BERLIN – Since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2015, too many policymakers have fallen for the oil and gas industry’s rhetoric about how it can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Tall tales about “clean coal,” “oil pipelines to fund clean energy” and “gas as a bridge fuel” have coaxed governments into rubber-stamping new fossil fuel projects, even though current fossil fuel production already threatens to push temperatures well beyond the Paris agreement’s limit of well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
Baltimore became the second East Coast city to file a climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. Its suit, announced Friday, becomes the 12th suit filed across the country aiming to hold the industry accountable for flooding and other harms caused by climate change.
June 25, 2018 - From the limited correspondence I have received from the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, I understand that the Panel has asked me to be here today because of my work as a public policy researcher and in particular because of recent research that I have done on “water storage” issues in northeast British Columbia.
I will speak to you about my research conclusions and do my best to situate that work in terms of the specific things that you as panel members have been called upon to do.
Now that we are in a sunny lull between the end of flooding season and the start of fire season, it’s time we had a talk about fossil fuels and climate change in BC.
With the debate over the Trans Mountain Pipeline and tankers project at fever pitch, another project with enormous climate impacts is slipping under the radar. After B.C. announced new climate commitments in May, LNG Canada’s CEO hinted construction will start soon. More recently, the Malaysian multinational Petronas announced a 25-per-cent stake in the LNG Canada project.
LNG Canada’s final investment decision is imminent.
In fiscal year 2008, according to the “upstream development division” of B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, British Columbians received $1.16 billion in royalty revenues. By 2017, however, revenues had fallen nearly 90 per cent to $147 million.
In 2011, a Cornell University research team first made the groundbreaking discovery that leaking methane from the shale gas fracking boom could make burning fracked gas worse for the climate than coal.
In a sobering lecture released this month, a member of that team, Dr. Anthony Ingraffea, Professor of Engineering Emeritus at Cornell University, outlined more precisely the role U.S. fracking is playing in changing the world's climate.
