A Conversation with BC’s Minister of the Enviroment
SFU Carbon talks just sent me this:
Two weeks ago, Renewable Cities invited you to “A Conversation with B.C.’s Minister of Environment.” Due to exceptional demand, capacity was exceeded within 24 hours. Renewable Cities is pleased to announce that a larger venue has been secured. Clearly, there is an enormous appetite to discuss B.C.’s climate plan and the urban opportunity.
Please join Renewable Cities on Friday, February 9 from 12:30-1:30 pm at the Asia Pacific Hall at the SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at 580 West Hastings Street in Vancouver, BC.
The public dialogue requires prior registration. If you have already signed up, no further action is required. Individuals on the wait list will now be able to join the event.
Otherwise, register to attend the event or watch the online stream here.
Please share the event with your network:
So I am doing that, but I won’t be going. BC has decided to go forward with Site C which makes very little sense, but also is based on the idea that there will be a market for LNG exported from BC to Asia. Economically, LNG exports are nonsense on stilts. They require huge amounts of subsidies from us. We already collect next to nothing in terms tax and royalties from gas frackers, and this will only get worse if any one of these plants actually gets built. But in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, this plan is a disaster. GHG emissions in BC have been rising and the idea that we will hit any of our self imposed targets is unlikely. The LNG export boondoggle ensures that we won’t.
I see very little point in listening to a discussion about a “climate plan” that has already been undermined. I hope that the reason for the exceptional demand is that the people who are going will be making some very forceful comments about the recent NDP flip over its GHG commitments.
From Vaughan Palmer in the Vancouver Sun
“If B.C. starts to focus again on trying to land an LNG industry given all that has happened, I can tell you I am voting government down,” the Green leader vowed in a Dec. 31 interview with Carol Linnitt of DeSmog Canada, the online news service.
He repeated his line in the sand this week on Twitter: “If the B.C. NDP caucus continue their generational sellout embodied in the LNG folly of the B.C. Liberals, their government will fall.”
What about it? Horgan was asked Tuesday. The premier confirmed that during the coming trade mission, he has every intention of exploring support for the LNG Canada export terminal that Shell and its Asian partners are proposing for Kitimat.
I’ll be meeting with partners of LNG Canada just to let them know that we’re OK with LNG development, provided that there are benefits to British Columbians through jobs, there’s a fair return for the resource, our climate action objectives can be realized, and that First Nations are partners.
“You’ve heard this from me before, and you’ll hear it from me again,” Horgan added and he’s right about that.
Stephen Rees's blog 
I certainly hope the NDP stand long enough to see through a successful referendum on proportionality the in the electoral system. That is so I can vote Green without as much fear of splitting the vote as with the winner-takes-all system we operate under now. A Green-NDP coalition may be the only way to keep the retreaded Socred-Liberals out and kill the notion that LNG is anything but environmentally friendly or economically viable.
Horgan may have to eat his words. The fact that one or two First Nations bought into LNG doesn’t make it right, and they are being set up for a fall. The fact Site C power could be used in the gas liquification process is beyond cynical because that’s just what Christy Clark and Rich Coleman based their decision on behind the scene to proceed with Site C without a proper review or consultation. Other First Nations are aggrieved by Site C and may yet launch a constitutional challenge, as is their right.
Andrew Weaver has the expertise on the climate file, notably on fugitive methane, but I fear he is too impetuous and will bring down the government prematurely. The Liberals will just simply do a cake walk back into power if Weaver’s timing is off. I sure hope David Hughes pipes up again on the notorious production decline rates and geological limitations of fracking specifically in the NE BC Montney and Horn River shale formations.
It is just so disappointing that no political party seems to have grasped the fact that Canada’s best potential and future does not lie in the extraction economy and raw resource exports in a value-added vacuum, but in the knowledge economy, in urban diversity and opportunity, in tech, in innovation labs, in intellectual property patents and commercialization, in exportable professional services, in growing a larger and stronger domestic economy with human resources, in sustainable urbanism, and so forth.
Alex Botta
January 23, 2018 at 3:36 pm