December 2, 2015

Friday afternoons are prime time for governments to make embarrassing announcements. Last Friday, with the Premier headed off to Paris, the BC government quietly acknowledged that the province will not meet its emissions reductions targets for 2020.

In 2007, the province said it would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by the end of this decade. Now we find out it’s too far behind to make it happen. This news came buried on the eighth page of the recommendations released by BC’s Climate Leadership Team, so it’s no surprise it was missed in the media.

But that wasn’t all. We also learned the government will not start raising its carbon tax until 2018, and even then it will make sure the LNG industry is sheltered from it. As Torrance Coste, our campaigner on the ground at COP21, told the Premier in person, “increasing the carbon tax on apple farmers and Lululemon but not on fossil fuels isn’t climate leadership; it’s an embarrassment to British Columbia.”

In its announcement, the government says it’s waiting for “other jurisdictions to catch up.” If you were winning a race, would you just kick back and relax, even if it meant missing your own personal goals? That’s what British Columbia is doing – and it’s disgraceful.

There’s no time to delay the transition to a low-carbon economy. This summer, British Columbians choked as our skies filled with smoke from record wildfires. We saw rivers so warm the salmon couldn’t spawn and trees so stressed their needles fell like snow in a strong wind.

The BC government’s LNG plans are incompatible with a healthy climate. Its own report says that for every decade we miss our targets, it will cost the taxpayer 40 per cent more to reach them. We need to restart the carbon tax, ban fracking and reject fossil fuel exports now. That would be real climate leadership.

- Peter McCartney | Climate Campaigner