For the CRD, climate change remains an economic challenge, not a cultural one

Municipalities in the CRD recognize the role of fossil fuels as the primary driver of climate change and have robust climate impact response plans, but they don’t have the impulse to proactively challenge the oil and gas industry. They’re leaving that up to Indigenous communities on the mainland who are facing a growing number of pipeline projects and the ecological devastation they cause on their territories.

Despite increasing climate-related events that directly impact their budgets such as floods, fire, drought, and erosion, the CRD has little on its books to significantly counter not only fossil fuel reliance, but the industry itself.

Part of that is jurisdictional, part of it is cultural. Kiki Wood, senior oil and gas campaigner for Stand.earth told Capital Daily, “Every time you ask an environmental question to a politician, you get an economic answer.”

The opening of the Executive Summary in Victoria’s Climate Leadership Plan states “extra heat in Earth’s atmosphere from global burning of fossil fuels is affecting communities around the world, and Victoria is no exception. Victoria has both a responsibility and an opportunity to respond to the causes and impacts of climate change.”

In its Climate Action Progress Report, the CRD lists hotter summer temperatures, heatwaves, warmer winter temperatures, longer-lasting and more frequent extreme rainfall events and sea-level rise as part of a growing list of concerning climate impacts.  But its response, by way of challenging climate change at the industry level, has been negligible. In a region where the car remains king, some numbers show why.

In 2019, the City of Victoria declared a climate emergency, highlighting the severity of immediate climate risks. Yet, in 2023, gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles represented 47% of its total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and natural gas, mainly in space and water heating, represented 32%, making fossil fuels contributors to 79% of its GHGs.

The CRD Origin Destination Household Survey from 2022 showed more vehicles were being driven in Greater Victoria in 2022 than in 2017. In 2022 there were 280K and in 2017, there were 255K households with a vehicle—an overall increase of 9.6%. The survey also shows that “although three-quarters of Victorians live within five kilometers of their employment, most residents and commuters choose to travel in and around Victoria in single-occupant vehicles.”

Victoria may not meet its 2030 climate targets

Despite these numbers, 2022 GHG emissions inventory shows the City of Victoria is trending in the right direction but a 7% reduction in GHGs from 2021 may not be on trend enough to meet its own targets or those released in the CleanBC Roadmap to 2030. The CRD Climate Leadership Plan promises to reduce regional emissions 61% by 2038 based on 2007 levels (as per 2018 Regional Growth Strategy). In the shorter term, the CRD is looking to reduce its community GHG emissions by 50% by 2030.

However, a consistent trend line that has hovered, since 2007, either side of 0% by a maximum of 20 percentage points and a slight uptick in emissions in 2024, the projected steep fall-off depicted in its Climate Action Strategy Pathways (even to the 2030 targets), appears aspirational. A sharp and consistent drop to net zero by 2050, feels impossible, based on current trends. Particularly since in the very government(s) where the jurisdictional power resides to reduce fossil fuels reliance, the feds and the province are moving in the opposite direction. In recent decades, the provincial government has approved several oil and liquified natural gas (LNG) pipelines in the northern Interior, many of which will be built by 2030.

Then there's fracking

LNG is hydraulically fractured (fracked) gas that produces benzene and nitrogen dioxide. Fracking is a process used to extract methane gas from rock beds deep underground in northeastern BC. In the process, enormous amounts of freshwater are mixed with silica sand and a blend of chemicals, then pumped down a narrow well at extremely high pressure to shatter shale rock and displace the gas.

The process draws billions of litres of water a year from BC rivers and lakes and the liquefaction process required to transport the gas uses enormous amounts of energy. The energy required for liquefaction can range from 10% to 15% of the energy content of the LNG produced. LNG is hardly a clean alternative but a number of billboards along the Pat Bay Highway and in regional bus stops advertising it as a “green alternative” try to tell residents otherwise.

Municipalities are more limited

Wood from Stand.earth told Capital Daily, “Municipalities are more limited than other governments in what actual powers they have, and so they have a more limited jurisdiction over the areas in which they can make an impact. Some areas they can influence is what that housing stock is going to look like from an emissions perspective.” That reality plays out in the CRDs focus on low-carbon, high-performance buildings and low-carbon waste management.

As of May 2023, the BC Building Code (the Code) requires 20%-better energy efficiency for most new buildings in the province. The Zero Carbon Step Code provides tools to municipal governments to incentivize or require cleaner new construction. But as Wood said, “Municipalities have an accountability problem. It’s all carrot no stick. They tend to do a lot of incentive programs designed to draw economic growth and prosperity into their communities, and almost nothing to actually, like, monitor, enforce and hold accountable companies and businesses for compliance on policies.”

Indigenous communities get involved

A lack of jurisdictional influence and a whole lot of stick for their efforts hasn’t stopped Indigenous communities directly impacted by pipeline construction around Vancouver and in the northern Interior from standing up to oil and gas.

In Indigenous communities, irreversible incursions by the oil and gas industry on their territories impact food sovereignty and traditional cultural practices. Jurisdiction is tied to sacred laws which are tied to the land. The land is law and so governance is, by nature, environmental. They are leading climate change resistance possibly because they are the most impacted by it.

Indigenous people in BC have been speaking out against oil and gas and have been criminalized and barred from their territories through court injunctions for doing so. Squamish and Musqueam and  Tsleil-Waututh Nations  led the Burnaby Mountain protests against the Trans Mountain Pipeline extension. The Wet’suwet’en led the most well documented fight against Coastal GasLinks Pipeline.

Mohawk musician Logan Staats, who was violently arrested on Wet’suwet’en territory, told Capital Daily “It’s profoundly offensive to desecrate our lands like that over and again. It’s never ending with resource extraction.”

Last Thursday, Gitanyow Chiefs led by Simogyet Gamlakyeltxw (Wilhelm Marsden), Gitanyow youth, and Wet’suwet’en and Gitxsan supporters gathered in Cranberry Junction to turn industry vehicles and to burn copies of a 10-year old agreement with he Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project (PRGT).

The project, near the Nass River estuary close to the Alaskan border, is undergoing an environmental assessment and has not yet been approved by the BC government. Last week, Gitanyow Chiefs announced they no longer support the project.

“Our ancestors protected our Lax’yip for thousands of years, and it is now our duty to do the same for future generations. We have a responsibility to safeguard the health of our lands and waters. Salmon is the lifeblood of our people and the PRGT pipeline threatens our food security, our culture, and our survival in an already rapidly changing climate,” said Marsden.

This past weekend, members of the Tsleil-Waututh nation and their allies participated in a flotilla to protest Aframax tankers leaving the Westridge Marine terminal loaded with refined Alberta oil sands bitumen. The first left on May 22. Jim Layton, a Watchhouse Elder who was arrested during previous TMX protests said. “We spent many years here fighting this pipeline,” Layton said. “Nobody thought the world would be like it is today with the fires, the floods—and they’re still allowing this to move forward.”

The CRD has a response plan for the fires, the drought and the floods but not a prevention plan that stands up to the industry causing them. They’re leaving that part up to the province’s Indigenous Peoples.