BC’s election is coming up. I’m climate-concerned voter, deeply concerned about the increasingly destructive climate future we are leaving to our kids and to all future Canadian generations. I still haven’t decided how I’m going to best vote for climate hope. So, I’m not writing to offer any recommendations on who to vote for. Instead, I’m writing to offer some basic information about BC’s emissions.
BC HAS FAILED TO CUT EMISSIONS – BC’s emissions have gone up. We now emit 26% more than we did in 1990. As chart at the top of this article shows, BC has done even worse than Canada has overall (+16%). We are holding our nation back in the climate fight. In comparison, Quebec, Ontario, and all the other eastern provinces have
cut emissions since 1990.
BC HAS FALLEN FAR BEHIND MANY OF OUR PEERS -- The chart also lets you see how far behind BC is compared to every G7 nation. Hey, even the Americans are way ahead of us. All G7 nations reduced emissions since 1990. All of them made significant cuts in last decade. And take a look at our Commonwealth peers, the British – they have done the hard work to
cut their emissions in half. Clearly, it has been possible all along for wealthy, advanced economies to cut emissions. So far, British Columbians have chosen not to act.
BC’s CROSS-PARTY FAILURE – BC’s emission went up under both NDP and conservative provincial governments. To highlight this, I’ve used orange on my chart to show the years when NDP was in power, and blue for the years when the conservative BC Liberals were in power.
POLITICAL TURNING POINT – One key reason the British have been successfully cutting climate pollution is that both their conservative and liberal parties have acted to cut emissions. For awhile it looked like that might happen in British Columbia too. Back in 2007, the BC Liberals (for those new to BC politics, this was a conservative party) passed some notable climate policies including enacting BC’s first Carbon Tax and a strong clean electricity mandate. They also set a climate target for 2020, as shown on the chart. For awhile BC emissions trended downward, similar to the trends in other G7 nations. But after a few years of climate progress, the BC NDP ran an “axe the carbon tax” campaign. Soon after the BC Liberal government “froze” their carbon tax and pulled back on their climate policy push. The result of BC’s cross-party climate retreat was a surge in emissions that left us heading in the wrong direction – and far above our 2020 target.
OUR 2025 TARGET – A few years ago the BC NDP government set BC’s next climate target for 2025. Since then, BC’s emissions haven’t headed down towards that target. They’ve gone up. My opinion from my years of reporting on climate pollution is that the biggest and most out of control sources of emissions in BC are: (1)
burning gasoline and diesel in our cars and trucks instead of driving on electricity; (2) increasing fossil gas extraction, now turbocharged to feed new LNG exports; (3) heating our homes and buildings by burning fossil gas instead of heating with electricity; (4)
extracting wood from our forest so much faster than it is growing back.