Absent a wholesale restructuring of the economy, meeting the 2030 goal will be an impossible task
By Jock Finlayson and Denise Mullen Business Council of B.C. Targets. We all know what they mean, or think we do. Several words convey essentially the same notion – e.g., goals, objectives, ambitions and intentions. The idea is about getting something accomplished at some point in the future. This brings us to B.C.’s greenhouse gas…
The government of Premier Jason Kenney has decided to end a 44-year moratorium on open-pit coal mining in southern Alberta
Desperate times sometimes lead to catastrophic measures. In Alberta, the beleaguered provincial government is in a financial situation that could be characterized as desperate, suffering from the double-whammy of collapsed resource revenues and, of course, the massive spending required to address the social wildfire known as the COVID-19 pandemic. The desperate measure that the United…
Recent sawmill closures have exposed a raft of problems in the industry and government failure to ensure long-term productivity
Recent sawmill closures in British Columbia have brought to light the need for renewed focus on the mismanagement of B.C. forests over the past decades and what to do about it. That mismanagement is having a significant effect on the B.C. and Canadian economies. If you live in the B.C. interior, where more than 820…
Precious little good will can come from Victoria city council's campaign, but it will certainly cost a great deal of money
The City of Victoria wants to round up municipalities to sue oil companies for damages from climate change. Not only is such a case virtually impossible to prove, it’s also full of rich ironies. Weather-related damages, termed “perils” in Canadian insurance plans, are more commonly called acts of God. How ironic that environmentalists envision the…
We know what a world without fossil fuels looks like – we used to live in it. It was cold, poor, dark, ignorant, starving and backwards
West Coast Environmental Law, an advocacy organization based in Vancouver, has persuaded a group of British Columbia mayors and city councillors to write threatening letters to major oil and gas companies. The letters demand the companies pay large arbitrary sums to compensate for a list of supposed harms associated with greenhouse gases from fossil fuel…
As spring beckons after four previous very dry springs and four summers of smoke, we should prepare for the worst
A funny thing happened in Powell River, B.C., the other day. There was a scheduled one-hour power outage that I heard about on the radio as I was driving the 30 kilometres into town to do some errands. No big deal, I thought. Lights out in the mall perhaps. My first stop was at the…
Consumers – including tourists visiting Whistler – and petroleum producers are co-conspirators in the emissions game
A common T-shirt reads: “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Whistler, B.C., Mayor Jack Crompton is wearing a neon version these days. Recently, Crompton infamously asked leading energy companies, including Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., to ante up a chunk of change to help mitigate impact that Whistler is ostensibly experiencing as a…
Including Indigenous voices in U.S.-Canada water agreement discussions would give the environment a leading role
Salmon used to swim all the way up the Columbia River from the Pacific Ocean near Astoria, Ore., to the Canadian Rocky Mountains at the river’s headwaters in Canal Flats, B.C. It was an astounding journey of 2,000 kilometres upstream that cut through a landscape of lush forest, dry desert and high peaks. But since…
As the local orca family hunts sea lions, the resident bald eagles leave for a pre-winter feast of salmon
When you live in the coastal rainforest, you learn the natural indicators that presage seasonal change. The mornings are getting darker, the days are becoming shorter and the evenings are definitely cooler. We swam on Sept. 3 but the ocean was noticeably colder. And we spent less time out front going through our exercise routines…
The summer of 2018’s last trip into Desolation Sound ended abruptly, and not because the weather changed
On the morning of Sept. 2, we decided to take a last trip in our boat into Desolation Sound, the world-class boating destination that lies a mere half hour from our Westview Marina berth in Powell River. All summer we’ve been popping in and out of this destination, taking advantage of blue skies and 30C…