Newsletters and Articles

Climate Change

Climate Change, by Bob Simpson
Climate change is upon us and it’s already costing us billions. Catastrophic floods and more intense storms have cost taxpayers, insurance companies and individual home owners almost half a trillion dollars during the 1990s alone, and the frequency and duration of these events are on the rise. The total estimated costs of the 2003 firestorms in BC came close to one billion dollars and by all counts we’re heading into another high risk fire season. The Pine Beetle epidemic, which BC’s Chief Forester and the Liberal government both admit is due in part to climate change, will cost our province and our resource dependent communities dearly.

Climate change also has negative impacts on agricultural productivity, it may prevent us from accessing timber and mining resources that require winter roads for access, it will likely create multi-year droughts, and it threatens to wipe out salmon and other fish species. In the extreme case, according to an international study released last year, we might witness the extinction of up to 37% of the world’s plant and animal species by 2050 if current climate change trends continue.

We’ve been warned about the potential impacts of climate change for decades, yet governments, industry, and individuals have repeatedly refused to take proactive steps to minimize our contribution to the greenhouse gases that are accelerating this global phenomenon. Why? Because the costs of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions were deemed to be prohibitive -- the negative impact on the current economy was deemed to be too great a risk to take against the unknown impacts of climate change. As a result, we are now beginning to bear the enormous costs of this short-term, minimalist thinking, and these costs appear to be much, much higher than any costs we might have borne to reduce greenhouse gas emissions had we acted sooner.

Yet, despite incontrovertable evidence that climate change is upon us and is costing us trillions of dollars, the current provincial government still refuses to act in any concerted fashion. The BC Liberals released their climate change strategy over the Christmas holidays for good reason, as it contains nothing more than recycled programs and arguments for not taking proactive steps to dramatically reduce our point sources of greenhouse gases. The fact that their climate change plan gets no mention in either the Throne Speech or their recent budget suggests that the Liberals are not really serious about taking a leading and proactive role in helping British Columbians reduce their contributions to greenhouse gases.

Contrary to their words, the Liberal government’s actions speak to their inability to truly grasp the magnitude of the challenges that climate change present us with: their transportation strategy will increase personal vehicle use in the Lower Mainland instead of putting money into public transportation; they are allowing the BC Utilities Commission to address Vancouver Island’s energy supply problems with a gas fired power plant and they have given approval for a coal-fired power plant to be built in the Kootenays; and, they have yet to undertake a comprehensive strategy to support our transition to a non-fossil fuel dependent economy.

Most insidious of all however, is that the Liberal’s climate change plan hinges on getting carbon credits for our forests when they know full well that our forests are more likely to be accelerating climate change as they die from beetle infestation and are burned in catastrophic fires. Once again, the Liberals actions reveal the lie in their words: according to the Ministry of Forests strategic plan reforestation will continue to slip below sustainable levels as the Liberal’s silviculture strategy has proven to be an abysmal failure.

It’s past time we took climate change more seriously. Past time we stopped making decisions based on short-term minimalist thinking. Governments at all levels have a responsibility to help us move forward, to push our creativity through consultation and legislation. Unfortunately, neither the provincial nor the federal Liberals seem inclined to take this kind of proactive leadership on our behalf.