Climate and Energy

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Déjà vu all over again: The NEB’s Taxpayer Mountain Pipeline redo

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results…"

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: the National Energy Board (NEB) is rushing through a pipeline review with a compressed timeline and narrow scope, where it sides with the proponent more often than not (despite tremendous opposition by intervenors), and excludes the public from “public” hearings. Huge volumes of evidence are filed by the proponent in what appears to be an attempt to overwhelm and paralyze participation in the already limited timeline.

A Climate Accountability Framework for BC

Together with Ecojustice, Pembina, Georgia Strait Alliance and Organizing for Change, West Coast Environmental Law Association has been insisting that BC’s climate action needs to be transparent, accountable and ambitious.

Our joint submissions outline how BC could enact laws to ensure that future governments are accountable for achieving our greenhouse gas reduction targets in a transparent way, through a permanent climate change committee, carbon budgeting and clear legal requirements to prepare and implement climate plans.

Talking climate justice in the wildfire-impacted Okanagan

In the last few sunny days of August, I took a trip to the Okanagan, which had been ablaze just a few days before with a series of major wildfires. I travelled through Kelowna, West Kelowna and charming Peachland, and got the chance to talk to some of the residents whose lives, communities and health had been affected by the recent fires.

We’re told LNG is good for the budget – but what about our carbon budget?

To be a responsible fiscal manager, you need a budget. And to be a responsible climate leader, you also need a budget – a carbon budget.

WCEL Submission on the Consideration of Climate Change in BC Budget 2019

As BC prepares its Budget 2019, West Coast Environmental Law is challenging it to begin tracking the costs that climate change is increasingly imposing on the province. The government’s budget consultation recognizes that the government “will need to plan to address financial pressures from wildfires [and] climate change,” and West Coast’s submissions points out that doing so requires an understanding of what those financial pressures are and how they are changing over time.

Oil industry, Notley opposition to Bill C-69 “wildly inaccurate,” environmental groups say

Pushback is an attempt to bypass crucial environmental oversight

OTTAWA - A number of Canada’s leading environmental groups are calling out the oil and gas industry and other critics of Bill C-69 for what they say is false rhetoric about important improvements to key environmental laws.

Climate accountability strikes a chord at the Union of BC Municipalities

We narrowly lost the vote, but I felt surprisingly good about it.

47.9% of local elected officials at the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) voted for the organization, which represents all of BC’s local governments, to send a Climate Accountability Letter to 20 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies – just short of the majority we needed.

West Coast reacts: Federal government needs a real plan for Indigenous consultation on Trans Mountain

VANCOUVER, BC, Coast Salish Territories – The federal government’s “first step” to proceed with the Trans Mountain pipeline and tanker project fails to address the critical issue of Indigenous consultation, says West Coast Environmental Law.

Climate Law in our Hands – A Candidates’ Brief

BC communities face a rising tide of climate costs. Prior to the 2018 municipal election, West Coast Environmental Law has produced Climate Law In Our Hands: A Resource for Local Government Candidates.

Environmental lawyers challenge BC municipal candidates to protect taxpayers, hold fossil fuel industry accountable for climate costs

VANCOUVER, BC, Coast Salish Territories – Today, lawyers at the West Coast Environmental Law Research Foundation released two resources aimed at promoting discussion in BC’s local government elections about the climate costs – wildfires, flooding, drought – being experienced by BC communities, and the need for local governments to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for its share of those costs.

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