Last week, the BC NDP and the BC Green Party announced their plan to work together and jointly fight the expansion of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, put plans for the Site C Dam under review, and gradually meet the Federal target for carbon pricing to $8 per tonne by 2022. On Friday, US President Donald Trump announced his intention to pull the US out of the Paris Climate Accord. Bowen Islanders Merran Smith and Jae Mather, both of whom work on climate policy, are optimistic about the impact of these recent events.
Smith, the executive director of Clean Energy Canada, says that for her organization, the most interesting thing about the NDP-Green alliance is the potential to build a “21st Century economy,” in British Columbia.
“In the past five years, globally, there has been more infrastructure for renewable energy built than in fossil fuels,” she says. “We would like to see BC become a leader in producing renewable energy and the services that go along with it. This is what emerging economies want. Yes, there is still a market for oil and gas, but that will only last for a decade or so. The growth, the future, is in clean technology.”
Smith adds that many people do not know about the opportunities that exist for more traditional sectors of the economy by investment in clean technology.
“Take mining as an example: electric vehicles use four times as much copper as traditional vehicles,” she says. “Forestry products are less carbon-intensive than cement, so they’ll be needed. When it comes to retrofits, to building wind power and bio-fuel plants, we’ll need all kinds of trades-people.”
On the proposed changes to the BC carbon tax, Smith says that the NDP-Green plan simply raises the amount of tax to the levels expected by the Federal government, and does so more gradually than a Liberal government under Christie Clarke would have.
“The more significant change that the NDP and Greens say they will make to the carbon tax is that they will shift it from being ‘revenue neutral,’ meaning that money collected from the tax will be contributed to lowering income taxes, to investing that money in carbon reducing programs,” says Smith. “And from the research that’s been done, that’s what a majority of British Columbians want from a carbon tax.”
Mather, whose organization, The Carbon Free Group, works on bringing sustainable technologies to the construction industry, agrees with Smith that the proposed changes to the carbon tax are not the most significant aspect of the political shift in BC.
“The carbon tax is not nearly at a level that would change behaviours,” says Mather. “To do that, you need to bring the cost of carbon up to $50 per tonne, at least, if not $80. What excites me is that this alliance, if it works, will not deliver business as usual policies. Coalitions governments, as demonstrated in the UK by the coalition between the Conservatives and Liberals, allows for ingrained policies that are no longer useful to be shed and for new ideas to take their place. I am concerned though, that we’ll see another election in the short-term and with lower voter turn-out, we won’t see such interesting results.”
Even more positive news, for Mather, comes from the global stage with the announcement that the US is pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
“No one who works on climate change is in any way surprised by this action from Trump, we’ve already braced ourselves. Besides, the United States is not out of the game just because the government is – companies, cities and states are coming out as being committed to the fight against climate change,” says Mather. “In a way, what Trump’s done by pulling out of these talks is he’s galvanized people on the issue.”
He adds that, from his perspective, Trump is proving that Nicaragua is on the right track.
“Aside from Syria, which is not engaged in these talks for obvious reasons, until now Nicaragua has been the only other UN member country that hasn’t signed the Paris Agreement, and that’s because Nicargua knows that Paris isn’t enough and carrying out agreement does not equal success,” says Mather, noting that in the past decade Nicaragua has undertaken a massive roll-out of renewable energies including wind, solar and tidal power and aims to acquire 90% of its power from these sources by 2020.
“This leaves the US, the second biggest emitter of carbon pollution in the world, in a class of its own. And frankly, it is a good thing they are not at the table any more because any international climate conference I have attended in the past fifteen years has seen everyone around the table pandering to US demands. Now the countries that want to can get serious about stopping climate change.”
Smith, who is currently in China as a part of the Canadian delegation to the Clean Energy Ministerial, was unavailable to talk this week but pointed to a blog post on her organization’s website that sees “a silver lining for Canada” in Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord.
The author states that the global shift to clean energy is already well underway and it is creating tremendous opportunity that Canada is well positioned to capitalize on.
