Tzeporah Berman: British Columbia’s climate plan is insufficient for the emergency we are in

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I came home from COP26, the UN World Climate Summit, to an unprecedented flood in southern British Columbia. A few months ago, I was breathing in the scorching air from the heat dome and watching one of the worst wildfire seasons unfold. With increasing urgency, we are all being asked to do more and faster to address the climate emergency.

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Even just a couple of years ago, the CleanBC climate plan could have been seen as historic, but as recent weeks have shown us, it is also clearly insufficient. The latest data shows that BC’s carbon emissions continue to rise. We need to stop thinking of rising emissions as an abstract concept and start seeing it for what it really is: people who lose their lives. Last month they looked like families displaced by the floods. It seemed like people were sleeping in their cars after the main roads became impassable. Like farmers trying to prevent their cattle from drowning in their fields and supermarket shelves being emptied by panicked and isolated communities. Today, as we face these devastating climate impacts sooner than we anticipate, the bar for climate leadership has changed out of necessity.

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There are positives to the new CleanBC plan. It includes an accelerated zero-emission light vehicle adoption schedule, a commitment to match California’s plans to adopt zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles, and a hefty $ 170 / ton carbon price, in line with the federal law. The government is pushing for the subsidy around gas ovens to be cut. These policies are not easy to implement and there are many people who worked hard to incorporate these measures into the British Columbia climate plan. However, CleanBC is not a plan for a climate emergency. In today’s age, leadership means moving first and setting the bar; it does not mean catching up on what other jurisdictions have already done.

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The reality is that in almost every file, BC has become a follower, not a leader. Provinces like Quebec and states like California, Oregon and Washington are taking real steps to stop and reduce oil and gas production.

In stark contrast, British Columbia continues to expand fossil fuel production at a time when our neighbors are phasing it out. At a time when we know that every ton of carbon we save by going into the atmosphere will save lives, the government of British Columbia is drilling more hydraulic fracturing wells in the Northeast and heavily subsidizing them, as well as building new pipelines and terminals. of LNG.

Rather than allocate more resources to the current emergency response in British Columbia, as I write this, the government is using taxpayer money to dispatch a massive police force to drive the people of Wet’suwet’en off their land, while resisting Coastal GasLink LNG. the pipeline is crossed without their consent. This government must be held accountable for today’s science, not yesterday’s science.

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The United Nations Environment Program, the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made it clear that increasing oil and gas production is not in line with achieving global climate goals of limiting warming. at 1.5 C. Or, in other words, it is not a transition if we continue to aggravate the problem.

What CleanBC does not provide us with is a plan. A plan to stop expansion and reduce fossil fuel production that leaves no worker or their family behind. An emergency preparedness and adaptation plan that recognizes that we are already experiencing the climate emergency and commits to budgets and systems to keep our families safe.

Historical but insufficient is the dilemma of the climate age. BC is not alone in this. We also saw it at COP26, where the mere inclusion in the last agreement of the word “coal” felt frustratingly historic, despite the fact that the commitment made on it was not enough.

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But as floods remind us, as heat domes remind us, as wildfires remind us: We cannot rely on implementing plans that seemed sufficient before the floods and fires. Now we must come together and have the courage to cancel bad projects and reorient budgets and plans to address the growing climate emergency.

Tzeporah Berman is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at York University, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, and Director of International Programs at Stand.Earth.

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