Today I was afforded the opportunity to present to delegates at the 115^th Union of BC Municipalities Convention in Whistler. I focused my speech on the challenges and opportunities of global warming.

Below I reproduce the text and video of the speech. The sound quality in the video is not ideal.

Text of Speech

In the span of just a few centuries, Earth has made a transition from a past, when climate affected the evolution of human societies, to the present, in which humans are affecting the evolution of the climate system.

Today we are at a pivotal moment in human history; our generation will be responsible for deciding what path the future climate will take.

You and I, as elected officials, will either be complicit in allowing climate change to despoil our world – or we can lead the way and choose a new future.

Prior to becoming the MLA for Oak Bay – Gordon Head and the leader of the BC Green Party, I was an atmosphere/ocean/climate scientist, with a background in physics and applied mathematics at the University of Victoria. I was a Lead Author of four United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

When asked what I believe will be the most serious consequences of global warming I always reply with the same two answers. The first concerns the effect of global warming on the world’s natural ecosystems; the second involves global security and geopolitical instability.

I would like to speak to you about both topics, the first I will tackle as a scientist and the second as a politician.

I also want to acknowledge the challenging summer that many of you have had. I can only imagine how terrible it has been to have your communities threatened by fire. How exhausting, stressful, and traumatic it must be to be on front lines of a provincial state of emergency. I’m glad to see you all here today and grateful for the opportunity to speak to you.

In light of your experiences, I wont dwell on the topic of forest fires. You know better than anyone how serious, how costly and how uncontrollable they have become.

I will however, speak about climate change as clearly as I can. I do not aim to alarm, but need to emphasize the severity of the threat that lies ahead. We must speak about this issue in accurate terms that are often missing in government meetings, public discourse, and media coverage.

The fires of the past two summers were no surprise to the climate science community. Back in 2004, my colleagues and I published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters pointing out that we could already back then detect and attribute the increasing area burnt in Canadian forests to human-caused global warming.

We know that global warming will lead to increasing likelihood of summer drought. This in turn will lead to more and more extensive wildfires.

We know that precipitation extremes will increase and that flooding events will be on the rise.

The current state of BC’s climate is not “the new normal” as many have been saying this summer. Normal implies a plateau and consistency. We are not on a plateau; we’re on a steep trend towards increasingly extreme events. I’m sad to say, this is just the beginning and what is occurring worldwide pales in comparison as to what we have in store.

Over hundreds of millions of years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, together with global temperatures, dropped slowly as carbon was slowly stored in the sediments of the deep ocean and the great oil, gas and coal reserves of today. Yet in the matter of just a few decades, the carbon, drawn down over many tens of millions of years is being released back to the atmosphere. In but a single generation, humans are taking atmospheric conditions back to the age of dinosaurs.

Metaphorically, we are piling more blankets on an overheating planet. The hotter it gets, the more symptoms, if you will, humans will experience.

If global emissions do not start to dramatically decline in the next few years many millions of people, including British Columbians, will be at risk from heat waves, drought, floods, storms, and wildfires. Our coasts and cities will be threatened by rising sea levels.

Sadly, tomorrow, category 4 hurricane Florence will make landfall on the coast of the Carolinas. Yes the science community has warned that global warming will lead to an increase in intense hurricanes. Yes the scientific community has warmed that sea level rise coupled with storm surges will have devastating effects on coastal communities. But are our elected leaders in North America listening?

Many ecosystems, plants, and animals will face widespread extinction.

This isn’t new information. Scientists have been speaking out for decades. And therein lies the difference between global warming and many other environmental concerns. It is the scientific community — not so-called foreign funded environmentalists ‑ who have been ringing the alarm bells.

I recognize that some chose to listen to the charlatans who tell them what they want to here, but I can assure you that the concern within the global scientific community is very real and very profound.

We are on target to take ocean acidity levels into a realm for which there is no known analogue. Most of the world’s heritage coral reef systems, including the Great Barrier reef, will become extinct this century.

In Canada, overall precipitation will increase, but it will come in fewer, more extreme events, interspersed between longer periods of drought. There will be an increased risk of flooding. And wildfire.

At the rate we are going, we are looking at between 20 and 50% of the world’s species, almost certainly including the iconic Fraser River Sockeye, becoming committed to extinction this century.

For BC the threat goes beyond wildfires and drought. Global warming is a threat to our economic well being.

Yes, climate change has some potentially horrible consequences. But there is an opportunity here too, and I think British Columbia is brave enough to seize it.

I have a vision for how BC can position itself as a leader in the 21st century economy, something that may look different for every community.

To start, BC has three strategic advantages over virtually every other region in the world.

1. The quality of life and natural environment allows us to attract and retain some of the best and brightest minds from around the globe — we are a destination of choice.
2. We have a highly skilled and educated workforce. Our high school students are consistently top ranked internationally. They are smart, well trained and they are ready to go to work.
3. We have access to renewable resources — energy, water, and wood — like no other jurisdiction. We have incredible potential to create a clean, renewable energy sector to sustain our growing economy.

To capitalize on these advantages, we need to start planning beyond the next election cycle. We need to focus on building a new economy that works for all of us — not just the privileged few. Policies must be based on principles and evidence, not political calculation and opportunism.

And governments must put people’s interests first – ahead of entrenched industry – because building healthy, safe, secure communities needs to be prioritized in a changing world.

Since the election my BC Green Caucus colleagues and I have been working closely with the NDP government to develop a clean growth strategy for BC —one that embraces climate policy as an economic strategy. Papers outlining the direction were released this summer and the first phase will start this fall.

The BC Green caucus and BC NDP both agree the development of a clean growth strategy must empower communities to identify and seize opportunities that are unique to their regions. You know your communities best.

It must be built in partnership with Indigenous peoples and bring the principles of UNDRIP into action. We will work with Indigenous communities to ensure that rights, title, lands, territories, culture, traditional knowledge and identities are protected by and included in BC’s clean growth.

I’m afraid there are no easy fixes. Dealing with global warming requires us to challenge ourselves to be bold and fundamentally reconstruct core structures of our economy and energy system.

There was a time and place where fossil fuels contributed much to human advancement. They effectively allowed us to transition our industrial practices, spur economic growth and lift people out of poverty in the western world. We can recognize the incredible value that those technologies and innovations had in that place in time, but acknowledge that we are now in a different time, with a transformed economy, and we have different sources of energy, and we need to keep progressing forward.

As such, BC Hydro needs to get out of the business of building mega power projects and focus on a new core mandate of matching consumer with producer of distributed renewable energy, while using its existing dams to stabilize load.

We need to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels.

If international leaders believe what they signed in the Paris Agreement they will know that the agreement translates into the following statement:

There can be no new investment in fossil fuel infrastructure that will last decades into the future.

That’s because you don’t build an LNG facility today to tear it down tomorrow.

We know the world has already warmed by about 1.1°C and we have another 0.6°C warming in store as we equilibrate to existing levels of greenhouse gases. The permafrost carbon feedback adds another 0.2° or so meaning we are basically hitting 1.9°C at a minimum.

There are no other options.

I know this can be a scary and overwhelming proposition. It’s a normal human reaction to resist change and instead try to preserve the status quo. But we know where that leads. We need to start – now, not next decade – to build a new way of life. It can be a shift that provides economic opportunities like the world has never seen.

Opec’s electric vehicle forecast grew by almost 500% last year: $11.5 trillion being invested globally in new power generation capacity between 2018 and 2050, with $8.4 trillion of that going to wind and solar and a further $1.5 trillion to other zero-carbon technologies such as hydro and nuclear.

By tackling climate change seriously, with carefully designed policies, BC’s economy can grow in new ways.

We will introduce policies that help our industries become the cleanest in the world, while supporting the development of innovative climate solutions and sustainable prosperity. It is only by harnessing our strategic advantages and advancing a clear vision of a thriving economy and climate leadership that go hand in hand that we can accomplish the challenges in front of us.

We must inspire British Columbians to get involved in building this future for our province – one that sees us once again become leaders on climate policy.

We can prosper in a time of crisis. But it requires us to be honest with ourselves.

In your work and mine, it is important we keep the spotlight on the stark and alarming reality of climate change, and not to get lost in the everyday bustle or the fog of November’s rain.

The time for “yes, but” arguments – yes, but other people emit more, or yes, but other industries are worse or yes, but BC is small and this is a global problem – has passed.

We now need “yes, and” arguments. Yes, other people emit more, yes, other industries will always be worse, and yes, BC is small when compared to the world. And, yet, we still need to do our part.

And collectively we must change the way we think. Rather than doubling down on the economy of the last century and giving away the farm in a desperate attempt to land an LNG investment in Kitmat, why aren’t we doing everything we can to get Tesla to invest in a Giga factory there?

Rather than bemoaning the loss of several hundred hypothetical jobs in building a pipeline, why aren’t we doing everything we can to build our manufacturing sector in light of our boundless access to renewable energy, particularly in places like Terrace — on the rail line between Prince Rupert and Chicago — the gateway to Asia and the Eastern US.

As much as we may wish, we don’t have jurisdiction over the world. But we have influence here in B.C., where we live. And that is important.

We need to work together on this. We need to involve every community, every leader, every party, every sector, every industry, every institution, and every good idea. We need everyone to look at the area they have influence in and think about how they can make positive changes in the context of a warming world.

As I heard Chief Maureen Thomas, of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, say a few weeks ago, “we need to come together and find a way to ensure our future generations can enjoy this world to the extent we do… [we must ask ourselves] Have I done enough to ensure the fondness of my grandchild?”.

I believe that our children and grand children will ask us one of two questions when they look back at the beginning of this century.

It will either be: “How could you let this happen?”

Or, if we choose a different path, they will ask: “How did you solve this problem when so many said you couldn’t?”

To be a climate scientist one must be an optimist. Frankly, I’ve found it helps you survive politics too. I am convinced my children will one day ask me the second question. And I will answer:

“We prevailed because we worked together. We saw the threat and we knew we had to deal with it.”

It will take great political courage and leadership to change the direction of the world — Society will have to change, technology will have to change. But embracing change is an exciting opportunity for innovation.

I believe we can do it. And I hope you do too because as I said in my opening:

You and I, as elected officials, will either be complicit in taking a wrong turn, or we can lead the way and choose a new path for our communities, for our province, for Canada and for the world. It has to start somewhere, why not here?

Thank you again for your time and all that you do for B.C.

Video of Speech

In what can only be described as a desperate attempt to save face, the Federal Government announced today that it would use taxpayer money to buy Trans Mountain’s Canadian assets which include the existing pipeline from Alberta to the Burnaby refinery.

Below I reproduced the media statement that we released in response to this action.

Media Statement

Weaver: Federal government decision to buy Trans Mountain a betrayal
For immediate release
May 29, 2018

VICTORIA, B.C. – Andrew Weaver, leader of the B.C. Green Party, issued the following statement in response to the federal government’s decision to buy the Trans Mountain Pipeline.

“This is a betrayal by a government who ran on a hopeful vision for a better future,” said Weaver.

“A government that promised to end fossil fuel subsidies and to champion the clean economy should not be spending billions of dollars of taxpayer money to buy out a fossil fuel expansion project. We should be investing in growth industries that are clearly where the world is heading. Investing in this pipeline is like investing in the horse and buggy industry at the advent of the car.

“This is a deeply troubling decision on many levels. Canada stands to sacrifice its international reputation, irreplaceable iconic species like the Southern resident Killer Whales, and its commitments to meet its Paris Climate targets and to reconcile with Indigenous people – all while putting enormous risk on Canadian taxpayers.

“It is clear that the world is transitioning away from fossil fuels. The cost of renewable energy continues to fall – solar and wind are already cheaper than coal in many jurisdictions. Last week, a report by Aurora Energy Research projected the adoption of electric vehicles could wipe out $19 trillion in oil revenue. You don’t build infrastructure like this for the next few years – this is built to last for the next 40-50. This is not the infrastructure we need in 10 years and certainly not what we need in 40.”

-30-

Media contact
Jillian Oliver, Press Secretary
+1 778-650-0597 | jillian.oliver@leg.bc.ca

Today in Kamloops I had the pleasure of giving a keynote presentation at the 2018 Annual General Meeting of the BC Chamber of Commerce.

I took the opportunity to outline our vision for a thriving, diverse 21^st century economy that builds upon our strategic strengths.

Below I reproduce the text of my speech.

Text of Speech

Introduction

Thank you for inviting me to “the River City” to speak not only about some of the work we’ve been doing over the past year, but also about our vision of economic prosperity for BC.

It’s been almost exactly one year since we signed our confidence and supply agreement with the BC NDP, signalling our commitment to supporting them in a minority government.

It’s somewhat ironic that it’s also been almost exactly one year since the publication of your breakfast keynote speaker (Adam Kahane’s) book Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust — a book I bought and read last summer.

The last year seems like a year on fast-forward.
The minority government produced by the election – the first in 65 years in BC – led to the BC Greens playing a role we’ve never before played in BC politics.

It provided us an opportunity to champion key aspects of our economic platform in our agreement with the NDP.

To be successful in the 21st century economy, we need to capitalize on our strategic strengths and position ourselves to be leaders in the new economy. Achieving this has been the focus of our efforts in BC’s minority government.

As many of you know, before running for office in 2013 I was a climate scientist at the University of Victoria for 25 years.

Year after year, my students would ask me why so little progress was being made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions given that the science on climate change was so clear.

I told them that if they didn’t like the decisions politicians were making, they should consider finding someone to run or consider running themselves.

In 2012, as I watched the dismantling of Gordon Campbell’s legacy of positioning BC as a leader in the new economy, I realized I had to take my own advice. So, what motivated me to get into politics is fundamentally the same thing that I’m sure motivates a lot of you to do what you do.

I believe we have a responsibility to the next generation.

I believe in British Columbia and want to contribute to building the brightest possible future for our province.

If we want to secure a bright future for BC, we will do ourselves no favours by doubling down on the economy of the last century.

Instead, we must take stock of global trends – climate change, technological innovation, the rise of the knowledge economy – and point ourselves in a clear direction of where we want to go.

This year, the auditor general confirmed BC will miss our legislated 2020 greenhouse gas reduction targets.

Without a plan we will almost certainly miss our recently legislated 2030 targets as well.

Last year, wildfires, which the scientific community agrees will become more extensive, cost our province $750 million. Communities in BC are still recovering from flooding. The effects of global warming are not in some distant future – they are here now. And they will get far worse.

In this context, it’s not acceptable to continue to ignore our greenhouse gas reduction targets, and to continue to expand the fossil fuel infrastructure of the last century thereby pushing our targets further out of reach.

And this isn’t just an environmental issue – It’s critical from a business perspective as well.

The cost of failing to reduce greenhouse emissions will be profound for all sectors of our economy, both here in BC and around the world.

The world is coming together to find innovative solutions to the energy challenges arising from the transition to the low carbon economy. Globally countries like Saudi Arabia, China and Germany are investing billions in alternative energy production to position themselves as leaders of tomorrow.

There are opportunities to be had from transitioning to the low carbon economy, but they will flow to those who lead, not to those who follow.

Climate/LNG

Global investment trends are being driven by the world’s shared Paris commitments, predicated on the fact that keeping global warming under 2 degrees Celsius is far more cost-effective than dealing with the effects of a temperature rise above that level.

In the next two decades, renewable energy sources like wind and solar will comprise almost three-quarters of the US$10.2 trillion in new global investment in power generating technology.

The cost of solar is already on par with coal in Germany, the U.S., Australia, Spain and Italy, and will reach parity in China, India, Mexico, the U.K. and Brazil in 2021, if not sooner.

This shift presents a significant opportunity for B.C.’s economy. Our province is well poised to bolster its leadership in the cleantech sector – Vancouver alone is home to a quarter of Canada’s cleantech companies. And we can thank the leadership of Gordon Campbell for bringing this to fruition.

In 2016, B.C. cleantech generated approximately 13,900 jobs with an average salary of $84,000. We have a strong competitive advantage in the building blocks required to foster a knowledge-based economy.

Natural gas – royalty credits

Despite the new opportunities we’re presented with, in BC today, our government is continuing to pursue the dream of exporting LNG, and is perpetuating a natural gas giveaway.

We have seen massively decreasing revenues to BC from gas extraction.

What the data shows is quite shocking – while gas production has gone from 25 billion cubic metres in 2001 to over 50 billion cubic meters in 2016/17, royalty and land lease revenues to the BC government have gone in the opposite direction, from a record $2.4 billion in 2008/09 down to only $139 million in 2015.

This is partly due to the fact that the B.C. government provides hundreds of millions of dollars every year to subsidize horizontal drilling in the northeast of our province, through the deep-well royalty credit program.

The deep well royalty credit program was originally meant to offset the cost of deep well drilling.

It was later extended to apply to horizontal drilling as well. Now both are common practice, so much so that companies have amassed more credits than they can spend.

The companies earn these credits by drilling qualified wells, and when the wells start to produce gas, the companies apply the credits to reduce or even eliminate provincial royalties that they normally pay on this public resource.

In recent years, the participating companies have amassed credits faster than they can spend them. The balance in their deep-drilling account has increased from $752 million in 2012 to an accumulated $3.2 billion today.

Not only are we not getting paid for this public resource, we are literally paying companies to take it from us.

In 2009, B.C. collected $1.3 billion in natural gas royalties. Last year, we collected a mere $152 million. Measured as a share of the value of oil and gas production in B.C., royalties collected by government has fallen from 44 percent in 2008 to just 4 percent last year.

In 2009, BC earned $39.90 in royalties for every 1000 cubic metres of natural gas. In 2017 it was $2.95.

This is a dismal return on the resources that are being extracted from our province. We are giving away more gas for less money while barrelling past our climate commitments. That’s race for the bottom economics at its finest.

Opportunity/innovation

The future of economic prosperity in BC lies in harnessing our innate potential for innovation and bringing new, more efficient technologies to bear in the resource sector.

BC will never compete in digging dirt out of the ground with jurisdictions that don’t internalize the same social and environmental externalities that we value.

We will excel through being smarter, more efficient, & cleaner.

This means that we not only export the dirt, but we also export the knowledge, technology and value added products associated with resource extraction.

A great example is Vancouver-based MineSense’s technology that saves mines between $20 million to $200 million per site, while also reducing electricity and water consumption by 20 to 25 per cent and tailings by up to 40 per cent.

Through MineSense’s innovation, B.C.’s economy grows by creating the technology that enables others to make this same transition.

Efficiency also means ensuring B.C. is getting the maximum value for our resources. The last two provincial budgets reported job losses in forestry, fisheries, mining and oil and gas.

My caucus and I hear a common theme from resource businesses, industry groups and local governments — the economic value of B.C.’s natural resources does not remain in our communities.

It’s profoundly ironic that many believe that doubling down on the approach of the BC Liberals is somehow good for the resource sector when in fact, the job losses, downturn in the resource sector, and economic troubles in rural BC have occurred precisely under the watch of the BC Liberals over the last six to eight years.

In forestry, sawmills close as raw log exports persist. In fisheries, quotas become concentrated in the hands of a few companies, pricing young fishers out of the market.

Seafood caught in Canadian waters is shipped to Asia, where it is processed, and then shipped back here to be sold.

The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion seeks to export diluted bitumen, which must be refined abroad before it can be of any use to consumers.

Every time we ship a raw commodity overseas, we forgo opportunities to create well-paying jobs and grow our economy.

There is no need for this — B.C. has a highly educated workforce, a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and world-class research institutions.

Our high school students are consistently top ranked — with the OECD noting that BC is one of the smartest academic jurisdictions in the world. Our high quality of life and beautiful natural environment attract some of the best and brightest from around the globe.

In every corner of the province, innovative British Columbians are using these strengths to generate economic prosperity. After the Midway Mill closed in 2007, the town raised capital to invest in a technological overhaul and reinvigorate the mill.

At the Wood Innovation and Design Centre in Prince George, students learn how to bring design, technology and forestry products together to develop innovative high-performance wood products.

The centre was built using value-added wood products from Structurlam, a highly innovative Penticton-based company whose products have been used in award-winning buildings all over the world.

To get a fair value for our resources that deliver maximum benefits to our communities, we need to get smarter and more strategic when it comes to embracing innovation.

Government’s role

Government should be doing more to support these initiatives and create fertile ground for a sustainable, resilient, and diverse economy.

In our Confidence and Supply Agreement with the NDP, we included two key pieces from our 21st century economy platform to help us seize economic opportunities in the emerging economy.

The first piece is the Emerging Economy Task Force.

We proposed the Emerging Economy Task Force to enable government to adapt and respond to changes on the horizon.

We need to modernize government so that it is considerably more responsive to technological innovation.

In one example, six years since ride hailing attempted to enter our market, Vancouver is still stuck with fewer options than every other major city in North America. This shouldn’t be the case.

The role of the Emerging Economy Task Force is to look to the future, identify emerging trends and advise government on how to maintain our competitiveness and achieve prosperity amidst these changes.

The second item from our platform that we integrated into CASA is the Innovation Commission (now Innovate BC) as well as the appointment of an Innovation Commissioner.

The innovation commissioner was proposed to be an advocate and ambassador on behalf of the B.C. technology sector in Ottawa and abroad, to enable B.C. companies to more easily tap into existing federal programs and build key strategic relationships.

I’m confident that both of these initiatives will bolster key sectors of our economy as we go forward.

We should be using our strategic advantage as a destination of choice to attract industry to BC in highly mobile sectors, like tech, that have difficulty retaining employees in a competitive marketplace.

We should be using our boundless renewable energy resources to attract industry, including the manufacturing sector, that wants to brand itself as sustainable over its entire business cycle, just like Washington and Oregon have done.

We should be setting up seed funding mechanisms to allow the BC-based creative economy sector to leverage venture capital from other jurisdictions to our province.

Too often the only leveraging that is done is the shutting down of BC-based offices and opening of offices in the Silicon Valley.

We should fundamentally change the mandate of BC Hydro. BC Hydro should no longer be the builder of new power capacity.

Rather, it should be the broker of power deals, transmitter of electricity, and leveller of power load through improving British Columbia power storage capacity. Let industry risk their capital, not taxpayer capital, and let the market respond to demands for cheap power.

Similarly, by steadily increasing emissions pricing, we can send a signal to the market that incentivizes innovation and the transition to a low carbon economy. The funding could be transferred to municipalities across the province so that they might have the resources to deal with their aging infrastructure and growing transportation barriers.

Yes, we should be investing in trade skills, as described, for example, under the B.C. jobs plan. But we should also be investing further in education for 21st century industries like biotech, high tech and cleantech. It’s critical that we bring the typically urban-based tech and rural-based resource sectors together.

Natural gas has an important role to play.

But, we should use it to build our domestic market and explore options around using it to power local transport. BC businesses such as Westport Innovations and Vedder Transport have already positioned British Columbia as an innovative global leader in this area.

The digital technology supercluster provides another example of exactly the type of innovation government should be doing everything it can to support. The supercluster is estimated to generate up to 15,000 jobs and $15 billion in economic activity in the coming decade.

It offers an opportunity to bring together the private sector, our post-secondary institutions and government to solve problems and accelerate innovation in key sectors in our province, like health care, forestry and manufacturing.

The companies involved in the supercluster are diverse, innovative and deeply committed to seeing success in British Columbia, and their initiative will help B.C. be more competitive as we respond to changing global trends, and help us get a better return for our resources.

Benefit companies

Finally, I’d like to speak today to a recent initiative our office has undertaken, to have benefit company legislation passed in BC.

This legislation would support companies that choose to integrate economic sustainability and social responsibility into their business mandate, by enabling them to incorporate as benefit companies in BC.

By incorporating as benefit companies, businesses would achieve greater certainty for their directors and investors about their goals and mandate, enabling them to attract capital investment while staying true to their mission as they scale.

Benefit companies are critical because they recognize that in today’s new economy — with triple-bottom-line reporting, providing a workplace where you actually create an environment that is conducive to attracting and retaining employees in a very progressive manner — these are the types of companies that are attracting the millennial generation.

This legislation is an opportunity for B.C. to lead the country in supporting businesses that want to be a bigger part of developing innovative solutions to the challenges of the 21st century.

I am hopeful that government will support this legislation and that we will be the first jurisdiction in Canada to have benefit companies.

Conclusion

We will not solve the challenges of the 21st century by chasing 20th century solutions. In the shadows of the massive challenges that we face, our province needs a new direction.

But we can turn these challenges into opportunities if we have a forward-looking vision, an evidence-based approach to policy and political leadership that thinks beyond a four-year election cycle.

Most importantly, I believe that we must reject politically motivated attempts to pit the environment against the economy. Doing so will only short-change resource-dependent communities by justifying the race-to-the bottom economics of raw commodity exports.
Instead, we need a new direction that offers a realistic and achievable vision grounded in hope and real change.

A new direction that places the interests of the people of British Columbia first and foremost in decision-making. And it’s not only today’s British Columbians that we must think about, it’s also the next generation who are not part of today’s decision-making process.

I am truly excited about the prospects that lie ahead in this minority government. British Columbia has so much to offer and we can and shall be a leader in the new economy.
Thank you all again for having me here today to speak with you.

I look forward to more conversations to come.

Today in the legislature we debated Bill 34, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Amendment Act, 2018 at second reading. This bill repeals the previously legislated greenhouse gas reduction target of 33% relative to 2007 levels by 2020 and adds two new targets: a 40% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2030 and a 60% reduction by 2040 relative to 2007 levels. The 80% reduction target for 2050 relative to 2007 levels remains the same.

The bill also enables the Minister of Environment to set sectoral targets. It further requires biannual reporting on the risks facing British Columbia as a consequence of climate change as well as the government’s response to these risks. This reporting requirement is a direct response to a recommendation of the report: Perspectives on Climate Change Action in Canada—A Collaborative Report from Auditors General—March 2018.

I spoke for the better part of an hour in support of this bill. I began by outlining the history of climate change policy in British Columbia and how, starting in 2012, our province moved from being a leader to a laggard. I further focused on the incredible opportunity for innovation that these new targets provide. And I laid out why it is not possible to reduce emissions to meet these bold new targets while at the same time substantially expanding the fossil fuel sector and in particular LNG in our province.

Below I reproduce the text and video of my speech at second reading

Text of Speech

A. Weaver: I rise to speak in favour and support of Bill 34, Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Amendment Act, 2018. This act is putting forward a number of amendments to the original Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act, which was assented on November 29, 2007. That act has three parts to it: one with respect to future greenhouse gas emission targets, one with respect to carbon-neutral public sector and one that had some general provisions.

It is on the first part that the amendments are being put forward today. Under three main areas, the first, of course, is that new targets are being added for 2030 and for 2040. The government is proposing a 40 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, relative to 2000 levels, and a 60 percent reduction, relative to 2000 levels, by 2040.

In addition, we know that there are sections being added here to give the minister executive power through the Lieutenant-Governor-in-council to provide sectoral reduction targets as we move forward.

In addition, and in direct response to the federal Auditor General’s report, the government is proposing to have — starting in 2020 and reporting every two years after that — a report that will be introduced that will discuss the termination of the risks that could be expected from changing climate, the progress that has been made toward addressing those risks, the actions that have been taken to achieve that progress and the plans to continue that progress.

I’d like to go back to the original act in 2007 that’s being amended. To me, that was a very important time in my life, because 2007 was the year in which the IPCC — that’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — released its Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change. In that year, they also received the Nobel Peace Prize.

I remember that year very, very well. I remember that year because of the fact that the B.C. government at the time, under the leader, Gordon Campbell, decided that this was an opportunity that B.C. could not afford to miss out on. Gordon Campbell, the Premier at the time, recognized, as did his Environment Minister, Barry Penner, that having a climate change greenhouse gas reduction strategy is essential to, say, having a vision. It’s, essentially, exactly the same as having a vision for a renewable, clean 21st century economy that brings prosperity, not only for the present generation but also for future generations thereafter.

He recognized that the very first piece of legislation that needs to be introduced prior to bringing in steps to actually mitigate greenhouse gases was setting a goal. That goal in 2007 in the act that received royal assent on November 27 was greenhouse gas reduction targets.

I sat in the audience proudly watching that day when the bill was read here, as I see young children from a school here. I sat where they sat that day and listened to the minister at the time, Barry Penner, bring in this legislation. I felt proud to be a British Columbian. I told my colleagues around the world to look at the jurisdiction we had. I’ll come to that in a second.

It was not just about the goal, the target that was put in. It was the subsequent legislation that was brought through in a diversity of arrays.

But in 2007, something happened. Mr. Campbell, the Premier, recognized that what we need to do is we need to send a signal to the market in British Columbia that we are going to be leaders in the new economy. We see the emergence of a clean tech sector. We see the emergence of the renewable energy sector, and we see the emergence on investments by companies in reducing greenhouse gases. A lot of that was done by the subsequent measures that were brought in place.

Also, I talked about the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act. That was a goal that subsequently was buttressed by a number of measures brought in through, for example, the Carbon Tax Act, which was assented to on May 29, 2008; the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Cap and Trade) Act, which was assented to on May 29, 2008; the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Emissions Standards) Statutes Amendment Act, which was assented to on May 29, 2008; the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Renewable and Low Carbon Fuel Requirements) Act that was assented to on May 1, 2008; the Utilities Commission Amendment Act that was assented to on May 1, 2008; the Local Government (Green Communities) Statutes Amendment Act, which received royal assent on May 29.

We have the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Emissions Standards) Statutes Amendment Act, which I already mentioned. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Vehicle Emissions Standards) Act — another act assented to on May 29. And then we have the Utilities Commission Amendment Act. Finally, we had the Clean Energy Act, brought in on June 3, 2010.

During that time, as British Columbia was leading up to the Winter Olympics, a very strong signal was being sent to the market. I remember, as part of the Climate Action Team, the very first climate action team, the multitude of meetings that we had as we made recommendations to government about the types of policy measures they might consider. We were tasked primarily with coming up with interim targets for 2012 and 2016.

We came up with targets that…. In 2012, we were putting forward that we believed that government should seek to reduce emissions by 6 percent, relative to 2007, by 2012. And by 2016, the second target that we were tasked with providing recommendations for…. We came up with 18 percent by 2016.

Government was on track. In fact, it made its 2012 target, based on the policy measures that were put in place. We knew, and government knew at that time, through wedge analysis, that we were not going to make the 2020 target of 33 percent reductions by 2020 with the policy measures and those bills and the statutes on the table, and more needed to be done.

Despite what the member for Kamloops–North Thompson suggests, there was no plan for 2040. The fake numbers brought up about somehow this was part of the government’s plan…. I recognize that he wasn’t there, and he’d probably throw his hands up to say: “What do I know? I wasn’t there.”

However, the reality is that I was there. I was there, working on the Climate Action Team. I was meeting with the Premier at the time — Gordon Campbell — and the Minister of Environment numerous times during that time in an advisory capacity.

As I say again, I was proud to be a British Columbian, because Mr. Campbell recognized the economic opportunity associated with dealing with greenhouse gases, associated with being clean instead of polluting.

All of this came to an end with a switch in leadership. The first crack in the wall or hole in the dike started in June, July of 2012 when LNG was excluded in the Clean Energy Act. So that energy would have to be renewable unless it was being used in the compression of liquefied natural gas. That was the first act.

But it became far more aggressive towards dismantling the policies, and that culminated in 2014, in the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act, wherein we in this Legislature repealed the Greenhouse Gas Reduction (Cap and Trade) Act that was assented to on May 29, 2008. We repealed that act, an act that business had actually sought.

Even today, in speaking with heavy point source emitters, they wish that we had that legislation in place. Why, of course, is that we try to meet our targets. We have to recognize that in our society there’s a diversity of emitters. There are large point source emitters, like cement manufacturers, like Rio Tinto Alcan, like pulp mills or paper mills. These large point source emitters are subject to the carbon tax, but the original intention back in the day, back in 2007 and 2008, was that a regulatory framework was put in place. That enabling framework was there, through the cap-and-trade legislation that would allow for the inclusion of large point source heavy emitters, while exempting them from the carbon tax.

So they’re still covered by emissions pricing, but it’s internal emission pricing within heavy industry that allows the most efficient investment of money to reduce emissions.

This is the approach California has done with large heavy emitters. This is the approach Quebec has done. This is not the approach of some other provinces or certain states, but many jurisdictions around the world have cap-and-trade legislation or enabling legislation — some more aggressively so than others.

So with the repeal of that legislation, large point source emitters were left wondering what to do. They were left troubled by the fact that they’re now going to be incorporated into an emissions pricing, a straight-up pricing, and that really what we care about is internally reducing our emissions in British Columbia by spending money on the most efficient and effective ways of doing that.

The Rio Tintos of this world that have spent billions of dollars on upgrading their facility to reduce emissions by 50 percent at the same time would potentially be in trouble if it’s suddenly only a carbon tax approach, as opposed to a cap-and-trade approach, which would have given them recognition for early adoption of measures that were subsequently brought in. That would be allowed and possible within the cap-and-trade system.

So I still hope government, one day, will be bringing in that legislation. You don’t have to go far to find out where it is, because it’s right there in the legislation that we repealed in 2014 in the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act. As a little sidebar, you’ll recall that I proposed an amendment, which didn’t pass, to rename it the Greenhouse Gas Increase Industrial Reporting and Control Act back in the day.

Coming back to the issue of emissions. We now know, in British Columbia, that we have two new targets set in this bill — 40 percent by 2030 relative to 2007 and 60 percent at 2040 relative to 2007 — and an old target of 80 percent by 2050.

Now why that 80 percent number is critical is that, while some might cynically say, “Okay, it means we don’t have to do anything, and other governments are responsible,” that number sends a signal to market, a very strong signal to market that government should listen to. And that signal is this: we can no longer spend any more money investing in fossil fuel intensive infrastructure in the province of British Columbia today, because we know that we’re not going to tear it down tomorrow.

Instead, we should be transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables and the low-carbon economy. We don’t build a coal-fired electricity plant to tear it down tomorrow. We don’t build an LNG facility — a two-train, a four-train LNG facility — in Kitimat to tear it down tomorrow. We build them to last 40, 50 years. We build them to last until 2050. Therein lies the conundrum that government has if it’s trying to talk on the one hand about LNG and on the other about meeting climate targets.

The previous government lost all credibility on that file, as they were talking 23 permits and five big plants. I mean, it was just outrageous, the rhetoric that was coming from the opposition, then-government, about wealth and prosperity for one and all from LNG that clearly didn’t transpire.

I recognize that the present government has taken the giveaway one step further with reduced electricity rates, exemption of increase in carbon tax. It has also talked about repealing the LNG income tax, which I hope my colleagues opposite will not support the repeal of, as we will not support here on the B.C. Greens. But coming back to that….

In 2007 —that is the reference point upon which all future reductions are measured against — we in British Columbia emitted 64.7 megatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.

Now, the carbon dioxide equivalent means that we know that methane, on a 100-year timescale, is much more powerful, as is nitrous oxide or certain CFCs or HCFCs. They’re more powerful on a molecule-per-molecule basis in terms of their absorptive ability on greenhouse gases. So we convert them, all those other greenhouse gas emissions, to the carbon dioxide equivalent.

We had 64.7 megatonnes. In 2008, we had 64.7 megatonnes of emissions again. In 2009, not because of any grandiose immediate policy — although, we recognize that there was a very strong signal at the time sent to the market that the carbon price was going up, and there was investment at the time — emissions dropped to 61.1 megatonnes. Part of that, too, was because of the economic downturn that didn’t really hurt B.C. but hurt global economies.

In 2010, we were down to 60.6 megatonnes and in 2011, 61.1 megatonnes. In 2012 — here’s where the policy shift started to happen — 61.9 megatonnes. In 2013, 62.9 megatonnes; 2014, 62.3 megatonnes; and 2015, 63.3 megatonnes. Every single year since the change of leadership of the previous government, emissions went up.

Why did they go up? It was because government sent exactly the wrong signal to market that you want to send if you want to head towards decreasing emissions. Government introduced exemptions on the deep-well royalty credit, not only for deep wells but now for shallow well. Heck, for any well, royalty credits now exist.

Did you know that ten years ago we used to get $35 or so for every 1,000 cubic metres of natural gas produced in the province of British Columbia, as a royalty — $35. Now it’s less than $3 as a royalty. It was more than ten times that just a decade ago. It’s going down still. At the same time, the production of natural gas has gone up and up. Why wouldn’t you take it out, if we’re giving it away?

Literally, we give this resource away — this beautiful resource, for applications that we yet have no idea of, in the future. We know that these molecules are very useful in the petrochemical industry. We know they’re very useful in other industries for creating fertilizer and creating methanol. We know that we can use our natural gas resources in a diversity of ways. Burning it is one of the most ridiculous ways, and frankly, generations after us are going to look to our generation and say: “Why did you squander that resource? Why did you burn it when the most powerful source of energy, the sun, is free — as is geothermal energy?”

Let’s come back to the targets, because it’s critical that we do that. I’ve pointed out that in 2015, now we’re at 63.3 megatonnes. That’s the last reporting year. For the next little bit, I’ll assume that we haven’t changed from that — not because that’s correct or wrong, but because that is the last year we have reporting data officially done for Canada in the United Nations framework convention on climate change.

There were 63.3 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent from B.C.in 2015. Let’s suppose we know that we’re going to add four trains of LNG facilities. Shell Canada talks about a two-train facility right now, but you don’t build two trains not to build four trains. So let’s suppose we talk about a four-train facility and that that’s really the direction we’re heading.

Well, we know, as I’ve mentioned already, that if we start at 64.7 megatonnes — that’s the 2007 reference value that this legislation is referring to — we know that our 2030 target of a 40 percent reduction of that 64.7 megatonnes means we have to go down to 38.8 megatonnes by 2030, to 25.88 megatonnes by 2040, and to 12.9 megatonnes by 2050. So that 64.7 megatonnes in 2007, under the legislation before us, must drop to 38.8 in 2030, 25.9 in 2040, and 12.9 in 2050.

Now, if we’re going to add a four-train LNG facility, we’re going to add 8.6 megatonnes — that’s before some of the recent estimates that I could talk about shortly, about fugitive emissions  — and adding on to that. So our new reference case is actually…. Well, we’re basically adding 8.6 megatonnes to that 2015 value. The 2015 value was 63.3 megatonnes, we’re going to add 8.6, and we’re going to come up to 72.9 megatonnes. That 72.9 is our starting point — because we’re adding 8.6 — for reductions.

Let’s suppose that we know we’re going to put in a four-train LNG facility. We know that Shell won’t build that today to tear it down tomorrow. It’s going to last for several decades. They’re not going to invest billions of dollars just on a whim. It’ll last decades. So what does this mean for greenhouse gas reductions in every other sector?

Here are the numbers. We know that if we have a four-train LNG facility — that’s going to be constant; it’s going to be there; we’re not going to tear it down — then every other sector in our economy, other than that facility, must drop its emissions by 52 percent by 2030, down to 30.2 megatonnes, by 73 percent by 2040 and by a whopping 95 percent by 2050.

Now, reflect upon this. One four-train LNG facility in Kitimat will produce 8.6 megatonnes of emissions, which aren’t going to be around just for tomorrow and then we tear it down. That’ll be around for decades. If we add those four trains and we believe these targets that we’ve actually put forward, then we need every other sector of our economy to reduce its emissions by 95 percent. That means telling Rio Tinto Alcan: “I’m sorry, but you have to shut down.” That means saying nobody can drive fossil-fuel-combusted vehicles anymore, nowhere in B.C. That means telling heavy industry left, right and centre they have to shut down because we’re already at that with things with landfills, which we have to close down as well.

There’s a staggering disconnect, and to be fair to the politicians in this room, it’s not just here; it’s globally. There’s a staggering disconnect between science and policy here in B.C., in Canada and internationally. I’ll come back to that again in a couple of seconds.

Leaders around the world signed, in 2017, something called the Paris accord, which committed…. Canada was one of the signatories of it. Despite the fact that Trump wants to get out of it, he can’t for years to come. It committed to keep global warming to below 2 degrees relative to preindustrial levels. They would actually keep it substantially below 2 degrees. So what can science say? It can say this. We know the world has warmed 1.1 degrees already. We know that 2016 was the hottest year on record, followed by 2015, 2017, 2014, 2010, 2013, 2005 and 2009.

For those people who’ve been following this climate change debate, like I have, for so many years, you should be asking the question: where were all those skeptics who said we’re in a cooling period? What happened to them? Are they finding some other argument now?

Believe it or not, scientific communities understood thermometers quite well for several centuries, and in fact, the world is warming, and we can measure it. Forty percent of Republicans in the U.S. don’t believe there’s solid evidence that the world is warming. Frankly, they don’t believe in the existence of thermometers. That’s the scale of that.

Coming back, we know the world has warmed by 1.1 degrees. We know that if we do no more, if we do nothing but keep existing greenhouse gas levels fixed at the present-day values, we’re going to warm by another 0.6 degrees. That takes us to 1.7 degrees, and we know that the permafrost carbon feedback is going to give us another 0.2 to 0.3. We know that if we do no more than just keep the levels like they are now, we’re going to warm towards 1.8 or 1.9. Yet emissions continue to go up year after year in places like Canada and elsewhere.

The disconnect that I mentioned about here in British Columbia extends globally. It’s particularly in Canada. I’ll come back to this in a second, but in Canada, Mr. Trudeau signs with a smile that we’re now part of the global agreement. On the one hand, he says we’re going to actually bring in place a climate plan in Canada to meet our Paris targets. It’s actually Harper’s plan, but that’s an aside. I’ll come to that in a second. He brings in…. He’s done nothing, argues we need to build pipelines to have a climate plan. It makes no sense because what Paris says, not only to Canada or British Columbia but to the world, is that effective immediately, we must turn the corner and stop investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure that will continue to be around for decades to come.

As I say again, we don’t build a coal-fired plant today to tear it down tomorrow. It’s about making the right choice of investments today that will affect tomorrow. I’ll come back to some of the ramifications and the importance of this bill later.

Coming back to federally in this context of meeting our legislation. Federally, ironically, people like me are beginning to look quite fondly upon the time of Mr. Harper because he did nothing on the climate change file — nothing at all — and Mr. Trudeau has done negative by stumping for pipelines.

It’s remarkable that we have this cognitive dissonance happening politically, federally, at a time when most of the world is actually recognizing the seriousness of this. Norway, for example, a nation that recognized that climate change is not only something to be concerned about; it’s also an opportunity. Did you know that 40 percent of new cars in Norway are electric? They’re electric today. Netherlands, India and other jurisdictions have announced that all new cars will be electric by 2030.

Here in British Columbia, we have an opportunity for leadership, and the first step in claiming that leadership is setting in place targets. Because it is those targets that allow the civil service, allow the modellers, to do their wedge analyses so that we can actually start to understand what the effects of certain policy measures are in terms of future greenhouse gas reductions. That work is ongoing as I speak. I’m very pleased that it is ongoing as we speak.

Coming back to the LNG relationship with this legislation. I’ve heard it say that LNG Canada is talking about a two-train LNG facility instead of a four-train. I’ve got the numbers for a two-train LNG facility as well, and they’re no different.

If LNG Canada invested a two-train LNG facility in Kitimat, all other aspects of our economy would have to drop their emissions from 63.3 megatonnes in 2015 to 34.5 in 2030, 21.4 in 2040 and 8.6 in 2050. That’s a 46 percent, 66 percent and 86 percent reduction — an 86 percent reduction, everything else other than LNG Canada.

These are big numbers. These are very big numbers, and very big numbers cannot be met without bold plans. That is what we’re looking forward to. We’re looking forward to seeing that plan, because frankly, I got into politics back in 2012, not because I saw this wonderful opportunity for a career in politics. That was not the intention.

It’s that I was involved very intimately with Gordon Campbell’s government and the development of the climate policy and climate strategies and his government — which, hon. Speaker, I note you were part of at that time — as they put British Columbia on the map as a leader internationally in both dealing with the challenge and recognizing the opportunity of what greenhouse gas mitigation does.

We were leaders, and then I saw that start to crack apart in 2012. I could not stand by and say to my students, who would come…. You know, I would talk in these classes about framing the whole issue of climate change as an issue of intergenerational equity, because it is. Today’s generation, our decision-makers, won’t have to live the consequences of our decisions, and those who do, better get participating in our democratic institutions, because they’re going to inherit those consequences.

They don’t. I would ask them: why don’t you vote? Why is it that 30 to 40 percent of youth between 18 and 24, until the last election, voted federally? They would say to me that all politicians are corrupt. All they want to do is line their policy…. I’d say to them, no, no that’s not the case. People go there for a right reason. If you don’t like them, run yourself or find someone to run, but this is the system that we have.

In 2012, I’m giving the same lecture, and I’m looking at myself in the face and saying I’m a hypocrite. I can tell them that if they don’t like what’s happening, they should run themselves, so I ran. I ran with the B.C. Green Party. Let me tell you, it is not the easiest path to this Legislature, as my friend from Saanich North and the Islands and my friend from Cowichan Valley will attest. Running with the B.C. Green Party, a party that had elected nobody before in any province, is not what you do if you’re looking for a political career in power. You do that out of principle. The same goes for my colleague Adam and my colleague Sonia.

And we’re here. We’re here with 17 percent of British Columbians saying we support you. We were very clear in our campaign that this defining issue of our time is one that we’re here to push, to ensure that British Columbia capitalizes on the opportunities. We can be laggards of yesteryear or we can be leaders of tomorrow. I think British Columbians want to be leaders.

We could talk about revenue. Revenue to natural gas was more than $1 billion dollars a little over a decade ago. And now…. Well, a couple of years ago we actually lost money. Now we’re making a mere few tens of millions of dollars. We are not…..

Hon. Speaker, I am the designated speaker. I noticed that the light has come on.

We are not going to continue to bring wealth and prosperity to British Columbia if we continue to chase the economy of the past. We are blessed in British Columbia with resources, renewable resources and raw resources like minerals, like gas, like water, like forests. We are blessed with resources that we have a duty and a responsibility to steward for future generations — not only the resources themselves but also the environmental and the social systems that surround them.

That’s why this bill is critical as giving the first step of those targets that will allow the civil service the wedge analyzes to get there. For example, let’s look at the mining sector. British Columbia is blessed with a mining sector. We are some of the world’s leading miners around the world. Many of them started…. Some of them get bought up.

Look at Teck Cominco. Well, it’s now just “Teck.” Teck — an incredible asset to British Columbia. Teck’s a good company, a good steward of the environment. Teck would love to be able to use electric trucks. But there’s no technology out there.

There’s an opportunity for B.C. innovation. There’s an opportunity for B.C. to actually do what Norway is doing in replacing their ferries with electric ferries — with batteries built in Richmond, no less. Why are we not recognizing this innovative opportunity for heavy industry? Electric trucks. We’ve got lots of electricity. We’ve got a company like Teck — a leader, a global leader — ready to adopt. There’s an opportunity.

Here’s another piece of innovation out there. We talk about gas filling stations all over the place. You want to be a leader of the new economy? You recognize that you can get land really cheap on the highway between here and there, halfway between towns, and you could start to put a gas station there. But the gas you’re doing is actually electricity for electric vehicles. When you fill up in a high-voltage 400-volt charger, it’ll take you 30 minutes. You’re going to sit there. You have a cup of coffee. It’s an opportunity for innovation — to start to create charging stations. But that innovation needs government to get out of the way.

Right now in British Columbia, you cannot give away your electricity and ask someone to pay for it unless you’re a registered utility. I have an electric charging station at my house. I’d love to charge the member for West Vancouver–Capilano 35 cents every time he filled his electric car up. But I can’t.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: There we go. My colleague here would charge me 25 cents, and the free market starts to come to play here. Capitalism, free market economy — here we go. He’s charging 25 cents, and maybe my colleague there from Whiskey Creek will say: “I’m going to charge 20 cents, because the Huu-ay-aht have got a generating station there, and they have excess power. We want to charge that power here. Let’s go.”

This is innovation. We in British Columbia used to be leaders in that regard, and now, sadly, we’ve fallen off that. This legislation is the very first step, the necessary first step, mirroring what was done in 2007 by Gordon Campbell to get us back on the right path.

British Columbia has an electric car company here — Electra Meccanica. Our colleague ran in Vancouver–Mount Pleasant, there, against the member from Vancouver–Mount Pleasant. This is a company that builds electric vehicles. It’s traded publicly on the NASDAQ. It builds electric vehicles in Victoria. But now, guess what. The factories are going to be in China and India. He’s got hundreds of millions of dollars of sales coming forward, but in B.C., we should be doing that here.

We should be saying say to Terrace that we get that you have some economic issues right now, because the oil and gas sector is hurting. The price has gone through the floor. But you are on a rail line between Chicago and Prince Rupert. You’re on that rail line, and guess what. We can get your goods manufactured there to market in both the biggest east coast and the Asian markets. But what we need is to attract manufacturing there.

By recognizing that there’s a whole generation of manufacturers who want to be clean and good corporate citizens…. B corp., the legislation I just brought in a couple days ago. Benefit corporations. We could give them that clean energy.

We don’t have to double down on the economy yesterday. We could say that Terrace is the place to go. And 100 Mile House — all of these small communities across our province have their own strategic advantages that make them the place to go for innovation and variety of areas.

Forest fire innovation. There is so much potential there, both in terms of the type of suits that people wear through the suppression techniques for innovation in the forest fire sector. We have innovation in the forestry industry, but we buy our innovation from Finland. There was a government there that recognized that in order to compete, we can’t compete by racing to the bottom. We can only compete if we are smarter. Otherwise, we’re going to give our resources away. We’re smarter, and we’re more efficient. Therein lies an opportunity there.

In those opportunities, those wedge opportunities, we meet our targets at the same time as we bring economic prosperity to British Columbia — not only for this generation but for generations to come. Not doing so is a problem.

We bemoan…. It’s a tragedy that we have the flooding events in the Boundary-Similkameen region this year. We had flooding last year. We had forest fires last year. We had forest fires that took out much of Fort McMurray. This is a story that happens year in and year out, not only in B.C. but everywhere.

As I’ve tried to point out time and time again, the issue of global warming, which this is addressing, is fundamentally a question of intergenerational equity. Do we, the present generation, owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of environment that we leave behind? If the answer is no, who cares about global warming? Really, it doesn’t matter. Because it just goes to hell in a hand basket, and “I don’t care about future generations.” But if we care, yes, we must act now. Because waiting is too late.

The analogy that’s direct is: you put a pot of water on the stove, and you turn it up to 8. That dial there is essentially greenhouse gas emissions or the level of the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. You turn it up. The water is cool. It starts to warm. I don’t worry about global warming. I don’t care. The thing is on 8. It starts to get a bit warm. You go: “Whoa, this is getting hot.”

It starts to get a little bit warm. I’m going to turn 8 down to 7. It gets warmer. Now it starts boiling. Oh, I better turn it off. You turn it down to zero, but guess what? It’s too late.

The analogy is direct to the world. Seventy one percent of our globe is covered by water. It takes time for the oceans to heat up. Once they do, you can’t cool them right away either. The analogy is direct. And once you get to a stage where you say, “Oh, it’s too warm. We better cool it” — it’s too late, frankly.

Now we worry about the forest fire here and a flood there. And I get that. It’s really important. But it pales in comparison to the plight that’s in store for us. And you can go back and look at what the climate scientists have been saying for decades — it’s been the same thing. Those touting that it’s just somehow some natural cycles — they act like a legal defense team who’ve lost their case. They throw all sorts of public doubt out there, fake news and all, hoping that the public jury will render a not guilty verdict.

But we know that a substantial fraction, something like 60 percent of the world’s species, will be committed to extinction — 60 to 80 percent at the end of this century as a direct consequence of greenhouse gas emissions.

We can’t turn the level of atmospheric dioxide up, on the scale of 100 years, to the levels that haven’t been seen since Jurassic and Triassic and not think there’s not going to be an ecological response. We are literally going back to the Triassic and Jurassic in the scale of a few decades, as we take that captured carbon that was captured in those swamps and the seas and created goal and natural gas that we’re releasing in decades.

Sure, life will go on after an extinction event, and it will come on in a different form. But it certainly will not be life like we know it today. We know that in the big extinction events in earth’s history, when a meteor hit or when we had more intensive volcanic activity, there were 80 percent, 90 percent of marine organisms that went extinct. We know we’re on track to do that now.

We know that the biggest sink of atmospheric carbon is the oceans. We know that the Great Barrier Reef is probably gone, and there’s nothing we can do about it because of the sink of the carbon that exists. We know that many of the ocean’s corals are dead, and they will die forever and there’s not much to do about it. These are just the early stages.

Again, I come to the point of: do we, as a present generation, actually owe anything to future generations because if we do, we must act here now. We must not weigh, for example, one LNG plant against and jobs that may or may not exist five years from now versus the opportunity for success in a new economy that preserves prosperity and the environment that our next generation will actually come to live in.

These are not options. I talk about some of the sad things that I see. One day I see a politician putting sandbags up on a dike, and the next day that same politician is here arguing: “Rah, rah, rah Kinder Morgan and LNG.”

Where’s the disconnect? The disconnect is mind-boggling. Again, we go back to this issue that we’re proposing to deal with here. The greenhouse effect goes back to Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in the early 1800s, the first to recognize the atmosphere acts like a greenhouse that allows incoming solar radiation through but blocks outgoing long wave radiation, to act like a blanket to keep the surface warm.

We’ve known about the different effects of a variety of greenhouse gases since the 1860s. We’ve known about the specific role of carbon dioxide in the 1890s. We knew and had the first multisensory projections in the 1930s.

In 1979, when I was graduating from high school, Jule Charney, an MIT climate and atmospheric scientist, was tasked with the first national assessment in the U.S. They came up with the best estimate of the single most important metric, summarizing our cumulative understanding of the world’s response to increasing greenhouse gases.

That is climate sensitivity. Climate sensitivity, by definition, is how much will the world warm if we double atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from Premier-industrial levels, from 280 to 560 parts per million.

In 1979, the very best estimate was between 1½ and 4½ degrees. That was the range. In 1990, the first IPCC assessment — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — scores of publications examined. Best estimate:1½ to 4½ degrees.

In 1996, second assessment report, best estimate:1½ to 4½ degrees. The single best estimate of the single most important metrics, summarizing our cumulative understanding of how the world responds to a doubling of carbon dioxide, has not changed from 1979 to 1996, where we’re in the second assessment report.

We move to 2001. We’re now at the third assessment report. The best assessment gives 1½ to 4½ degrees, and then we move to 2007. That’s the Nobel Prize year. It moves to 2 to 4½ degrees. Wow. We’ve changed it slightly. And then in 2013…. I was involved in every report from 1996 through 2013, and that 2013 one was fundamentally frustrating. The report had largely concluded in 2012, and I withdrew from the process when the writ was dropped in the 2013 election, but all the rating had been done.

The 2013 estimate from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, summarizing tens of thousands of papers’ knowledge on this issue, the best estimate of climate sensitivity, the single most important metric summarizing our cumulative understanding of what will happen as a consequence of global warming — that is, how much will the world warm if we double carbon dioxide….? The best estimate was 1½ to 4½ degrees again.

We don’t need more science. What we need is political will, and what we don’t need is more grandstanding on these important issues, which is why I’m excited about this bill. Why am I excited about this bill? Because it provides the first step, as was done in 2007 — the very first step that is necessary to actually head us in a direction. And that necessary step…. This should be taken as a signal.

If government is serious about this bill brought forth, it cannot support the addition of a two- or four-train LNG facility. We just can’t do it. You cannot square that round peg. It doesn’t work. The numbers don’t work, and the last thing this government needs to do is try and play the accounting games that happened towards then end of the last administration’s governance.

We start to get things like: “Okay, I’m going to give you money and take a carbon credit, because you’re not going to not cut down those trees that otherwise you would cut down.” This is the kind of carbon accounting nonsense we get into. If you open that Pandora’s box, you’re going to have to start accounting for forest fire losses as well, and we don’t want to do that, let me tell you.

We started to pay Encana…. They had at the time…. We gave them carbon offset as they actually upgraded some natural gas facilities. Okay. That’s fine, but that was not the intent. The intent was to actually get fundamental changes and send a direction to the economy that we want to move elsewhere. And we have to be careful how we continue with the offsetting.

With that, I will suggest that this debate…. Both my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands and my colleague from Cowichan Valley will be looking to speak to this bill further. I do want to touch upon the last two things that I haven’t marked.

I want to support the minister in his ability to be given the powers to set sectoral targets through regulation. I think that’s important, and he has articulated and identified, in his opening remarks, that he will seek guidance for that from his — I forget the name of this reincarnation; we’ll call it, for the purpose of Hansard — climate leadership team 3.0. He will seek advice from them. They represent a variety of sectors, and I think that’s a good strategy, and I think the approach is a fine one.

I also want to give the minister a lot of credit for adopting the recommendation of the Canadian Auditor General with respect to biannual reporting out of the risks as well as how we are moving towards meeting those risks of climate change.

The risks are very real and very serious and will get worse as time goes one. You know, I could talk about…. For example, we knew since 2000, when a student of mine, Dáithí Stone…. He went to Oxford — I lost touch with him in the last few years — and was a lecturer there after that. He wrote a paper where he analyzed precipitation trends in Canada. We know extreme precip is going up.

We know, for example, we can attribute…. We did this in 2004. Nathan Gillett is a former…. He’s now head of the Environment Canada Canadian centre for climate modeling and analysis. We knew, in 2004, that we could detect and attribute the increasing area of forest fires burnt in Canada directly to human activity. We know that.

We know what the cause is. We know what the precursors are. We need to have ignition. Well, we’ve got lots of lightening. We need to have dry timber, and the way you get dry timber through soil moisture and summer warmth. We know we can detect regional changes in increasing temperature.

Again, I’ve said the same thing since the 1990s. As a climate science community, we know it’s going to happen. We know that we’re going to get an increase in extreme weather events, particularly in precipitation. The 100-year event is no longer a 100-year event; it will become a 25-, a ten-year event, and then it’ll become a 5-year event and so forth. We know we’re going to get that.

We know we’re going to increase our precipitation in our latitudes. We know water here is not going to be an availability issue; it’s going to be a storage issue, because we know we’re going to get increased water in the winter and less in the summer, because we have increased likelihood of summer droughts.

We know that in the winter it’s going to be increasingly likely and more and more extreme events. Ironically, we might get amazing snow years, because if the temperature is slightly below zero, it’s snow instead of rain. So yes, we might get a big snowfall, but that’s exactly what we would expect to get, because it’s winter it’s and cold and we expect increasing amounts — of the warming climate to have more moisture in it.

We expect a northward shift of the storm track, so yes and lo and behold, we’re getting more of these stronger storms hitting our latitude. What would you think? That’s exactly what we’ve been saying: these move further northward. The same in the south. We know artic sea ice is going. We know it’s likely going to be gone in the summer in a few decades. We know that 2017 is right on the edge of setting a new record — the record that was first set in 2007 and then broken, quite dramatically, in 2010. We’re on path to beat it again this year.

We know that global sea ice volume was a record low this year. We know that if we don’t do anything, we’re going to commit 60 to 80 percent of the world’s species to extinction towards the end of this century. We know that we’re going to get increasing droughts. We know that we’re going to flood islands.

We know that there are hundreds of millions of people living on the coasts, and we know that if we get warming to about two degrees, we have a very high probability that we’re committed to seven metres to sea level rise, because that point puts Greenland and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet past the point of no return.

Now, we also know that when there’s a storm — and we know that there are increasingly strong storms — that we actually get storm surges. We know that with the warming water — again, you could do this experiment at home — when you have a high tide, warming water and storms, you get big storm surges, and you start to see things like Hurricane Sandy flooding New York.

Now what happens when New York, which was flooded once, starts to get flooded like that every ten years. Then you add six metres of sea level rise on that. You start to create a problem for our built infrastructure — a problem when you have hundreds of millions of people within ten metres of the coast. The town of Shanghai, the burgeoning metropolis of Shanghai, is less than ten metres from the coast. You get rid of Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheet — it’s pretty hard for them to adapt if you add ten metres of sea level rise. It’s pretty hard for deltas, for Richmond, to adapt if they have ten metres of sea level rise.

It’s not going to happen overnight. This is why the issue is one of intergenerational equity. That won’t even happen in the next 100 years. It takes hundreds of years for that to happen. But, hon. Speaker, let members in this House know that history will not be kind to those of us who stand by and let this happen. We will be judged. So be it if people don’t care, if they don’t care about intergenerational equity. That’s fine. People who don’t have children might not care.

Some people may have belief systems that this conflicts with. They might believe, for example, that  whatever is going to happen was meant to happen, and it’s God’s will. As climate scientists, we can’t argue science against faith. You can’t dismiss those views, people within our society, because nobody, no science could ever address the question: do we as a society need to actually deal with this issue? That requires all of us.

What we need to do is we need facts and evidence on the table, and we’ve got to stop listening to rhetoric that’s put forward and doublespeak — like we need to build pipelines in order to have a climate plan. Politicians need to be truthful to the people of British Columbia. They need to know what the consequences of inaction are.

If society believes that you don’t need to deal with this problem, so be it. I happen to think we do, and I happen to think most people do believe we need to deal with this issue. As such, this bill is critical. When we apply this is critical, not only to implement this bill but also the subsequent policy measures that will ensure we will meet targets. Targets have been in place in Canada since the 1980s, when Brian Mulroney introduced the first targets, and we have a litany of missed and failed targets.

Europe met their targets. We have not met our targets here in Canada — not one, not close, not even a little bit close to any of our targets.

I look forward to the subsequent legislation announcement to come, and with that I thank you for your attention, and I look forward to further debate.

Video of Speech

Over the last month there has been a flurry of media interest concerning whether or not British Columbia can meet it’s legislated and promised greenhouse gas reduction targets while simultaneously developing an LNG industry. The short answer is no, it’s impossible. In what follows I outline why this is so. I also outline why this is a defining issue for my continued support of this minority government.

1. British Columbia’s legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets

In 2007, at a time when British Columbia was emerging as an international leader in the quest to reduce greenhouse gases, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act was passed. This act committed British Columbia to:

1. reduce emissions by 2020 to at least 33% less than the level of those emissions in 2007;
2. reduce emissions by 2050 to at least 80% less than the level of those emissions in 2007;

It further tasked the government with developing interim targets for 2012 and 2016.

Later that year the government set up a Climate Action Team whose mandate included, among other things, advising what these interim targets should be. The resulting report recommended:

1. 1. By 2012, the growth in emissions must be reversed and emissions must begin to decline significantly, to between five and seven per cent below 2007 levels;
   2. By 2016, the decline in emissions needs to accelerate. In order to ensure that B.C.’s 2020 target can be reached, emissions should fall to between 15 and 18 per cent below 2007 levels by 2016.

In November 2008, upon completion of the Climate Action Team’s report, the government announced that it would establish a greenhouse gas reduction target of 16% below 2007 levels by 2012 and 18%  by 2016. And at the same time, a suite of policy measures were implemented. As can be seen in the figure below, annually-averaged British Columbia emissions began to reduce.

On November 3, 2010 Gordon Campbell resigned as premier which initiated a search for a new Leader of the BC Liberal Party. Christy Clark won the subsequent BC leadership race and was sworn in as premier on March 14, 2011. After an unsuccessful attempt to win a seat in the Point Grey riding during the May 2013 provincial election, now Premier Christy Clark was eventually elected in a July 10, 2013  Kelowna West byelection.

Why this political history is important is that the change in leadership immediately signaled a change in direction for British Columbia. Almost immediately, the new Christy Clark government started to dismantle the climate policies put in place by her predecessor. One of her very first pronouncements was that natural gas would now be defined as “clean” thereby signalling the beginning of the BC Liberals’ reckless quest to capture a pot of LNG gold at the end of an ever-moving rainbow.

This pronouncement became law on July 24, 2012 as British Columbia’s Clean Energy Act was modified to exclude natural gas used to power LNG facilities. As early as June 2012, journalists were already asking how on British Columbia could venture into the LNG export industry while at the same time meeting its legislated greenhouse gas reduction targets. The political spin began.

2. Why I agreed to run as a BC Green Party candidate in the 2013 provincial election

It was during this same post-Campbell period that I was heavily involved in the writing of Chapter 12: Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility of the soon to be released Working Group I contribution to the 5^th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The last thing on my mind was contemplation of a possible move to BC politics.

Several times during 2012 the then Leader of the BC Green Party, Jane Sterk, approached me about running for office in the 2013 provincial election. It wasn’t until September of that year, the 4^th time I was asked, that I final agreed to do so.

Over the years I have given hundreds of public lectures on the science of global warming. I also developed a course at the University of Victoria entitled EOS 365: Climate and Society.

In my last lecture of that course, or towards the end of my public lectures, I typically provide a summary. I use the image to the right to boil the entire issue of global warming down to one question:

Do we, the present generation, owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of the environment that we leave behind?

Science can’t answer that question. But science tell us why this is ultimately the question that needs to be asked.

The figure, taken from the 4^th Assessment report of the IPCC shows six panels with three in each column. The first column shows projected change in annually-averaged surface air temperature (as averaged over many climate models) over the decade 2020-2029 relative to the 1980-1990 average.  The second column shows the same thing over the decade 2090-2099 relative to the 1980-1990 average. The three rows show the results when the climate models are forced by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions that follow three distinct trajectories (B1, A1B, A2).

The first (B1) has carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions which peak mid century then decline to below 1990 levels by the end of the century (see figure to the left taken from the IPCC 3^rd Assessmnet Report). The CO₂ emissions used in the second row (A1B) grow significantly until mid century and then decline slightly thereafter. The third scenario (A2) reveals CO₂ emissions that grow throughout the 21^st century. Each of these scenarios were developed using assumptions of future population growth, economic growth, energy usage and numerous other socioeconomic factors.

Since 2000, after which CO₂ emissions were estimated in the figure above, humans have been following the higher trajectories. In 2017 emissions from industrial activities and changes in land use were 10.0 GtC (Gigatonnes of Carbon) and 1.1 GtC, respectively, for a total of 11.1 GtC.

The results shown in the six paneled-figure above tell us that the amount of warming over the next century is very sensitive to our future emissions of greenhouse gases. But they also tell us that policy decisions made today will have little effect on the warming over next several decades. The climate change we have in store for the next 20-30 years is pretty much in the cards  because of past policy decisions. That’s because of something I like to call socioeconomic inertia (we don’t build a coal-fired power plant today just to tear it down tomorrow — our built infrastructure has a turnover time associated with it).

It’s no wonder that our political leaders are having such a difficult time introducing the policies needed to ensure a reduction in greenhouse gases. Politicians are typically elected for short terms. Every four years or so there is a new election.

Let’s suppose that there is a health care crisis in a particular city. A politician may get elected on the grounds that he or she will deal with this crisis. A hospital might get built. During the next election campaign the politician can point to the hospital and say to his or her constituents: “Look. I listened to you. We built a hospital to deal with your local health-care problem”. That politician may get reelected. Now let’s suppose you are a politician who introduces a regulation limiting greenhouse gases. Or you might add a tax or levy to greenhouse gas emissions. The effects of this policy would not be realized during your political career. In fact, they may not be realized in your entire lifetime. They would start to have an effect in the lifetime of the next generation. That’s hardly something you can point to in the next election campaign. There is no immediate benefit.

So if indeed we believe that we have any responsibility for the well-being of future generations in terms of the quality of the environment that we leave behind, we have no choice but to immediately start to implement the policy measures required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Waiting to act will mean waiting until its too late. There’s a very simple analogy that illustrates why.

Suppose you put a pot of cold water on a stove and turn the element to high. The water won’t boil right away. It takes time for the water to heat up. If suddenly it gets too hot, and you decide to turn the element down, it also won’t cool right away. That’s because of the large heat capacity of the water. The analogy to global warming is direct. The element on the stove corresponds to the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere whereas the pot of water represents the oceans which cover 71% of the Earth’s surface.

Students and members of the public in my classes and lectures would invariably ask: “What can I do to make a difference?”. I would respond that there are three things anyone and everyone can do:

1. Use your purchasing power to send a signal to the market by buying products that when produced, delivered, or used, are low greenhouse-gas emitting.
2. Exercise your right to vote and ensure you vote for someone who is willing to put in place the policy measures required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Education: tell everyone you know to do 1) and 2).

In my 3^rd year Climate and Society class I would typically ask how many people voted in the last election. It wouldn’t be unusual to see only about 50% of the class put up their hands. I’d then ask why people chose not to vote and the answers included statements like: “my vote doesn’t matter” or “all politicians are the same, they just care about themselves and getting reelected.”

I’d show the figure to the right illustrating Canadian voter turnout as a function of time (now updated to include the 2015 general election). I’d talk about the fact that global warming is not really an issue that will affect seniors over the age of 65 (for reasons outlined above) and that 70-80% of this demographic typically vote. I’d suggest that it is important for those who will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions (or lack thereof) to participate in our democratic process to ensure that their interests (the long term consequences) are incorporated into decision-making. I’d suggest that if they didn’t like the names on the ballot then they should consider running themselves or encouraging someone to run that they can support.

Ultimately, when Jane Sterk approached me that 4^th time in September 2012, I took a look in the mirror and told myself that I would be a hypocrite if I were not willing to follow the advice I was willing to offer others. And so I agreed to run as a matter of principle and on May 14, 2013 I was elected as a BC Green Party MLA representing the riding of Oak Bay Gordon Head. My journey from scientist to politician is the focus of the Robert Alstead’s feature documentary entitled Running on Climate.

3. British Columbia’s reckless efforts to land an LNG industry

By now, the results of the 2013 general election in British Columbia are but history. Campaigning on the promise of 100,000 jobs,  a $100 billion prosperity fund, a $1 trillion increase in GDP, thriving schools and hospitals, and the potential elimination of the PST, Christy Clark and the BC Liberals won a bigger majority government than they had going into that election.

While the BC NDP were campaigning for “Change for the better, one practical step at a time” (whatever that means), I was busy calling out the BC Liberal promises as nothing more than unsubstantiated hyperbole. In one of my first blog posts as a newly elected MLA, I penned an article entitled: Living the Pipe Dream: Basing BC’s Economy on Bubble Economics. This was based on some Powerpoint presentations I had given during the election campaign. In that article I stated:

It is simply a pipe dream to believe that by the end of this decade, the same natural gas price differential will exist between North America and Asia. It is also much cheaper to pipe natural gas directly from Russia to China than it is to liquefy it and ship it from North America. And as we have seen above, there is much, much more natural gas located in Russia. British Columbians deserve better.

I pointed out that the widening of the Isthmus of Panama was about to be completed and that the southern US, a historical importer of LNG, already had the infrastructure on the coast to become an exporter. They were set to meet any upcoming supply gaps in the Asian market. I pointed out that Australia had massive LNG projects about to come online. I pointed out that Russia, with about 20 times all of Canada’s shale gas reserves, had entered into multi-decade contracts to deliver natural gas to China. And Russia’s natural gas reserves are largely conventional and so much cheaper to extract.  More recently, I pointed out that Iran, containing the world’s largest reserves of natural gas, just had sanctions lifted. But that didn’t stop the BC Liberals from desperately trying to deliver the impossible.

In the fall of 2016, the BC Liberals brought in Bill 6, the Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Act. I described it as a “generational sellout” that was incomplete and full of loopholes. I noted that in a desperate attempt to fulfill outrageous election promises, the BC Government did what it could to give away our natural resources with little, if any, hope of receiving LNG tax revenue for many, many years to come. Every single member of the legislature apart from me voted in support of the bill at second reading (see the image to the right).

During the committee stage for the bill after 2^nd reading, I identified a number of potential loopholes that could be exploited by LNG companies to further reduce the already meager amount of tax that they would pay to BC. And then, at third reading, I moved an amendment that would have sent Bill 6 to the Select Standing Committee on Parliamentary Reform, Ethical Conduct, Standing Orders and Private Bills, so that British Columbians could get answers to unresolved questions about the government’s LNG promises. The bill would have benefitted from a more thoughtful analysis by the Select Standing Committee. Third parties could be brought in for consultation, including the public, including First Nations and including the companies involved.

When it came to the vote, only independent MLA Vicky Huntington (Delta South) stood with me in the chamber in calling for more time. The official opposition and the government voted together. It was truly remarkable to witness the opposition collectively stand in favour of this bill. So many of them had offered scathing condemnations of it during second reading. In my view they were still gun shy as being perceived as “the party of no” and against resource development.

Clearly the LNG Income Tax Act wasn’t generous enough and the pot had to be sweetened further with the introduction of the 109 page LNG Income Tax Amendment Act (Bill 26) a few months later. While this bill closed a few glaring loopholes I had identified in Bill 6, Bill 26 introduced what I considered to be an unacceptable revision that granted the minister the power to use regulation to allow corporations involved in the LNG industry to use their natural gas tax credit to pay an 8 percent corporate tax instead of 11 percent. Back in the fall, when I put an amendment to send this to committee, I specifically stated in speaking to that amendment that one of the reasons this had to go to committee was because “I would have wished to explore, in particular the one-half percent natural gas tax credit.”

But it doesn’t end there. The BC Liberals still could not land a positive investment decision for a major LNG facility. And so, the legislature was called back for an unusual summer session to pass Bill 30: Liquified natural gas project agreements act. As I noted earlier when I addressed the bill at second reading, in a ever more desperate attempt to fulfill outrageous election promises, the BC Liberals did what they could to give away our natural resources with little, if any, hope of receiving LNG tax revenue for many, many years to come.

I offered a Reasoned Amendment to this bill. In speaking to the amendment I looked across the aisle to the MLAs opposite. I asked them to ask themselves one question. How do they think history will judge them? I argued that the generation of tomorrow will look back and will say: “This generation sold us out.” They will look back at this government’s decisions here to pass this bill with disdain, with shock, with disbelief and ask why?

By this time the BC NDP realized just how outrageous the sellout was becoming and they joined me in supporting my amendment and voting against the bill at second reading.

What we should do: Bill 30 should be repealed.

Bill 30 set the stage for the BC Government to approve the Project Development Agreement that it had already signed with Pacific Northwest LNG on May 20, 2015. One of the key conditions of the deal, however, was that Petronas had to make a final investment decision on Pacific Northwest LNG by June 2017. Petronas decided to kill the project instead.

In light of this, I recently asked the new Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources if the long-term royalty agreement would be terminated as it was the government’s legal right to do so. In my view it literally gave away our resource and now it is being viewed as a starting point for negotiations with other companies who want to lower the bar still further. The Minister responded that she would have more information later. I await such information.

What we should do: This expired long term royalty agreement should be terminated.

If you thought the LNG deals couldn’t get any richer, you are in for a surprise. British Columbia has had in place a deep-well royalty program since 2003. It was designed to enable the provincial government to share the costs of drilling in B.C.’s deep gas basins. But recently it transformed into a massive subsidy to incentivize horizontal drilling, including shallow wells and hydraulic fracturing. There should be no surprise that British Columbia now earns very little in royalties from its natural gas royalties (see figure to the left taken from an article written by Marc Lee in PolicyNote.ca). Worse still is that there are more than $3.2 billion in unclaimed royalty credits than can be applied against future royalties.

What we should do: The deep-well royalty program should be terminated.

There is more. In Bill 19: Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Amendment Act, 2016, the BC Liberals repealed existing Cap and Trade enabling legislation and allowed new entrants in the LNG industry to have “flexible options” for their initial operations. The first 18 months of a new operation’s existence would “allow for time for testing and other initial activities that may affect emissions and production levels.” The bill also opened up the BC Carbon registry to non-regulated operations (companies and municipalities). The BC NDP and I voted together in opposition to this Bill.

What we should do: Cap and Trade enabling legislation for heavy emitters should be reintroduced.

Unfortunately, the BC Liberals committed even more to LNG proponents. As former Premier Christy Clark stated in the November 2014 announcement of an agreement between BC Hydro and LNG Canada “This agreement is an important step forward towards getting the LNG industry up and running”. Initially the agreement promised to provide power to LNG facilities at a rate of 8.3¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh), before applicable taxes. This rate subsequently dropped to 5.4¢ per kWh (the same as the industrial rate used by other heavy consumers) in the late fall of 2016.

But here’s the problem. In order for BC Hydro to deliver into these contracts, it would need new power. This is where Site C comes in. Site C, when completed, would produce 5,100 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity per year.

If you pick up your bi-monthly BC Hydro bill you will see that residential customers presently pay a Tier 1 rate of 8.3¢ per kWh for the first 1350 kiloWatts of electricity and a Tier 2 rate of 12.9¢ per kWh for everything in excess of that. Site C, is now projected to cost $10.7 billion (and rising). With BC hydro’s growing debt, one thing we can be certain of is that these rates will increase. In essence, what the BC Liberals started (and the BC NDP continued) was a massive ratepayer electric subsidy of a nonexistent LNG industry. You and I will pay more than twice what LNG proponents have to pay while at the same time taking on billions of dollars of ratepayer supported debt. If this sounds like a bad deal, it gets worse.

As early as October 2103, I pointed out that it no longer made any fiscal sense to proceed with Site C. Not only was its cost escalating, but the cost of renewables was plummeting. In the last eight years alone, costs for wind power declined by 66 percent. And the costs are predicted to continue to fall. Bloomberg, for example, predicts that onshore wind costs will fall by 47 percent by 2040 and offshore costs will fall by 71 percent. In fact, Alberta just announced it is proceeding with the development of 4000 megawatts of wind energy at a cost of only 3.7¢ per kilowatt hour, well below what Site C will end up costing.

Solar energy tells a similar story. Costs have decreased by 68 percent since 2009, and they’re projected to decrease by a further 27 percent in the next five years. We have a window of opportunity now to harness renewables and build power that puts us on the cutting edge of innovation and provides local jobs and benefits. Furthermore, we are not using our existing dams efficiently and they could be used to level the load from these intermittent sources (and so act like rechargeable batteries).

Building Site C will cost much more than just its construction price tag. It will also cost us lost opportunities in terms of distributed, stable, high paying, long term jobs in renewable energy production.

What we should do: Site C should not proceed.

I reiterate, the reality is that there is a global glut in natural gas supply and despite what some might claim, oil and gas activities play a very minor role in BC’s economy. As I mentioned earlier, the royalties and net revenue from the natural gas sector in British Columbia have plummeted in recent years (see also figure below). In fact in 2016, British Columbia actually lost $383 million from exploration and development of our resource. That’s because the tax credits earned exceeded the sum of the income received from net royalties and rights tenders combined. In the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, British Columbia earned total revenue of only $3.7 million, a 99.9% drop from 2010 (BC earned 1000 times more revenue in 2010 from natural gas than we did in the last fiscal year).

Figure: Net royalties earned (after claiming tax credits) [red]; net increase of unclaimed tax credits [orange]; net revenue from tendering the rights to natural gas [green]; the sum of these three (i.e. the net revenue to the province from our natural gas resource) [blue]. The scale is in billions of dollars. Each year represents the fiscal year ending March 31 of that year. Thanks to Norman Farrell for providing me the data that he collated from BC Public Accounts, BC Budget and Fiscal Plans, and the Auditor General’s Information Bulletin 1 (May 2011).

What we should do: Stop doubling down on the economy of yesterday and instead focus on our strategic strengths as we diversify for the economy of tomorrow (see section 5).

4. Meeting our 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets – the line in the sand

During the 2017 election campaign the BC NDP campaigned on a promise to introduce measures to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our province. In particular, they promised:

Our plan commits to achieve BC’s legislated 2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 80 percent below 2007 levels and will set a new legislated 2030 reduction target of 40 per cent below 2007 levels.

The BC Liberals had no plan. Obviously the BC Green plan for climate leadership was far reaching.

While the details of their plan were scant, there is no doubt that the BC NDP commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 40% below 2007 levels by 2030 was the defining issue for me when it came to determining who we would support in a minority government. And so, embedded within the confidence and supply agreement that we signed with the BC NDP is this:

a. Climate Action

As evidenced in the figure at the top of this post, British Columbia emitted 64.7 megatonnes of CO₂ equivalent (CO2e) in 2007. By 2030, the BC NDP have committed to reducing emissions to 38.8 megatonnes CO2e and by 2050 this number drops to 12.9 megatonnes. As of today, British Columbia has no plan to reach either of these targets. So how does the addition of a major LNG facility muddy our ability to meet these targets?

Pembina Institute undertook a careful analysis of the emissions that would arise if the LNG Canada proposal in Kitimat would go ahead. Recall from the earlier discussion that in the race to the bottom, British Columbia continues to give away the farm in a desperate attempt to land this facility. Pembina conservatively calculated that when upstream (fugitive emissions from natural gas extraction) were included, the completed LNG Canada plant would add an additional 8.6 megatonnes CO2e by 2030 and 9.6 megatonnes CO2e by 2050.

Let’s look at these numbers a slightly different way. In 2015 British Columbia reported 63.3 megatonnes CO2e in emissions. If we add the emissions associated with the LNG Canada proposal, we would need to reduce emissions from 71.9 megatonnes CO2e to 38.8 megatonnes CO2e by 2030 and from 72.9 megatonnes CO2e to 12.9 megatonnes CO2e by 2050. That’s a 46% and 82% reduction, respectively.

We know that LNG Canada emissions would be in addition to existing emissions. LNG Canada would not build the new facility today just so that they can tear it down tomorrow. We can safely assume it would be producing emissions throughout the period from 2030-2050. This means that for all other aspects of the British Columbia economy, emissions would have to drop from 63.3 megatonnes CO2e in 2015 to 30.2 megatonnes CO2e in 2030 and to just 3.3 megatonnes CO2e in 2050. That’s a drop of 52% and 95%, respectively.

If the LNG Canada proposal goes ahead, then every aspect of our economy will have to collectively cut emissions by more than half in twelve years and by 95% by 2050. This is simply not feasible given socioeconomic inertia in our build infrastructure. I’ll expand on this more in a forthcoming post where i explore British Columbia’s sector specific emissions in more detail.

Some will argue that British Columbia should get credit for any potential emissions reductions that would occur if China, for example, were to use our natural gas and transition away from coal. The problem with this argument is two-fold.

1) International reporting mechanisms do not allow one nation to get credit for such fuel switching in another nation. China gets credit for their domestic emissions reductions, not British Columbia. British Columbia cannot simply rewrite international reporting rules developed through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In addition, it’s not even clear whether or not such fuel switching would occur.

2) More importantly, there is no evidence to suggest that when a lifecycle analysis is considered, replacing coal in China with LNG that originated in BC would actually reduce emissions.

Here’s why.

Methane has a global warming potential that is 84 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20 year horizon. This means that on a molecule per molecule basis, methane is 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in its warming ability. It’s 28 times more powerful over a 100 year time frame. And so, it’s important to ensure that the effects of methane are accounted for in a lifecycle analysis.

Unfortunately, it is well known that there are pervasive problems with the estimating and reporting of fugitive emissions in British Columbia. For example, a recent St. Francis Xavier study suggested that BC’s actual fugitive emissions were upwards of 2.5 times higher than what was being officially reported. A particularly policy-relevant and recently published study also highlights troubles and lack of consistency with subnational estimating and reporting of fugitive emissions. In fact, uncertainties are so high that in yet another insightful analysis, that estimated which nations it was best to ship BC LNG to in order to get the best bang for the buck in terms of GHG emissions, it specifically stated:

“It is critical to note that the significance of the results does not lie with the ultimate magnitude of the values, where uncertainties remain due to the evolving nature of upstream fugitive emissions measurements. Instead, the important conclusion is the potential for variability in carbon intensity of LNG across countries.“

That is, while the relative merits of shipping to one country over another was quantified, the authors recognized that uncertainties in fugitive emissions precluded a conclusion as to whether the lifecycle analysis led to a net greenhouse gas benefit. In particular they noted,

“Results include two Canadian studies, both of which report total life cycle greenhouse gas emissions notably lower than those reported by the others, ranking the lowest and second lowest values in the collected data.”

and

“The Canadian datasets would benefit from disaggregating emissions, such that areas in need of research and improvement can be identified.”

5. In Summary: A vision for the future

Over the course of this essay, I hope that I’ve been able to explain why my continued support of the BC NDP in this minority government is conditional on them implementing a realistic and achievable plan to meet the 2030 greenhouse gas reduction targets. I initially got into politics for the reasons articulated above. I could no longer look my family, friends, students and colleagues in the face knowing that I let future generations be sold out when I had the chance to stop it from happening. This is a principled decision for me and the reason why I refer to it as a line in the sand.

It is not possible to on the one hand claim you have a plan to meet our targets and then on the other hand start promoting the expansion of LNG. It’s a bit like Mr. Trudeau’s recent doublespeak where he says that we need to triple the capacity of the Kinder Morgan pipeline in order to meet our climate commitments. That is, we need to increase emissions to reduce emissions!

In section 3, I outlined the numerous ways the BC Government can take steps to stop the generational sellout embodied in the great LNG giveaway. I will continue to work to push them in this regard.

In the shadows of the massive challenges that we face, our province needs a new direction.

A new direction that offers a realistic and achievable vision grounded in hope and real change.

A new direction that places the interests of the people of British Columbia first and foremost in decision-making. And it’s not only today’s British Columbians that we must think about, it’s also the next generation who are not part of today’s decision-making process.

A new direction that will build our economy on the unique competitive advantages British Columbia possesses, not chase the economy of yesteryear by mirroring the failed strategies of struggling economies.

A new direction that will act boldly and deliberately to transition us to 21^st century economy that is diversified and sustainable.

A new direction that doesn’t wait for public opinion — but rather builds it.

We have a unique opportunity in British Columbia to be at the cutting edge in the development of a 21^st century economy.

Our high quality of life and beautiful natural environment attract some of the best and brightest from around the globe —we are a destination of choice. Our high school students are consistently top ranked — with the OECD specifying BC as one of the smartest academic jurisdictions in the world. And we have incredible potential to a create clean, renewable energy sector to sustain our growing economy. When we speak about developing a 21^st century economy — one that is innovative, resilient, diverse, and sustainable — these are unique strengths we should be leveraging.

A 21^st century economy is sustainable — environmentally, socially and financially. We should be investing in up-and-coming sectors like the clean tech sector, and creative economy that create well-paying, stable long-term, local jobs and that grow our economy without sacrificing our environment.

We should be using our strategic advantage as a destination of choice to attract industry to BC in highly mobile sectors that have difficulty retaining employees in a competitive marketplace. We should be using our boundless renewable energy resources to attract industry, including the manufacturing sector, that wants to brand itself as sustainable over its entire business cycle, just like Washington and Oregon have done.

We should be setting up seed funding mechanisms to allow the BC-based creative economy sector to leverage venture capital from other jurisdictions to our province. Too often the only leveraging that is done is the shutting down of BC-based offices and opening of offices in the Silicon Valley.

We should fundamentally change the mandate of BC Hydro. BC Hydro should no longer be the builder of new power capacity. Rather, it should be the broker of power deals, transmitter of electricity, and leveler of power load through improving British Columbia power storage capacity. Let industry risk their capital, not taxpayer capital, and let the market respond to demands of cheap power.

Similarly, by steadily increasing emissions pricing, we can send a signal to the market that incentivizes innovation and the transition to a low carbon economy. The funding could be transferred to municipalities across the province so that they might have the resources to deal with their aging infrastructure and growing transportation barriers.

By investing in the replacement of aging infrastructure in communities throughout the province we stimulate local economies and create jobs. By moving to this polluter-pays model of revenue generation for municipalities, we reduce the burden on regressive property taxes. Done right, this model would lead to municipalities actually reducing property taxes, thereby benefitting home owners, fixed-income seniors, landlords and their tenants.

Yes, we should be investing in trade skills, as described, for example, under the B.C. jobs plan. But we should also be investing further in education for 21^st century industries like biotech, high tech and clean tech. It’s critical that we bring the typically urban-based tech and rural-based resource sectors together. Innovation in technology will lead to more efficient and clever ways of operating in the mining and forestry industries.

Natural gas has an important role to play. But, we should use it to build our domestic market and explore options around using it to power local transport. BC businesses such as Westport Innovations and Vedder Transport have already positioned British Columbia as an innovative global leader in this area.

We should be investing in innovation in the aquaculture industry, like the land-based technologies used by the Namgis First Nation on Vancouver Island who raise Atlantic salmon without compromising wild stocks.

In forestry we send record amounts of unprocessed logs overseas. Now is the time to retool mills to foster a value-added second growth forestry industry.

These are just a few ideas that could help us move to the cutting edge in 21^st the century economy.

Fundamental to all of these ideas is the need to ensure that economic opportunities are done in partnership with First Nations. And that means working with First Nations through all stages of resource project development – from conception to completion.

I am truly excited about the prospects that lie ahead in this minority government. British Columbia has so much to offer and we can and shall be a leader in the new economy. And the recent announcement of the appointment of Dr. Alan Winter as the new Innovation Commissioner is an exciting step in this direction.