Revelstoke Times - Review
November 28, 2007
The BC Liberals’ new bill to control greenhouse gas emissions is laudable but falls short of what is needed to have a significant impact on climate change, says Columbia River-Revelstoke MLA Norm Macdonald.
“We need to do this but it has to be a genuine effort,” the Opposition MLA said in an interview last Wednesday.
“If I was a cynic I’d say this is just posturing.”
He said Premier Gordon Campbell doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence, even on this issue, which is likely the greatest challenge the human species has faced since the end of the last Ice Age.
“Premier Campbell has a history of making grandiose promises and promises that ultimately amount to nothing,” Macdonald said, pointing to promises to help seniors, house the homeless and produce a strategy that benefitted the so-called Heartland.
“Rather than be cynical about this we’ll push the government to achieve meaningful goals,” he said.
However, even there he wondered if the government truly understands the cope of the problem.
He said the government’s continued interest in exploiting offshore oil and gas reserves as well as its move towards a freeway-based transportation strategy for the Lower Mainland suggests that its approach to dealing with climate change is still somewhat confused.
Bill 44, the Greenhouse Gas Reductions Targets Act, required the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. The Bill requires the provincial government, including all ministries, agencies, schools, colleges, universities, health authorities and Crown corporations to become “carbon neutral by 2010 and make public a report every year detailing the actions taken to achieve that status.
“Climate change is a monumental challenge that means we have to rethink beyond the present and to imagine and plan for the type of future that we want the next generation of British Columbians to inherit,” Campbell said in announcing the Bill. “We are taking decisive and necessary action to confront the global warming crisis, but we’re doing it in a way that will increase our quality of life and support our economy through increased innovation and new technologies.”
Mayor Mark McKee welcomed the government’s first crack at addressing climate change.
“British Columbia is the first jurisdiction in Canada to address the problem of climate change and that is something we should all support,” he said.
He noted that the City of Revelstoke takes climate change seriously, too, and is doing what it can to address the problem.
The City built BC’s first municipal co-generation plant, has a no-idling policy and plans to use green guidelines when it buys new vehicles.
North Columbia Environmental Society President Sarah Newton also welcomed the law but said “the hard part” has yet to come.
“People love their creature comforts,” she said. “Getting them to change that attitude could be difficult.”
DAVID F. ROONEY
Times Review