If you have a public pension in B.C., your retirement savings are likely fuelling the climate change crisis.
The pensions of over half a million British Columbians are administered by the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI), formerly known as the bcIMC. It’s the fourth-largest pension fund manager in Canada and controls one of the province’s largest pools of wealth, totalling $135.5 billion.
Thirty years after a former Nasa scientist sounded the alarm for the general public about climate change and human activity, the expert issued a fresh warning that the world is failing “miserably” to deal with the worsening dangers.
Last fall 15,000 scientists issued a second dire notice to humanity that we are on a collision course with the limits of our planet. They concluded, “To prevent widespread misery, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual,” including “reassess[ing]… the role of an economy rooted in growth.” That means that we have to challenge capitalism; there is no capitalism without growth.
Describing something as being in “the national interest” gives it a sense of gravitas, of over-arching public purpose.
So it always struck me as odd to hear Justin Trudeau say that the building the Kinder Morgan pipeline was “in the national interest.”
How can something be in the national interest when it would significantly contribute to the destruction of the very planet that sustains us? Can something really serve our interest as a nation when it undermines our more basic interest as humans?
Thomas Homer-Dixon is a CIGI chair at the Balsillie School of International Affairs and professor in the faculty of environment at the University of Waterloo.
Yonatan Strauch is a doctoral candidate in the school of environment, resources and sustainability at the University of Waterloo.
