Dear Premier Clark
We heartily endorse this quote from your BC Climate Leadership Plan, released in August 2016:
“Climate change is one of the most critical issues humanity faces. It is an important battle that all governments need to demonstrate leadership on.”
However, in its current form, the Climate Leadership Plan is far from sufficient to reach the necessary greenhouse gas reduction targets. This plan ignores our 2020 target and does not set an interim target between now and 2050. There is a huge gap between what is proposed and the emission goals we’ve pledged to meet, with only a promise that more actions will be announced.
Now that the Pan-Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change has been signed by the First Ministers in December, it’s time to learn what those actions are. With no increase in the BC carbon tax expected until 2021, what other actions will be taken to make those emission cuts?
B.C. voters expect a plan with additional actions, sufficient funding and interim emissions targets. We have had extensive public consultation, a comprehensive report from our stellar climate leadership team and substantial analysis from the First Minister’s Working Groups. There’s now more than enough data to present a real plan of action.
B.C. voters deserve to have this information so they can make an educated choice on election day.
On behalf of all of your constituents, we request that the B.C. Liberal government show leadership and step forward with a solid climate plan.
Dona Grace-Campbell, Kaslo BC
For Citizen's Climate Lobby
Response to Tom Fletcher and Ron Robinson - Feb 16
Shocking to read these two pieces in the February edition of The Free Press and realize that there are still people out there who question whether climate change is a real threat, and what the contributing factors are. Such sentiments demonstrate a clear misunderstanding of basic science.
I work as a risk management consultant with clients from across Canada to help them manage risk, including climate change risk. It is well accepted by every government, business, and industry in the world, including the world's largest oil and gas producers, that global warming is a real threat and human caused. You could also refer to a Grade 8 science textbook for the same information.
There is no debate about the causes of global warming over the last century. It is clearly a human-driven problem. But don’t panic! This doesn’t mean you have to stop driving your car, or shut down the coal mines in the Elk Valley, it means that we, as a species, have yet another problem to solve. Please don’t send me your youtube videos, or articles from ‘scientists’ who claim humans have no influence on the climate. I’ve seen them all. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and some ‘scientists’ still claim that the Earth is flat, and that vaccination is bad, so there are some bad scientists. But it is time to get beyond this, and move beyond the debate about whether humans are affecting the climate. Please accept that the most intelligent humans on planet earth have been working on this issue for many decades (if not centuries) and the best knowledge we have is that humans are having a major impact on the global climate system. Let’s accept it and work together to solve this problem as we have with many other problems in the past.
Jeff Zukiwsky
Fernie, BC