It is interesting that Jonathan Wilkinson’s federal department is called the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change and George Heyman’s BC job is Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

Neither is called the Ministry of Climate Action or Ministry of Climate Change Solutions. Departmental names reflect what they do, which is to encourage and exacerbate an existential problem. So, I guess we should give them points for truth in labeling.

Wilkinson and the Liberals maintain that Canada has to increase fossil fuel production so we can afford to reduce fossil fuel production. That’s a bit like Alcoholics Anonymous advocating for continued drinking to better prepare for abstinence.

A website by federally owned Trans Mountain pipeline proclaims that TMX is good for the economy because of economic stimulus derived from spending $12.7 billion (plus $4.5 billion to Kinder Morgan for the then 65-year-old pipeline). No doubt they will say it’s an even better deal when total costs pass $20 billion.

Of course, spending $20 billion to encourage non-destructive renewables instead of Trans Mountain could go a long way toward an energy solution.

Liberals promised that Trans Mountain would provide hundreds of millions of dollars to fight climate change. But SFU researchers said there is no likely scenario in which the project would be profitable. They estimated that Canada will lose $11.9 billion because of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.

TMX will harm more than climate. The diluted bitumen it will carry endangers coastal waters and people who live, work or study on Burnaby Mountain. Also many near the pipeline path across BC are put at risk.

https://mobile.twitter.com/dogwoodbc/status/1378827763126214660

BC’s climate change promoters, John Horgan, George Heyman, and others in the BC New Liberal Democrats make a different set of arguments. They don’t promise a cleaner world; just a cleaner province. Well, at least the parts of BC not in the Northern sacrifice zone. BC Government’s climate strategy is to not have accurate measurements of methane emissions from subsidized production, transportation and conversion of natural gas and to pretend that when BC’s fossil fuels are burned elsewhere, the province has no responsibility for damage that results.

Fossil fuels primarily profit a highly privileged minority that is responsible for ecological destruction. A few years ago, OXFAM produced a briefing titled Extreme Carbon Inequality:

Those with most at stake in Paris are the poorest 3.5 billion people on the planet, responsible for only around 10% of the total emissions from individual consumption, yet living overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change. In the dataset used to generate these estimates, individual consumption is responsible for 64% of global emissions, with the remaining 36% attributed to consumption by governments, investments (e.g. in infrastructure) and international transport.