Is the creation of a new “climate leadership team” a sign the B.C. Liberal government is renewing its interest in confronting the climate change issue?
Or is this simply an exercise designed to fail?
We may know the answer to these questions as early as July, when the new team is supposed to hand in a draft framework for a climate plan that seeks to reduce greenhouse emissions while at the same time expanding the economy, including creating a new liquefied natural gas industry. Pulling off those accomplishments simultaneously will be tricky, if not impossible.
As such, it will be interesting to see if the three prominent environment activists appointed to the new panel stick around to see things out.
Veteran Greenpeace campaigner Tzeporah Berman, the Pembina Institute’s Matt Horne and Merran Smith of Clean Energy Canada are all well known, and given their criticisms of natural resource industries in the past it’s hard to envision any of them agreeing with a plan that allows for a huge expansion of those industries.
But the Christy Clark government is attached, both politically and economically, to establishing an LNG industry in this province.
As this commitment went from what seemed like a pie-in-the-sky idea before the 2013 election to being the centerpiece of the government’s economic strategy, critics began pointing out it would be impossible for the province to meet its committed targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 if LNG plants started being built. And even with the establishment of this new climate action team, those criticisms have gotten even louder.
Green Party MLA Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist himself, says the government doesn’t need another panel to tell it how to meet its climate change goals. He has dismissed the latest one as a “credibility building exercise” for a government whose interest in battling climate change has waned in recent years.
Certainly, there appears to be a world of difference between the government of former premier Gordon Campbell and the one headed by Clark when it comes to making the fight against climate change a top priority issue.
Campbell, you will recall, seemed to get religion on the issue in his second term and brought in the carbon tax and set those targets for GHG emission reductions. His government was hailed around the world as a leading groundbreaker in the fight against global warming.
Clark has not backed away from those emission targets, at least not on paper. But you rarely hear her discuss the issue publicly, as she stresses over and over again the need to grow the provincial economy before anything else.
A number of critics think that the only way to effectively fight global warming is to actually shrink the economy, not grow it. This is an extremist view, but if economic growth occurs and as a result it boosts GHG emissions, it gains credence.
This is where the LNG part of the puzzle begins to loom large. Weaver says that Horne’s Pembina Institute, for example, estimates even a single LNG plant would generate 12 million tonnes of new carbon pollution, which would undo much of any effort to reduce GHG emissions on other fronts.
“The simple fact is we cannot build an LNG export industry governed by emissions intensity regulations like the ones proposed by the government and still meet our legislated climate targets,” Weaver told the legislature last fall.
So how will this new climate leadership team square this circle? Can it come up with a strategy that reduces this province’s carbon footprint while at the same time accommodating LNG?
The odds seemed stacked against success on this one. And so it’s worth considering this possibility: the government changes the emission targets set by Campbell, arguing they are unrealistic and ultimately unachievable over the time frame that has been set.
I can’t see the Clark government backing away from its all-in approach to creating an LNG industry in this province.
That’s the starting point for this new climate leadership team. Whether it can cross the finish line in harmony seems to be a monumental challenge.
Global TV's political correspondent Keith Baldrey writes every Friday on provincial issues. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
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