A commentary by the former legal director of the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre
Catastrophic damage caused by climate change is rapidly escalating in B.C.
Since 2016, wildfires have burned an area far larger than Vancouver Island — decimating timber resources, damaging the tourism and wine industries, and impairing air quality and public health.
In 2021, a heat dome killed more than 500 British Columbians and a billion marine creatures. This was immediately followed by a wildfire season that cost $800 million to fight and left Lytton in ashes. Months later, an atmospheric river triggered record flooding — destroying homes, dikes, highways, railways and bridges that will cost many billions to rebuild.
It’s getting worse. Last year was the most destructive wildfire season in B.C. history — burning an area 10 times the long-term annual average. More than 30,000 people were forced to evacuate, hundreds of homes and structures were lost, and a vast number of North Americans faced health risks from our smoke.
Temperature records are once again being broken this summer — and another damaging fire season is likely to extend into the fall.
Who will pay for all this climate change damage?
A growing number of governments now assert that fossil fuel companies causing climate change should pay, out of their soaring profits.
Governments point specifically to the turn-of-the-century industry ad campaign that denied that climate change was real — a notorious misinformation campaign that effectively killed the Kyoto Accord and other regulations that could have prevented our climate emergency.
Numerous U.S. local and state governments have filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies for misleading the public about climate change, thus worsening the problem.
For example, the City of Boulder, Colorado, has sued Big Oil companies for its costs from heat waves, wildfires and flooding — charging that the companies “knowingly and substantially contributed to the climate crisis by producing, promoting and selling a substantial portion of the fossil fuels that are causing and exacerbating climate change, while concealing and misrepresenting the dangers associated with their intended use.”
Sixteen Puerto Rican municipalities are also suing fossil fuel companies, claiming compensation for damages inflicted by the record-breaking 2017 hurricane season. The City of New York and the states of Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota, Massachusetts have all filed similar lawsuits.
Perhaps most important, major new Vermont and New York legislation could finally ensure that polluters pay, not taxpayers. In May, Vermont legislated the Climate Superfund Act, which will require fossil fuel producers to finally pay their fair share of climate change costs. The new act will work like this:
• The state will assess the costs that climate change is imposing on public health, natural resources, flood preparedness, agriculture, housing, economic development, etc.
• The largest fossil fuel producers will pay a portion of what climate change has cost the state. The amount payable will be based on how much their individual corporate products have contributed to greenhouse gases.
• Corporate payments will be deposited into a climate superfund, which the state will use to mitigate climate change damage. For example, the money will pay for flood protection; retrofitting to deal with heat and smoke; upgrading infrastructure such as roads, bridges and drainage impacted by climate change; and extreme weather recovery costs.
Paul Burns of the Vermont Public Interest Group celebrated this new law:
“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire. Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”
Only a few weeks after Vermont acted, the New York state legislature passed a similar bill that now awaits the governor’s signature. New Jersey, California, Massachusetts and Maryland are considering similar laws.
As British Columbians face unprecedented future climate damage, a key issue arises for the fall provincial election. Citizens need to know whether candidates are committed to the “polluter pays” principle. Will their party support a B.C. Climate Superfund Act?
Or do they think it’s fair that taxpayers continue to shoulder the climate change burden alone — while Big Oil gets off scot-free?
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