It wasn’t easy, and it was uncomfortably close. But late Wednesday evening, the gas industry’s effort to re-introduce fossil fuel heating in new homes and buildings in Vancouver was mercifully defeated.
Mobilizing to confront the climate emergency desperately requires forward momentum. Instead, thanks to the unrelenting persistence of the fossil gas industry, countless Vancouver-area climate activists and organizations just spent untold hours over the last four months re-prosecuting a fight they had already won.
The fate of a 900-kilometre natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia is in limbo after its environmental assessment certificate expired on Nov. 25.
The province must decide whether to greenlight the Prince Rupert Gas Transmission (PRGT) pipeline by either making its decade-old certificate permanent or sending the entire project back to the drawing board for a new environmental assessment.
