Environment, resources & sustainability

Out of water?

May 20, 2021
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As deadline looms, thousands of BC groundwater users risk losing access to water, but not most water bottling, fracking and mining companies In February 2018, the head of a little-known Surrey-based company asked the BC government for a licence to withdraw 864 cubic metres of water per day from a well drilled deep into the… View Article

Burning our way to a new climate?

Apr 7, 2021
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As UK’s Drax makes play for BC’s wood pellet mills, questions grow about wood-fired electricity With its six massive 660-megawatt power units, the Drax power station in North Yorkshire is the United Kingdom’s largest thermal electricity plant. When it opened in the mid 1970s, the giant facility burned coal. Today, however, Drax burns something else:… View Article

Rosenbluth Lecture 2021: Peter Victor, Slower by Design, not Disaster

Mar 12, 2021
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The Gideon Rosenbluth Memorial Lecture was held virtually in February. The lecture is in honour of Gideon Rosenbluth, who was an esteemed professor of economics at the University of British Columbia and a research associate with the CCPA’s BC Office.  As a young person, Peter Victor looked at the now-iconic, then newly minted image of… View Article

Fracking in BC’s northeast

Feb 23, 2021
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Last summer I got out of Vancouver and toured northern BC. While the trip was mostly for pleasure, my inner economist could not resist some industrial tourism and visits to resource towns and major industrial sites that are the heart and soul of BC’s resource economy. Forestry dominates near Prince George, fishing at Prince Rupert,… View Article
A pile of wood pellets is shown in front of a cross-section view of a stack of logs.

Trees to pellets? Scarred by two previous resource industry boom and busts, pivotal decisions lie ahead for community of Fort Nelson

Feb 17, 2021
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The residents of Fort Nelson know better than most rural British Columbians about the harsh economic realities of resource dependency. It is now 13 years since the forest industry ditched the community in dramatic fashion when Canfor Corp. ceased all its local operations in the region and closed its plywood and oriented strand board (OSB)… View Article

Time for zero carbon housing and buildings in BC

Jan 21, 2021
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BC needs a lot of new affordable housing and any build out should ensure that it meets the highest standards for energy efficiency, including zero-carbon operations. Residential, commercial and institutional buildings produce 11% of BC’s GHG emissions, mainly from burning natural gas for heating and hot water. Updated building codes are needed to make the… View Article

It’s 2021: Time to get serious about BC’s carbon emissions

Jan 7, 2021
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In December 2020, the BC government released its first Climate Change Accountability Report, the result of 2019 legislation aimed at improving the reporting and oversight of climate action in BC. The report lacks accountability in one important respect: it is not an independent assessment and reads like previous BC government reports on climate action that… View Article

Healthy forests for a cooler future

Dec 14, 2020
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There was every reason to believe in the early spring of this year that the most ambitious tree-planting program in British Columbia’s history would be scuttled by COVID-19. A record 310 million seedlings were slated to be planted. But with the unfolding pandemic, all bets were off. Only after tree-planting companies, First Nations, provincial health… View Article

Why now is the time to reform BC’s oil and gas royalties

Dec 8, 2020
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The oil and gas royalty regime in British Columbia needs a major overhaul. The re-elected NDP promised during the election campaign to review oil and gas royalties and credits. In the context of a climate emergency the need for a managed wind-down is urgent. Despite “natural” gas being a finite greenhouse-gas-generating fossil fuel, the royalty… View Article