Environment, resources & sustainability

Cedar LNG: Chronicles of a petro-state in the age of climate change

Jul 31, 2024
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A final investment decision in June 2024 by Cedar LNG highlights the challenges and contradictions of BC’s climate and energy policies. For the BC government, this is the model industrial project: it creates jobs and development in the North, has a major Indigenous partner in the Haisla Nation and will meet the low-emissions target established… 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

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