Back in December, during the Copenhagen negotiations, a group of environmentalists provided BC Premier Gordon Campbell with an award for climate leadership. Based primarily on the creation of a BC carbon tax two years ago, the Premier has gotten a lot of brownie points from the greens – in spite of the fact that there [...]
Entries Tagged as 'oil and gas'
About that Copenhagen award
February 5th, 2010 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · Climate change, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Taxes
Mischief making by oil and gas industry
May 8th, 2009 · Seth Klein · 1 Comment · BC Election 2009, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
Ben Parfitt and I submitted the following letter to the Vancouver Sun yesterday. Hopefully it will run in the next couple days. Here it is:
Letter to the editor
Re. “Maintaining momentum in oil and gas,” May 7.
The oil and gas industry should stop its political mischief-making, and obfuscating the numbers about the industry’s contribution to BC’s [...]
Tags: BC Oil and Gas Commission·David Collyer·flaring·greenhouse gas·oil and gas
What are we going to do with the oil and gas industry?
May 7th, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability
That is the question no one seems willing to entertain in this election campaign.
In today’s Vancouver Sun, David Collyer of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers makes the case for expanding the industry based on some dubious facts. First there is this gem:
The industry has invested almost $30 billion dollars in British Columbia over the [...]
Tags: BC Oil and Gas Commission·David Collyer·employment·flaring·greenhouse gas·oil and gas·Petroleum Producers
BC's economy and the Liberal platform
April 29th, 2009 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · BC Election 2009, Economy, Energy, Provincial budget & finance
With my oped last week on the NDP platform making me less than popular over at NDP HQ, today the Sun published my take on the Liberals’ platform, thereby guaranteeing that the list of Christmas parties I get invited to dwindles to next to nothing.
BC’s Economic Challenges and the Liberal Platform
By Marc Lee
The BC Liberal [...]
Tags: carbon tax·deficit·green infrastructure·greenhouse gas·inequality·Liberals·oil and gas·platform·Port Mann·recession·transportation
Oh, about that recession …
April 27th, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy
BC’s recession started in 2008. That is the upshot of today’s release of Statistics Canada’s Provincial Economic Accounts, which provides the first estimates of BC’s GDP for 2008. Unlike national data, which are provided quarterly and on a timely basis, we have to wait about four months to tally the various provincial beans. These numbers [...]
Tags: Agriculture·budget·campaign·construction·deficit·exports·fishing·forestry·mining·oil and gas·recession·service cuts
The NDP Platform and BC's Economic Challenges
April 20th, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Climate change, Economy, Provincial budget & finance
Below is an oped of mine that was done at the request of the Vancouver Sun and that ran in today’s paper. Unfortunately, for reasons that are not entirely clear, the last two paragraphs were cut off, leaving the oped hanging. I put them back in below, and have requested that the online version be [...]
Tags: budget·cap-and-trade·carbon tax·deficit·flaring·green infrastructure·greenhouse gas·NDP·oil and gas·platform·recession·tax cuts·unemployment
How green are BC's climate policies?
April 16th, 2009 · Marc Lee · 2 Comments · BC Election 2009, Employment & labour, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability
One of the most striking contradictions in BC’s climate action plan is the oil and gas industry. Greg Amos in The Hook, quotes our “green” premier out on the campaign trail in the northeast:
“Let me tell you what’s happened in the energy industry in British Columbia in the last eight years: thirteen billion dollars of [...]
BC's Carbon Tax Clash
April 15th, 2009 · Marc Lee · 1 Comment · BC Election 2009, Energy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Taxes
With the BC election campaign now officially on, the carbon tax debate is back. Since the fall’s federal election, when the Prime Minister dropped in to beat up the carbon tax to solidify his support in BC, the carbon tax has dropped off the public radar, replaced by stories about the economic and financial crisis. [...]
Tags: cap-and-trade·carbon footprint·carbon tax·greenhouse gas·oil and gas·Port Mann
The wrong kind of stimulus
March 13th, 2009 · Marc Lee · No Comments · BC Election 2009, Economy, Environment, resources & sustainability, Provincial budget & finance
I am a big fan of stimulus packages for our ailing economy. But my pitch has been that we need to use the occasion to retrofit our economy to be on a more sustainable footing. So it matters a great deal on what we spend those stimulus dollars. If we launch projects that take us [...]
Tags: oil and gas·Port Mann·stimulus
