PLANET B"

Budget 2023: a risky bet on cleaner capitalism

Jun 1, 2023

By Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood, Marc Lee and Caroline Brouillette

With roughly $62 billion in new climate-related spending over the next decade, the federal government’s 2023 budget doubled down on climate action with a focus on investment in the clean economy. However, the budget locks in a particular approach to climate action—one where incentives to the private sector do the heavy lifting of growing green… View Article

Aerial photo of Smithers mill surrounded by piles of logs

Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

Apr 28, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

Calls for BC environment minister to suspend pellet mill permit Every year, the air in the Bulkley Valley community of Smithers becomes hazardous to human health as thousands of fires known as slash burns are deliberately set at logging sites. The contaminated air can stay trapped in the valley’s airshed for extended periods as the… View Article

Raising emissions while pledging to lower them — British Columbia’s Orwellian LNG gambit

Mar 23, 2023

By J David Hughes

In 2007, then-BC premier Gordon Campbell passed the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act” committing BC to a 33 per cent reduction in emissions from 2007 levels by 2020. Despite premier Campbell’s good intentions, emissions in 2020 were down just 1.6 per cent. In 2016, in lieu of increasing the carbon tax implemented in Campbell’s greenhouse… View Article

BC budget does the right thing by prioritizing investment over austerity

Mar 1, 2023

By Alex Hemingway, Iglika Ivanova and Shannon Daub

BC’s first budget under Premier David Eby includes substantial funding increases in housing, health care, income supports and cost of living tax credits, as well as allocating a record level of investment towards capital infrastructure. This not only represents much-needed progress towards meeting some of the big challenges facing our province but also prudently continues… View Article

Does the global “loss and damages” fund negotiated at COP27 offer lessons for BC?

Feb 23, 2023

By Lisa Akinyi May

The 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) ended last November with an historic agreement to establish a “loss and damages” fund to address the impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable nations. Given the disasters BC has faced over the last couple of years, is this a model the province could draw on to… View Article

Spending What It Takes: Transformational climate investments for long-term prosperity in Canada

Feb 9, 2023

By Marc Lee, Caroline Brouillette and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood

The world is confronted with a slew of accelerating and converging crises, from climate change and biodiversity loss to energy insecurity, unaffordable living and rising inequality. In the face of these challenges, Canada must urgently and equitably decarbonize every sector of the economy both to contribute our fair share of the global climate effort and… View Article

Counting the Costs and Contradictions of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

Jan 23, 2023

By Marc Lee

Canada’s uneasy relationship between climate change and fossil fuel development was illustrated in November 2021 when seven atmospheric rivers hit southern BC. The “big one” starting on Nov. 13 led to massive flooding and landslides that crippled infrastructure and isolated the south coast from the rest of Canada. Among the shutdowns was the Trans Mountain… View Article

Severe climate events cost BC economy billions more than reported estimates

Nov 30, 2022

By Marc Lee and Ben Parfitt

Caroline and Paul Mosterman have seen their share of unusual weather in four-plus decades of farming. But nothing comes remotely close to what they experienced in November 2021 when their Sumas Prairie farm was inundated by floodwater. Because the couple farmed on a floodplain, they had no flood insurance. So, when their farm buildings, blueberry… View Article

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