The government talks the talk, but we'll have to walk the walk

Column by Les Leyne, Times Colonist

Published: Tuesday, February 13, 2007

British Columbia crashed the climate change party in a big way Tuesday, elbowing past the rest of Canada and even California in the race to catch up to voters.

If setting ambitious targets and announcing plans to bring all the power of government to bear on a specific issue counts as progress, then the B.C. Liberals took a progressive leap forward in the throne speech. Never has so much of the government’s outline of its agenda been devoted to one issue. Fourteen pages of the 41-page speech dwell on climate change and all the problems that flow from it.

You need a pretty compelling reason for such a single-minded focus, and the B.C. Liberals came up with a doozy. Climate change is described as a threat to “life on Earth as we know it.”

That kind of apocalyptic language is a little startling coming from a tiny jurisdiction within a middling country that rarely gets worked up about anything. It was only two years ago that the Liberals came up with a throne speech that revolved around the theme of “eating your vegetables.”

The dramatic switch from Good Housekeeping nutrition tips to a sci-fi doomsday showdown will certainly catch people’s attention, if nothing else.

“If we fail to act aggressively and shoulder our responsibility, we know what our children can expect — shrinking glaciers and snow packs, drying lakes and streams, and changes in the ocean’s chemistry,” the government warned. “Our wildlife, plant life and ocean life will be hurt in ways we cannot know and dare not imagine.”

Although the Liberals are wholeheartedly buying into climate change and its dire consequences, they are also keen to make it appear that they’ve been on top of the problem for years, which is a bit of a stretch.

Premier Gordon Campbell’s speech noted climate change was part of the party’s re-election platform (a rather small and innocuous part) and is “central” to one of the great goals he came up with in a previous Throne Speech. Climate change was also an important performance objective in the last two strategic plans, he maintained.

The Liberals may have made periodic noises about climate change in the past, but there’s no question that it’s now their defining preoccupation. And there’s no question that people’s abrupt realization this winter that “global warming is real” — as the speech notes —  is what drove the Liberals to vastly elevate its priority.

But just because the motivations are political doesn’t detract from the ambitious goal of reworking major parts of modern life so that British Columbia, as a four-million person entity, comes out as carbon neutral at the end of the day.

The targets will bring home to people the enormity of what was outlined in yesterday’s speech.

The long-term goal is to reduce B.C.’s greenhouse gas emissions to at least 33 per cent below current levels by 2020.

Put differently, that means reducing emissions to a volume 10 per cent below 1990 levels by that year. That’s even lower than California’s target, which was stringent enough last year to garner world attention. There are also longer-term targets in mind for 2050 and shorter-term targets coming for 2012 and 2016.

Those are just abstract concepts at this point, but they translate into revolutionary changes in the performance required from vehicles. There will be zero tolerance for emissions for all electricity production. The two coal plants that won preliminary approval earlier are probably dead in their tracks, given that they have to apply new emission technology that’s barely been invented. No more beehive burners, new methane capture gadgets at landfills and an assortment of other measures add up to a whole new ball game when it comes to emissions in B.C.

B.C. got a head start on climate change through two geographic flukes. It’s covered in forests, which count as carbon sinks and offset greenhouse gases. And hydroelectric power was the default generation choice for years, relatively clean and renewable compared to the options other jurisdictions had to pursue.

But we blew the lead as emissions rose through the 1990s and up to today.

Now it’s time to play catch up, and the game won’t be voluntary any more.

It will take the rest of the year before we see details of the mandatory regime the Liberals are setting up.

That’s when the feel-good notion of a government doing something about climate change will start clashing with two realizations.

It’s not them, it’s you who has to do something. And shortly, you won’t have any choice.

lleyne@tc.canwest.com