The BC NDP is not the climate leader it is cracked up to be

British Columbia’s New Democratic Party (BC NDP) was just re-elected in a campaign where they touted their climate leadership. Despite these reassuring words, Canadians concerned about climate change should pay close attention to what's happening. The province has turned into a climate laggard, with emissions stuck far above 1990 levels. And, perhaps shockingly, all the increase in climate pollution has happened while the BC NDP has been running the government. 

My first chart shows both these sad facts. See that orange and blue line at the top? That’s BC’s climate pollution since 1990. As you can see, three decades later the province emits 26 per cent more. 

For comparison, I’ve shown what Canada and its peers in the Group of Seven (G7) advanced economies have done. BC is doing even worse than the G7’s climate laggard, Canada. 

And take a moment to compare British Columbians’ climate efforts to the British. Our Commonwealth peers have already cut their climate pollution in half. 

So, clearly, BC could have reduced its climate damage over the last three decades. Its failure has been a choice.

A second startling takeaway from this chart is how the entire rise in provincial emissions happened while the BC NDP was running the government. On the chart, the years the BC NDP were in power are shown in orange. The other major party to hold power over these decades was the center-right BC Liberals (blue line). Over the years they were in office, emissions fell for a decade before rushing back.  

All the increase … and more

To put some more precise numbers on it, I added up all the annual emission increases and decreases between 1990 and 2022. My next chart shows the results. 

Provincial emissions rose by a net total of 16 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) during the years when the BC NDP were in power. That’s the tall orange bar on the chart.  

Provincial emissions fell by a net 2 MtCO2 during the years the BC Liberals controlled government. That’s the smaller blue bar pointing downwards. 

Overall, BC’s emissions were 13 MtCO2 higher in 2022 than in 1990. And, yep, all of that increase — and more — occurred while the BC NDP held office. 

Obviously, this one measure of climate accountability doesn’t tell the whole story. A government can enact climate policies that might change emissions for years, and they might not be in power during all of that time. On the flip side, governments can preside over huge emission drops that aren’t tied to their climate policies. For example, that BC NDP bar above includes a record emissions drop that was caused by the global pandemic in 2020, not by climate policy. 

Despite the wiggle room on this metric, when a party holds power for literally all the emissions increase across decades, that party has clearly failed the most basic climate task – reducing the greenhouse gases overheating our planet.  

There was once hope for climate leadership in BC

There was a time, back in the 2000s, when BC looked like it might turn around its pollution and become a climate leader. Emissions had started to fall and both major political parties were voicing support for stronger climate action. Cross-party support for climate policy has been a key ingredient for success in many nations, like Germany and the United Kingdom. 

I’ve highlighted the year 2007 on my chart. Hopes for climate progress were particularly high that year as the governing center-right BC Liberals under Premier Gordon Campbell rolled out a series of innovative climate policies — plus an ambitious target. 

The new climate policies included one of the world’s first clean electricity mandates and one of the world’s first pure carbon pollution taxes. 

The BC Carbon Tax was the most talked-about policy, both at home and around the world. It was exactly the kind of climate-pollution-fee-with-rebates policy that many climate experts were advocating for, including Dr. James Hansen of NASA. And it had progressive roots in the “tax shifting” proposals from the Sightline Institute, a sustainability think tank focused on the Pacific Northwest. 

That year, BC also set its 2020 climate target. The target aimed for 19 per cent below 1990 levels, as shown by the green bullseye on the chart. And the dashed green arrow shows how steep the emission path was to get there. BC would need all those new climate policies and more to pull it off. In the end, several G7 nations managed to cut emissions at roughly the pace BC was aiming for. You can see some of their similarly steep gray lines on the chart.  

BC hopes soon fell to the Axe

Sadly, the hopes for a golden age of BC climate leadership quickly faded when the BC NDP made a fateful decision to run their 2008 election campaign centered on an “Axe the Tax” message. Sound familiar?

While the BC NDP lost that election, they severely weakened the BC Carbon Tax. 

To understand why, it’s important to know the power of the BC Carbon tax to cut emissions did not lie in its carbon tax rates. They were deliberately set low in the beginning to minimize economic impact. Instead, the policy relied on convincing citizens and businesses that the cost to emit CO2 would rise ever higher in the future. If British Columbians believed that would happen, then they would be motivated to buy cleaner cars, trucks, furnaces, factory equipment, and so on. But that incentive only worked if people believed the cost would keep rising. 

The BC NDP’s “Axe the Tax” campaign cut the legs out from under this incentive by promising to eliminate the tax in the future. It also removed any political pressure on the BC Liberals to stick with the carbon tax when the inevitable attacks by the fossil fuel industry emerged. And sure enough, in 2012, Christy Clark, the new BC Liberal premier, finished the job of neutering the policy by “freezing” the carbon tax. At that point, both major political parties were on record against raising it.

You can see on the chart what happened next. The decade-long decline in BC’s emissions ended in 2012. Emissions then shot up and they remain far higher today. Along the way, BC wildly overshot its 2020 climate target. 

What now?

The province’s next climate target is for 2025. It’s shown on the chart below by a second green bullseye. 

The BC NDP set this target a few years after returning to power with a minority government allied with the BC Green Party.

The first thing to note about the 2025 target is how much weaker it is than the province’s 2020 target. It allows emissions to be much higher despite being five years later.

The second thing to note is the path to this weaker target requires equally steep emissions cuts as the earlier target did: kicking the can down the road doesn’t make the task go away. It just wastes precious years while making the climate ever more dangerous. 

Now, as British Columbians enter the target year of 2025, you’re probably wondering how close they are to meeting it. I’d like to tell you, but the BC government hasn’t released emissions numbers for 2024 yet. Or for 2023. Or even for 2022. Keeping the public in the dark about the last three years of provincial emissions prevents citizens and businesses from knowing what is happening and how to hold their government accountable. 

The best I can tell you, by using the federal government’s data for BC, is that provincial emissions shot up in both 2021 and 2022. You can see this on the chart as the orange line rockets away from the target.  

Most British Columbians I talk with have the mistaken view that the province has been a climate leader that has been reducing emissions. 

As we’ve seen in this article, the numbers tell a different story.