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BC fights climate change by reducing the public share of natural gas revenues to almost nothing, while production soars. Meanwhile, unprecedented portions of the world are on fire.
A shortened version:
Categories: Methane Gas
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in-sights.ca 
The link in the supplied article on GDP suggests some of the issues when
using it as a base for economic performance. The exporting of fossil
fuels as mentioned earlier for example really lets AB and BC off the hook
when considering the last bullet in the article.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-gdp-fails-as-a-measure-of-well-being/
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credit agencies do complain from time to time
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Is Horgan a rube or is he on the take ?
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I don’t believe our politicians are directly receiving bribes and monetary rewards to establish policies. Their preferences are influenced by interests of the communities they work in. For as long as I can remember, government participants have worshipped the God of GDP.
So, if an extra $10 billion is added to the province’s GDP by extracting natural gas and coal, even if it damages Earth’s climate, even if the financial benefits go primarily to out-of-province owners of industry and growing automation means fewer and fewer jobs in BC, government can say, “Look at how we increased GDP.” Then they look at deficits and debt and don’t talk about dollar amounts; they talk about debt as a percentage of GDP.
The NDP’s commitment to fossil fuel extraction is not because John Horgan is pocketing secret payments. Nor is it because the NDP expects to win Legislative seats that represent northeast BC.
It comes partly from promises made to unions that provided millions of dollars to bail pre-2017 BC NDP out of financial difficulties. Mostly though, it comes from the idea that any large-scale financial activity is politically good, even if it damages the world we live in.
Given the choice, politicians choose short term gain over long term pain.
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An excellent explanation, Norm.
I’ve often wondered why they would continue to do something that wasn’t increasing the provincial coffers — but it (sadly) makes sense that a government’s thirst for improved GDP would be a motivator to do the wrong thing.
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There was a socred politician quite a few years ago who said that the dam would be good for the economy if it never generated a single watt. Maybe the NDP is a victim of the Stockholm syndrome.
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I believe there are those within the NDP who are “on the take”. These are the influencers to the premier and the party. The continued building with SkyTrain is a a good example: An obsolete proprietary light metro system, which patents are owned by Alstom (inherited from Bombardier when Alstom purchased Bombardier’s rail division) and SNC Lavalin (which inherited patents from Lavalin) that continues to be built in metro Vancouver.
Previously influencers from Bombardier and SNC have ensured the continued use of the proprietary (now called ) MALM light metro, even though MALM costs a lot more to build, costs more to operate and maintain and lacks capacity when compared to LRT, even LRT operating as a light metro (Ottawa and Seattle).
Also Bombardier has been embroiled in criminal corruption cases over the construction of the proprietary light metro in Korea and Malaysia and SNC Lavalin is no saint when it comes to corruption and is also embroiled with Bombardier with the ART system (what we erroneously called SkyTrain in the 1990’s) in Malaysia.
Then there is that nagging story about the $1 million found in a gym bag in Clinton Park in the late ’90’s about the same time the millennium Line was being built.
Because our police don’t have the resources to tackle politcal corruption, much of it still goes on today.
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Good day
Consideration should be given to attaching an assessment of environmental carbon costs of exported fossil fuel resources to the exporting province, and also consolidated at the country level. As it it stands now the importing country gets the pox.
It would be quite interesting to see where BC, Alberta and Canada would stand on the world stage under that scenario.
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And we have federal liberals telling us that we need the twinning if the Trans Mountain pipeline to pump fossil crudes so we can sell it to generate money to fight climate change and develop alternate energies. Hmmm….fighting fire with gasoline???
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Horgan’s Liberals, always giving their politcal supporters financial benefits. Oops, I meant Hogan’s NDP.
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