Legislation introduced today by the B.C. government confirms multi-billion dollar giveaways to foreign multinationals that make it impossible to meet meaningful climate targets, said Sierra Club BC today.
“Why is our government spending billions to subsidize fossil fuel corporations when the resulting extreme weather will put B.C. communities at risk of increasing wildfires and drought, and rob our young people of a livable future?” asked Sierra Club BC’s campaigns director Caitlyn Vernon. “We have just eleven years to limit climate pollution and defend our life support systems, yet instead of doubling down on the energy efficiency retrofits and public transportation infrastructure needed to fulfill the important CleanBC program, this government is throwing fuel on the flames of the climate crisis.”
The B.C. government’s legislation helps enable more than $5 billion in subsidies to the foreign-owned LNG Canada conglomerate. These include subsidized electricity rates, exemption from PST during construction, elimination of the LNG income tax, and a future tax credit once production begins.
“This massive giveaway can’t be squared with the provincial government’s commitment to reducing climate pollution,” said Vernon. “It’s like digging a hole and trying to fill it at the same time. There is nothing ‘clean’ about fracked gas, and we could be creating more jobs and security for our communities by investing in green renewable energy instead.”
The world remains on a path to more than 3°C of warming, which would be catastrophic. Severe climate impacts are becoming an increasing fact of life in B.C., from record breaking wildfire seasons to droughts and flooding. In March of this year, temperature records were broken across the province, and Vancouver Island is experiencing low water levels more typical of those usually recorded in August.
B.C.’s carbon pollution has continued to rise, increasing 1.5 per cent in 2016, according to figures quietly released by the Province in December.
The CleanBC strategy, announced last fall, is a plan to get to 75% of B.C.’s current climate pollution targets. As such, it is a major step forward in the race to combat the climate crisis and secure a better future for British Columbians, although it will not reduce carbon pollution as much or as fast as the climate science tells us is needed.
“B.C. communities need to be given the tools to adapt to increasing extreme weather events, secure in the knowledge their governments are doing everything in their power to reduce climate threats,” said Vernon. “We need clear-eyed, practical policies to build resilience and hope for a livable future, not obscene giveaways to fossil fuel multinationals that are making things worse.”
Galen Armstrong speaking at CRD Parks and Environment Committee
By Galen Armstrong, Lead Organizer
March 2019
Last week, I was proud to stand alongside Sierra Club BC supporters and volunteers, representatives from other organizations, and community members in speaking up for protection of the Sooke Hills Regional Wilderness Park.
A couple of weeks earlier, news started to spread that the BC government was planning to announce a feasibility study on (get this!) punching a road through the Sooke Hills as an alternative to the Malahat section of highway. Negative reaction to this plan was strong and swift.
Sierra Club BC received numerous emails of concern from our members, and we knew this was something we would not stay silent on.
That’s why I attended the Capital Regional District (CRD) Park and Environment Committee’s meeting and spoke along with more than thirty others—all against the Province’s anticipated proposal.
Grey wolf in the Sooke Hills. Photo by Gary Schroyen.
In our fifty years as an organization, Sierra Club BC’s members and supporters have fought many fights, all across the province, to protect fragile ecosystems and irreplaceable places. The Sooke Hills is one of those places. In the 1990s, our members were among the many voices calling for protection of this local treasure.
The value of the place was easily understood, and it was protected under the management of the CRD.
Now that we find ourselves in the position of fighting again for protection of the Sooke Hills, it provides us, as individuals, communities, and as a province, a chance to remember why this place matters.
The Sooke Hills is valuable for a myriad of reasons. Its forest acts as a buffer for the watershed that provides drinking water for Greater Victoria. That alone is enough, and should be enough for the Province to understand.
This threat also comes in the era of climate change. We have no time to waste, and we must move quickly on climate solutions such as improved public transportation. Building a road through the Sooke Hills should not be on the table, and certainly not before far more reasonable solutions are attempted; for example, bringing back train service, creating a dedicated bus lane, and reducing the cost of taking public transit on this route.
Black bear sow with 7 month old cubs in the Sooke Hills. Photo by Gary Schroyen.
The CRD Parks and Environment Committee meeting last week provided a wonderful opportunity to remember why we haven’t – and mustn’t – build a road through the Sooke Hills. We heard articulate arguments from Wilderness Committee campaigner Torrance Coste, longtime activist Vicky Husband, young climate activist Antonia Paquin, and many more.
We heard about climate change, forest fires, freshwater and protection of ecosystems for wildlife such as the endangered marbled murrelet.
One person we did not hear from at this meeting was wildlife photographer Gary Schroyen. Instead, meeting attendees and committee members sat in rapt silence as Gary used his four minutes to show breathtaking photos of bears, elk, cougars and more, taken in and around the Sooke Hills protected area.
The only sounds in the room were the occasional gasp or “wow” as the photos showcased wildlife that most of us are rarely if ever able to see—wildlife that is protected from, and now threatened by, a new “emergency” highway.
Bull elk in the Sooke Hills. Photo by Gary Schroyen.
The meeting went well. After hearing the unanimous message from community members, the committee voted (almost unanimously) to recommend to the CRD that they send the Province a clear message: the Sooke Hills Wilderness Park exists for very good reasons, and it must continue to exist as it is.
The CRD Board met on March 13 and voted to follow the recommendations from the Parks and Environment Committee and the Water Commission to tell the Province that a road through this area is unwanted. Now the ball is in the Province’s court.
I suspect by now the Province has noticed this strong reaction to what is clearly a very bad idea. It is my hope that they will scrap the feasibility study and get to work on modern, smart solutions to our transportation problems and climate change crisis.
And until they do, we will continue to stand up and speak out.
Feature image: female cougar with 6 month old cubs in the Sooke Hills. Photo by Gary Schroyen.
Fifty years ago Sierra Club BC was formed by a handful of people determined to defend old-growth forests. As we look forward – still defending the remaining big old trees! – it’s a time for deep reflection on where our organization, and our planet, is at.
There is so much work to be done, so many losses already suffered. There’s no hope at this point of stopping climate change—it’s already here—and there’s no hope of reaching our goals without an abrupt transition of our entire economy. Maybe it could have been smooth if we started decades earlier, but no longer.
And at the same time, there is definitely still hope that we can reduce emissions rapidly and do what the IPCC says is needed to stay below 1.5 degrees warming.
In reflecting on climate change, we experience a difficult tension between hope and hopelessness. Somehow we need to hold both at the same time. How do we honour important emotions like grief, while staying motivated to take critical actions that will make a difference?
In December, Sierra Club BC’s Campaigns Director Caitlyn Vernon spoke at an event hosted by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). It was the launch of a book by Donald Gutstein called The Big Stall. The book reveals how Canada’s energy sector and think tanks connected to Big Oil have systematically blocked action on climate change.
We’ve been told Caitlyn’s stories inspired hope and action. So we’ve adapted her words into a blog post to share her thoughts here with you.
On hope, hopelessness and winning the world we need
By Caitlyn Vernon
These days, we are faced with many examples of how policy is being heavily influenced by Big Oil.
For example, just Google Bill C-69, which is the new federal environmental assessment legislation that is intended to overhaul the National Energy Board. Even though from our perspective it’s far from perfect, it’s stuck in the Senate and there is intense pushback on the bill from big business. From April to December last year, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) met with federal officials 139 times—an average of once every working day!
The Oil Tanker Moratorium Act for BC’s north coast is also stuck in the Senate and undergoing major pushback from CAPP and others. However, it has now passed second reading, which means the committee studying the bill can look at amendments but cannot kill it.
Here in BC, we have new environmental assessment legislation, but the government didn’t include a climate test in it. Despite announcing a climate plan with legislated targets, the environmental assessment process only requires climate impacts to be “considered.” This leaves open the possibility that projects that don’t fit within our climate targets are still eligible to be built.
And of course, our federal government bought a leaky tarsands oil pipeline that could set taxpayers back by over $15 billion.
Given all this, what do we do?
We have governments doing nothing or actively getting in the way. We have governments making only incremental efforts. We have governments with an actual plan to cut carbon emissions—like BC—but yet still nowhere near far enough.
The CleanBC plan announced in December by the BC government is both a really good step to reduce emissions, and woefully insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge. They essentially announced a plan to meet former Premier Christy Clark’s targets.
It’s a detailed plan, which is definitely a step in the right direction. Having a plan to meet weak targets is definitely better than having targets with no plan, but the targets are still far too weak. It would be an excellent plan if we had all the time in the world. But we don’t.
What is needed is much more transformative, like the kind of measures we saw during the two world wars.
People and organizations are responding to the threat of climate change in a variety of ways.
Some are convinced we need to applaud and celebrate even the tiniest step forward by governments, in recognition that the broader public is scared of change and needs to be met where they are at so that we can move forward together, albeit very slowly.
This gets us climate policies like what we’re seeing both nationally and in BC, where there are some good policies to cut carbon emissions alongside contradictory commitments to expand fossil fuel infrastructure. This is like digging a hole and trying to fill it at same time.
Then there are others who think we just need to talk about the scary stuff: show everyone the science and the facts and suddenly policy will change, because people will recognize the level of emergency and be motivated to act. While the urgency is real, psychology suggests that knowing the fearful facts doesn’t move people to get involved. And we live in a fake news reality where, unfortunately, evidence may be necessary but certainly isn’t sufficient.
Some say we need to avoid the doom and gloom, and instead focus on hope and make everything sound possible, as if we were living twenty years in the past and weren’t already dealing with the impacts of a changing climate. Yet that approach tends to lead to more incremental solutions.
And then there is real grief. Personally, I think it is important to tap into that, as it’s connected to our love for this place. And from that sense of grounding, we can be even more effective. And yet even if we start focusing more on building the community resilience that we’re going to need to face what is coming, we still need to harness enough hope to keep working on reducing the emissions.
So how do we find hope, in order to keep ourselves going and get more people involved, when at times hope seems hard to come by?
I get the sense that people are scared, and wanting to look after their own. We are seeing the rise of eco-apartheid. For example, in the recent California fires, the Kardashians hired private firefighters to protect their house while everyone else lost their homes and were living in tents in parking lots, dealing with virus outbreaks.
And of course, there is the rise of populism and eco-fascism. Walls are going up, and it’s no coincidence that it’s happening when so many people around the world are on the move.
The question of how we get real climate action in this current political context is the question that will define our future.
I certainly don’t pretend to have the answers.
Instead I’ll share some thoughts, in the context offive stories that have inspired me lately.
The Haida Gwaii energy transition
This past September, I attended a renewable energy symposium on Haida Gwaii, where the community is aiming to transition off burning diesel and move to renewable energy. They’ve set a very clear goal of energy sovereignty on the island by 2023.
How will they do this? By working together in a place-based way, setting clear intentions for drastic change, and finding solutions that work locally. And they are grounding the transition in Haida language and worldview.
Haida Gwaii has some undeniable secret sauce. It’s a stunningly beautiful place, where Haida title over the lands is recognized by all who live there. Haida people and non-Indigenous residents are committed to working together. People are connected to the land and willing to do the hard work required. They have shared pride in the knowledge that what happens on Haida Gwaii tends to be precedent setting. They know people are watching.
We need to build community resilience—as we work to lower emissions, we also need to prepare our communities for what’s coming and encourage cooperation rather than partisan divisiveness. For example, I’m convinced that ensuring our communities are welcoming to refugees and newcomers needs to be a crucial part of our response to climate change.
The Haida Gwaii story reminds me of the quote by popular educator dian marino: “Be passionately aware that you might be completely wrong.” And it reminds me of the importance of talking with people who disagree with you. The science is on our side but how we get there needs to work for everyone.
And we need to make alternatives real. Many people don’t believe that alternatives are possible and they need to see to believe. We need to show, not tell. On Haida Gwaii, local entrepreneurs are designing and building tidal power systems, showing what’s possible.
Solutions are known. All that’s lacking is political will.
Our Sierra Club BC podcast Mission Transition has attempted to make these alternatives more tangible. Our second season will be released this spring, and will feature the transition that is underway on Haida Gwaii. Please help us share it—Mission Transition is available wherever you get your podcasts, and at sierraclub.bc.ca/podcast.
Indigenous law
I’m just starting to learn about Indigenous law and I’m finding it very inspiring. The new Indigenous law program at the University of Victoria is something that makes me feel very hopeful. We can all learn from the different ways of knowing, and of relating to each other and to the non-human world that are honoured in Indigenous law.
As a non-Indigenous person, this work reminds me of the importance of reconnecting with the non-human world in a way that fosters an understanding that our survival and well-being depends on the health of the world around us. We need to get outside, and to approach our place in this world, with humility.
As non-Indigenous people, we can uplift Indigenous laws and governance, and help ensure that Indigenous peoples are leading the way in the transition to a post-carbon economy. The rest of us have so much to learn.
Lawsuits
Sometimes we just need to go to court.
I’m inspired by the youth in Quebec and the US who are suing governments for climate inaction. And I’m excited by West Coast Environmental Law’s “Climate Law in Our Hands” program that aims to get corporations paying for the costs of climate impacts.
And Sierra Club BC has a case, represented by Ecojustice. It’s about some very large seven-story tall dams that were built in northeastern BC to provide water for fracking. Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Petronas, built the dams illegally without environmental assessments. After they were found out, by the CCPA, they applied for a retroactive exemption, which the BC government granted. This sets a very dangerous precedent, because it signals to other companies that they can break the law and get away with it.
And then there were the Indigenous-led court cases that overturned first the Enbridge and then the Kinder Morgan pipeline approvals. And through our Pull Together campaign, a partnership with RAVEN Trust and Force of Nature to raise funds for these Indigenous legal challenges, we raised over 1.2 million dollars for these cases, not a penny of which went to SCBC. One of the learnings here is that people are eager for actions they can take that address climate change while at the same time taking steps towards reconciliation.
Another learning was that while what we are up against is really daunting and incredibly serious, how we come together to respond can build community along the way – many of the events organized in support of Pull Together were fun and lively, and I would argue that our communities are stronger and more resilient as a result.
Delivering Community Power
Delivering Community Power is an initiative of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers. The idea is to revitalize Canada Post. The postal service would be reimagined with the use of electric vehicles and new services like checking in on seniors, delivering medications and groceries, postal banking, and post offices as electric vehicle charging stations and community hubs.
This is the kind of creative big picture thinking we need. It would stimulate good, green jobs in communities across the country. You can hear an interview about this initiative with the president of CUPW, Mike Palecek, on the most recent episode of our podcast.
Green New Deal for Canada
The idea of a Green New Deal is one of the most exciting things I’ve heard in a while. It’s coming out of the US, and it’s starting to gain traction on our side of the border.
The idea is to tie the phaseout of fossil fuels to a job security guarantee, within a lens of addressing historical injustices.
It provides solutions that are at scale with the climate emergency, while also having the potential to appeal to a much broader sector of society, because of the focus on jobs.
It takes the concept of a just transition to a whole new level. I think it’s brilliant, and we will be finding ways to promote this idea, particularly leading up to the federal election.
It’s crucial that politicians hear from voters—even if they don’t worry about their own survival as humans, we need to convince them that their political survival depends on climate action. That means more grassroots mobilizing, holding events, talking to neighbours, finding ways to get more people involved and doing it in areas that politicians care about.
And we need to speak up and have our voices heard—to push back against the oil industry at every chance we get.
The situation we’re in is daunting and there is no easy way forward. In the courts, in our communities, getting organized and speaking out—rather than debating which strategies are the most effective, what’s clear to me is that it’s all needed and we need all hands on deck, in whatever way each of us have energy for.
Please find what inspires you and do more this year. Because we are in this together. To change everything, we need everyone.
Retired government forest ecologist Jim Pojar and Skeena Wild have just released a report on forestry and carbon. The report refutes some common myths and shows why the protection of old-growth forests is critical in sequestering carbon and addressing climate change. The report, entitled “Forestry and Carbon in BC,” has been reviewed by UNBC academics and independent researchers.
Pojar, who worked for the BC forest service for 25 years, has also written an opinion piece debunking these common myths. You can read and share it here.
BC’s forest management is making climate change worse—an alarming situation when our forests should instead be our best ally in the fight against climate change. Unless the BC government wakes up and takes far-reaching action to strengthen conservation and improve forest management, our provincial forests will continue to contribute to climate change instead of slowing it down.
Vancouver Island clearcut. Photo by Mark Worthing.
The massive and growing forest emissions from our province are a result of destructive logging, pine beetle outbreaks and wildfires. BC’s forests used to absorb more carbon than they released until the early 2000s when they became a net source of carbon.
The situation has gotten much worse in the last two years. Both the 2017 and 2018 wildfires burned more than 1.2 million hectares of the province, eight times more than the ten year average. Combined with skyrocketing emissions from fires and a reduced ability of damaged forests to sequester carbon, the province must expect more than 200 million tonnes of “uncounted” annual carbon dioxide emissions from BC’s forests, once data becomes available for 2017 and 2018.
The government should be setting and delivering on targets for protection of carbon rich old-growth, timelines to phase out slash burning, and ensuring all communities at risk of wildfires are fully participating in Fire Smart programs.
Phasing out logging of carbon rich endangered old-growth forest will result in immediate emission reductions, as demonstrated with the Great Bear Rainforests Agreements. Improving management of second-growth forests and moving from destructive practices to careful logging allows for both the production of wood products and an increase in the amount of carbon stored in forests at the same time. This means more jobs and less damage per cubic metre. These steps must be integrated in provincial strategies like CleanBC and the coast revitalization initiative.
BC’s hidden and uncounted forest emissions in 2017 and 2018 will be three times higher than the province’s total officially reported emissions. These growing forest carbon losses and steps to reduce them are summarized in the Sierra Club BC report Hidden, ignored and growing: B.C.’s forest carbon emissions.
On hope, hopelessness and winning the world we need
