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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.
Comments
Outstanding article with truly useful and telling graphs. Thank you!
Any chance that there is a similar article outlining Canada's performance, and is there an article that speaks to Canada's change from a 1990 baseline to a 2005 baseline for climate goals?
Thank you.
Good idea about for a similar ghg-vs-party-in-power article at national level. I will see if I can find time for that.
And, yeah, switching to a 2005 baseline was just cherry picking by USA/Canada to make their climate targets seem less pathetic. The media tend to just report the percentage cut and not the baseline…so it works.
Japan just switched this month from 1990 baseline to 2013 baseline which happens to be their peak. That let them announce a 2035 target of -60%. I read a lot of articles about it and none converted it to their 1990 baseline. So they got the greenwashing they wanted. This is a problem because climate change is driven by cumulative emissions and if you can keep kicking the baseline down the road the cumulative pile builds up without pressure on govts to act.
Great work as usual, Barry.
The emissions track does indeed tell a story, which is made that much clearer with such effective illustrations. However, not isolating emissions from economic data would have been be more helpful.
After the BC carbon tax was enacted in 2007 a worldwide recession occurred, and it lasted for years. I don't believe the big dip from 2008 onward can be attributed to the CT at all as implied, especially since the CT rates were very modest at the time. Meanwhile, economies around the globe were rocked, largely due to toxic debt. Down went global economic performance, pulling directly associated emissions with it.
Another factor not included in the graphs is BC LNG, which rose mainly under Christy Clark. Fracking the hell out of the shale formations in NE BC was catalyzed under her watch until the worldwide pandemic hit. Again, worldwide emissions dropped while the world locked diwn, not because our tiny corner had a leader who stopped raising the CT rates.
This brings BC's industrial strategy into the light. Electrifying LNG processes will not prevent methane release from wellheads and pipelines, but bringing new industry to BC and electrifying it with renewables (e.g. green steel and cement....) will allow economic performance to be maintained while lowering emissions. Ditto electrifying transportation.
There is also the BC NDP's recent invitation to First Nations and almost everyone to produce their own renewable power and sell or trade it with the grid through net metering. That is a policy by the Eby government and it effectively cancels the reluctance of former premiers in both parties (not to mention BCH management) to open up decentralized power generation by third parties. That fresh policy must be allowed time to play out, and if it has a measurably positive effect on emissions decreases -- or at least a plateau -- then that gives Eby and future leaders the ability to ignore LNG, allowing it to stand on its own without further subsidies against an export market not exactly favouring expensive BC LNG. Let it fail, I say.
Eby said he'll kill the BC CT if the feds kill theirs. That was a mistake, a loose comment meant to dull the rise of the BC Conservative party during a heated election campaign. That won't happen with the Greens now on board to back the NDP. To me, why not just grow a spine and make it an official coalition with Greens in cabinet and really run with renewables and electrification and create new green industries?
And continue raising CT rates as originally planned, a tax essentially on a diminishing fossil resource if renewables and electrification are allowed to achieve their potential.
The stage is already set for just that.
Clarification:
"...open up decentralized renewable power generation using private land and rooftops."
Lots of good points, Alex. Thanks for adding these. I agree that emissions are impacted by economic drops. I don't think that explains away BC’s emissions surge after 2013, because you can see on my charts how most of G7 advanced economies continued to cut emissions that decade and beyond. I am sure it is a complex mix of factors, and one big one in my experience living through it as climate reporter was the cross party collapse of political support for climate action.
Indeed.
I do believe that much of the success out there in lowering emissions has more to do with enacting and directly supporting climate action through industrial strategies beyond carbon taxes and r
...regs. Cases in point, the UK and offshire wind, the US and Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, etc.
One issue for BC is that most jurisdictions that have made major improvements in emissions have done so by getting rid of emissions from electricity production. BC already didn't have any before anyone was thinking about climate change, so that set of low-hanging fruit was unavailable.
That said, I'm not happy with the BC NDP's progress on climate change. LNG was a boneheaded thing to back . . . although I'm not clear whether it's actually creating any emissions YET, it'll really break the bank if and when it gets under way. I don't think the economics on that stuff are going to work for very long, though, luckily. The Chinese and Europeans are going to be using less and less . . . they'll stop buying.
The BC NDP have done a not-terrible job by Canadian standards on moving towards electric vehicle use. And it's nice that they're working on not having natural gas in new buildings soon. But we need a lot more than that, we need to be working seriously for instance to shift away from natural gas heating in existing buildings, and they're not doing much there, and there need to be incentives and programs for moving industry away from fossil fuel use and I'm unaware of any real push in that direction. I'm not seeing any big money into transit. In general, the BC NDP talk a good game, but have not been delivering much. The best you can say is they've done a decent job at the kind of regulatory infrastructure that will be needed going forward, but that's stuff is still just phasing in, so it's been way too slow.
Interesting comments, thanks. Your point about electricity emissions is a similar to what I have read BC NDP say. The data shows this isn’t a big factor. For example if you exclude the electricity sector, the rest of BC emissions are +27% since 1990 … and -43% in UK. That’s a 70% gap outside the electricity sector.
You are right that BC has done better-than-most in encouraging BEVs. That’s a climate plus. However BC is leading Canada in the increase in new ICEV as well. Allowing lots more new fossil burners is category 1 climate fail because these are locking in tailpipe emissions for many years.
This is a terrible story for someone who has been a life long NDP supporter........though only for a short time as a grad student, in B.C.
Still.........I'm glad to know this story, see the data, and face the unpleasant fact that no political party in Canada today can safely promise to do what must be done to curb the carbon bomb coming rapidly our way. AS SOON AS WE THE PUBLIC WOKE UP ENOUGH TO WANT SOMETHING DONE, BIG FOSSIL FUELS AND FOOLS GOT BUSY.
That a party with the history of social progress that the NDP rightfully has, is afraid to tell the truth and double down on Climate action is shocking. That they were able to Ax the B.C. Tax, and do it with almost no Canadians knowing, is frightening for what it says about our MSM.
We all have to do much better. We the people have to make it unnecessary for our elected officials to quake in fear in front of Fossil Fuel Propaganda. We need to make them do the right thing.
So far, if the upcoming federal election is any indication.........we're more interested in some very paltry kick back, than we are in saving our society. Climate change is here.........and its going to damage more, kill more, render more lands unavailable for housing projects or agriculture, than anything Axing the Tax will do for any of us. Hell: We're electrified; We make money off the carbon tax.
And more of us could do the same....git yer butts off fossil gas, already!! Stop voting to Ax my rightfully earned rebate cheque.
In an environment (pardon the expression) where many provinces and states (and soon, a federal government?) are actively hostile to climate efforts, I'm afraid the NDP get points for just not actively opposing transition efforts.
And, actually, the scientific/technological/economic trends are so very heartening right now, that if government can merely get out of the way, private forces can now defeat the carbon industries all by their own, with superior solutions.
Good points. Note that those heartening trends are occurring mainly outside Canada's borders, right smack dab in the export markets targetted by BC LNG. It will be a very hard lesson for investors about getting with the program (renewables) or losing your shirt.
Everything Hitler did was Legal, much the same as governments today who fabricate their own science, ignoring the real things destroying the world, and demonizing farmers and animals.
the answers to the worlds problems involves a "Renaissance" {going back to the old ways}
Allan Savory, when he was a government bureaucrat in Zimbabwe, like all bureaucrats who'd never worked a day in his life, arbitrarily decided that Elephants were responsible for destroying the grasslands of Africa. He then went on to murder 40 000 elephants, [imagine doing that, imagine looking down the barrel of a gun and shooting one after another innocent animal]
there is a saying: animals are people too, with the same emotions and fears. anyone with a pet knows this, but we are conditioned to not be considerate of all life.
if people in universities really cared about true science instead of manipulating their own view, then they would look at the facts, nature's science, the laws of nature.
why is man "thinks" he can make his own laws< like factory farms are made legal, farms that use chemical fossil fuel fertilizers, while at the same time crowding 10 000 cows into a small area and feed them GMO corn and grains?
I even a child understands that stuffing 30,000 chickens into a warehouse with no light fresh air or space to move is not only inhumane, but of course is going to cause diseases like bird flue, bc the laws of nature do not allow this inhumane treatment. but what they do to snub their noses at nature is to fill them full of costly antibiotics, which over time is only a band aid
the same goes for stuffing thousands of pigs in a warehouse, on cement floors, in small steel cages they can not turn around in much less walk around, no natural light or fresh air, fed GMO corn and grains, fill em full of antibiotics and steroids, then they wonder wtf theres swine flue outbreaks :(
it's not rocket science, but what it is is proof these universities, like big pharma are subjugated by capitalists who wish to paint their views on the world. self-evident within this very article above and all media that is subjugated and controlled to push the narratives "they" want.
self evident; the world was juuuuuusssssttttt fine up untill about 100 years ago when man started digging up trillions of tons a YEAR of oil coal lng sulfer lead mercury, and injecting it into the natural world.
one would have to be pure evil to then say, "cattle are the cause, and must be wiped from the earth" and if YOU were the Devil, you'd be doing just what these people are doing.
is it a secret that "they" knew over 100 years ago wtf the effects of doing that has on the natural world? its not,
another saying: "Words go into the air, but actions speak volumes< ones actions define them"
growing up on a farm our animals were treated like kings, they got fed before we did bc animals are an investment, even the loss of one animal had a effect on profits and the ablitity not to have to borrow more from the bank.
understand that farmers in Canada are not rich like Elon Musk, we don't make millions, in fact its the other way around. Farmers rely on banks to float them each year to provide capital to keep the wheels turning, literally. there is basically an open account in which farmers borrow what they need, then in the fall when the crop comes in, or in our case, the cows went to market. Farmers HAVE to sell their cows in the fall, bc they only have enough feed for their base number of cows, for us it was around 100, [we were a small ranch]
so what the capitalists do, who own the feed lots and processors, would manipulate the price of beef so that farmers only get the bare bottom price, quite often it still left a deficit from the years of borrowing. then of course the they would super inflate the final price that got to the markets, [look at the price of beef today in Canada at a store, the farmers doing get that, they are still struggling bc the cost of everything else to run the ranch has been manipulated as well, then add in government controls, like now each cow HAS to be inspected by a veterinarian, and each cow has to be tracked for its entire life]
this is what happens on BC farms, we still use traditional farming, though farms are quickly being over regulated and bought up by corporations, people like Bill Gates.
so over the winter the cows are kept in the fields we grow hay and grain on, their crap and piss is gold bc its fertilizers, we don't use a lot of chemical fertilizers, only once every couple of years.
spring comes and the cows that are going to calve soon are brought into close pastures, and around march they start popping them out. the farmers have to get up three times a night to go check on the cows, we don't send them to the vet to give birth, if there's a problem, WE pull the calf out ourselves, but this only happens once or twice, bc the cows we have are hand picked bc of the reliability of them. there are even some cows that have twins, which is a bonus bc most cows only have one calf.
then for the next few months the cows are kicked back out into the hay fields, this is when we feed them the hay that was harvested from the very same fields they are kept in.
about April, after branding they are kicked up into the low mountains, there they fend for themselves, live free, do not require any feed or any fossil fuels.
about june the animals are kicked out onto the "Range" range is crown land owned by the government, its forests high up the mountains, where again they live free and carefree, the life they were designed to live.
when I say "kicked out" its a farmer's saying for they herded them using horses, yes horses are the backbone of ranches even today. so again, no fossil fuels. a couple times a year we'd use horses to go check on them, move them up to higher where there is more grass and shrubs. then around september the opposite, we'd start bringing them down. by october they are all down back on the ranch.
I couldn't believe my eyes, they were sooo fat and healthy, they were a site to see, the calves would be almost as big as their mommas after just a few months. the calves would then be separated and sent off to auction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egJ8X7pxRc0
this is the way farming used to be all over the world, but since the inception of factory farming, the world has been slowly depleting and contaminating the natural world. but much like everything Hitler did was legal, so too is the destruction of the world, the subjugating of Government to make wtf ever it wants legal as long as they get unlimited lobbying from these capitalists to get them elected so that capitalists can do whatever they want.
Allan Savory has learnt from his mistakes, and is desperately trying to get governments to recognize that cows and farmers do not destroy the world, that they are symbiotic of one another. killing the cows as this article boasts and governments are doing is going to have the opposite effect on climate change.
meanwhile, everyone is silent as a church mouse while canada built the 30 billion Trans Mountain pipeline out of taxpayers' pocket that has tripled oil shipments to the coast but hasn't decreased the cost of fuel for Canadians.
Everyone is silent as the BC government spent 16 billion and flooded hundreds of acres of the best farmland to build Site C dam, which is only for the LNG processing plant in Kitimat that is going to quadruple lng shipments as it comes online this year. a plant in which taxpayers subsidies billions of dollars to get built, and a pipeline that was also subsidies, and a port for shipping LNG was also subsides with billions of taxpayers money. the transmission lines from site C dam is being build all with taxpayers money, another 15 billion dollars and will be done a year or two.
and yet all we hear is that the shift to wind solar hydro and wave energy will take decades and cost billions. sometimes I laugh, but more often I cry. bc as a farmer mechanic and wood stove installer I know first hand the issues at hand.
I don't see any hope for the future, and when I cry I cry for the children and future generations that are going to inherit these issues, I cry for the millions of animals that are miss treated in factory farms, I cry for the forests and fields that are being wiped out and paved over.
indeed, if I were the Devil, I'd be doing exactly what these POS in government and capitalists are doing to the world.
God has spoken to me, God has said that there is no Hope for the world, that this is the Devil's domain, that man is inherently evil, and that at this point, it is about saving souls. As such, God has made me and many others "Watch Men" Ezekiel 33.
Sovereign Brian-Arthur of the Alexander family, Bond Servant of Jesus Christ.
Allan Savoy's efforts to educate the world, though its falling on deaf subjugated ignorant ears.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpTHi7O66pI