Climate and Energy

The Pembina Institute and West Coast Environmental Law are pleased that the Ministry of Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources will establish a new regulation regulating the environmental impacts of oil and gas activities in British Columbia. That being said, we have serious concerns with the Regulation as proposed. We offer the following comments with regard to the November 4, 2009 draft Environmental Protection and Management Regulation under the Oil and Gas Activities Act (the “Regulation”).

West Coast Environmental Law Association has provided legal services to citizens in British Columbia concerned about threats to the environment since 1974. One important area of our mandate involves working to improve environmental legislation, regulations and policy.

On behalf of West Coast, we congratulate you on your appointment as Minister of Environment, Lands and Parks. We look forward to working with you.

Increasingly, Canadians look to professionals – individuals with special expertise and training, such as biologists, engineers, planners and foresters – to make decisions about a wide range of issues. Climate change is a cross-cutting issue that affects advice and decision-making in many different professions to an increasing degree.

British Columbia is in the initial phase of coal bed methane (CBM) exploration and production. CBM production requires an operator to dewater coal seam aquifers to release the methane gas for capture. It is likely the producer will have to dispose of a large amount of water related to CBM production.

This Backgrounder summarizes and explains the different ways for people to participate in the federal environmental assessment and regulatory review of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines – the Joint Review Panel. Community hearings begin across BC in January 2012, and individuals and groups may participate by writing a Letter of Comment, making an Oral Statement, or by becoming an Intervenor (a full formal participant in the hearing process). This Backgrounder explains each of these ways to participate, and can help people decide which route is best suited to them.

Speaker's presentation slides that provide information and analyses on global climate change.

ENGOs perspectives on emissions trading are increasingly dependent on the details of individual emissions trading programs and judgments of whether a program's particular environmental pros and cons outweigh the pros and cons of "command and control" alternatives. On the "pro" side of the emissions trading ledger, trading may help reduce costs of achieving a particular goal. This may, in turn, make more stringent environmental pollution goals more politically achievable, or may allow agencies to shift their attention to other problems.

I was asked to provide environmentalists' perspective on U.S. proposals for greenhouse gas emission trading between nations. To begin with it should be pointed out that there is no single defined position of environmentalists, but instead a range of opinions. In the U.S., the Environmental Defence Fund has wholeheartedly supported the U.S. proposal; other organizations have been equally adamantly opposed. Environmentalists' divided attitude toward joint implementation and international greenhouse gas trading reflect different assessments of a myriad of concerns.

Response to the Department of Transport's December 21, 1996 Canada Gazette request for submissions on motor vehicle emission regulation for Canada. West Coast Environmental Law proposes a unique Canadian vehicle emission program which supports various environmental objectives, is compatible with a North American vehicle market, has economic spin offs in Canada and eliminates incentives to purchase and sell larger vehicles. Our next preference would be for a program based on California certification of light and medium duty vehicles and the California NMOG fleet averages.

In December 1997, negotiators from all the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting at the Third Conference of the Parties to the Convention in Kyoto, Japan, successfully negotiated legally binding emission reduction commitments for nations the developed nations that are included in Annex 1 to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Annex 1 nations).