What Prince William and Kate Really Need to Know About B.C.
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- Published on Thursday, 29 September 2016 10:15
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Trudeau Just Approved a Giant Carbon Bomb in B.C.
The federal government issued an approval for the $36-billion Pacific Northwest liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal on Lelu Island on the B.C. coast on Tuesday, undermining its commitments to take action on climate change.
The decision means it will be virtually impossible for B.C. to meet its climate targets.
“If built, Pacific NorthWest LNG will be one of the largest carbon polluters in the country and a serious obstacle to Canada living up to its climate commitments," said Matt Horne of the Pembina Institute.
Pacific Northwest LNG — wholly owned by the Malaysian government and boasting a questionable human rights record — lobbied the federal government 22 times between February 1 and April 21 this year, including meetings with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and her chief of staff Marlo Raynolds. Read more.
What Prince William and Kate Really Need to Know About B.C.
Dear Will and Kate,
Welcome to beautiful British Columbia!
You are getting a pretty epic tour this week, from Victoria and Vancouver to Bella Bella (sorry about the rain) and Haida Gwaii. All of us watching the photo-ops are pretty jelly to be honest.
Here’s the thing though: B.C. truly is a glorious place — the type of place you can fly over in a seaplane and easily think the wilderness will never end.
But it’s also one of the world’s last frontiers and the race is on to cut down our old-growth forests, to send more oil tankers into our ports, to build natural gas plants in our salmon estuaries and to flood our rivers for megadams.
Here are a few things I thought you ought to know about B.C. (and which I’m doubtful you’ll hear from Justin or Christy). Read more.
ICYMI: What You Need to Know about the Pacific Northwest LNG Decision
Here are a few things you need to know about liquefied natural gas and the proposed Pacific Northwest LNG export terminal.
1) To liquefy gas, you need to cool it to a chilly -160°C. The whole process is very complex and energy-intensive, consuming the equivalent of about 20 per cent of the gas along the way.
2) There’s a global oversupply of natural gas given the massive scale-up of shale gas production in the United States, Russia and Australia over the past few years. As a result, not a single LNG company has made a final investment decision in B.C. Read more.
B.C. Climate Change Audit Won’t Be Released Until After Election: Auditor General
British Columbians will not find out before next spring’s provincial election if the province has adequate programs in place to adapt to climate change.
Earlier this month Auditor General Carol Bellringer released a list of projects her office intends to investigate in the next three years and, among the hot button issues — ranging from grizzly bear management to the Site C dam — is whether government is adequately managing risks posed by climate change.
In the wake of heavy criticism of Premier Christy Clark’s August release of the province’s “Climate Leadership Plan” — which does not include carbon tax increases or emission targets for 2030 — some were hoping Bellringer would release the report early next year. Read more.
Q&A: Mark Jaccard on Political Viability, ‘Untruths’ And Why You Should Actually Read His Latest Report
Mark Jaccard — a renowned climate policy analyst and professor at Simon Fraser University — recently published a short paper exploring federal approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Unfortunately, many news outlets, including the Toronto Star and Metro, ran articles suggesting that Jaccard was petitioning against a carbon tax, with emissions reductions entirely accomplished via regulations.
That’s clearly not the case if one bothers to read the paper (a reality Jaccard spent much of the following days pointing out on Twitter).
Last week, we spoke with Jaccard about his report, the significance of political viability in building meaningful climate policy and how California is leading by example. Read more.
Why Trudeau’s Commitment to Harper’s Old Emissions Target Might Not Be Such Bad News After All
Environment Minister Catherine McKenna recently announced that the federal government will stick with the previous government’s target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The news, delivered via an interview with CTV’s Evan Solomon, attracted a significant amount of criticism.
But here’s the thing: yes, the Liberals could have set a more ambitious target. And yes, to help keep global temperatures below two degrees of warming, they will need to in the future.
But what matters is not setting a target, it’s meeting a target.
The two previous federal governments were nowhere near to meeting the targets they set, so Canada is working to catch up right now.
While setting a new, more ambitious target might have drawn positive headlines, it may well have set the country up for repeated failures.r15 |r0
