Environment, resources & sustainability

BC First Nation logs almost all of its treaty lands, leaving behind lots of stumps and questions

Jul 10, 2023

In just three years, much of the McLeod Lake Indian Band’s treaty lands were stripped of their bountiful and exceedingly valuable trees in a surge of logging that included one massive clear-cut that is almost 3,000 hectares in size, or 7.5 times larger than Vancouver’s Stanley Park. The extensive logging by the band 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

The extra-long logging haul

Apr 12, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

As forests shrink, drivers work 16-hour days to deliver single loads of logs to BC sawmills When Eugene Wilson started driving a logging truck 24 years ago, he worked out of the Bulkley valley community of Houston three hours west of Prince George. He recalls the trips as if they were yesterday. He’d begin 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

Houston Falling: Super-sized mills lead to super-sized problems for BC forests and workers

Mar 2, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

When the world’s biggest sawmill opened its doors, then-premier Gordon Campbell enthused that it could shoot out enough lumber to build all of British Columbia’s new annual housing stock, which was then averaging 26,000 units per year. After the ribbon was cut and the first logs passed through its computerized scanners and whirring sawblades on… View Article

Greenlighting fracking while protecting treaty rights?

Feb 13, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

Agreement with BC aside, 1000s of gas wells await Blueberry River First Nations When the Blueberry River First Nations took the provincial government to court in March 2015, arguing that cumulative industrial developments had robbed them of their ability to hunt and fish, oil and gas companies could see trouble lay ahead. So what did… 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

Running on Empty

Jan 18, 2023

By Ben Parfitt

Closure of Prince George pulp mill all about running out of forest The pending closure of a pulp mill in Prince George and the loss of 300 high-paying jobs in the community is just the beginning of what promises to be a new and painful chapter in the province’s beleaguered forest industry, which has already… 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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A progressive take on BC issues

A progressive take on BC issues

Environment, resources & sustainability

BC First Nation logs almost all of its treaty lands, leaving behind lots of stumps and questions

Budget 2023: a risky bet on cleaner capitalism

Promises of cleaner air up in smoke

The extra-long logging haul

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

Houston Falling: Super-sized mills lead to super-sized problems for BC forests and workers

Greenlighting fracking while protecting treaty rights?

Counting the Costs and Contradictions of the Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

Running on Empty

Severe climate events cost BC economy billions more than reported estimates