Turning up the heat on climate change
GROUP PULLING B.C. TOWNS INTO ACTIVIST CAMPAIGN
When news broke this month that Vancouver city officials were considering joining a campaign demanding that oil companies pay for costs associated with climate change, it marked the second time in just a few days that a little-known activist group had stirred up national media attention.
West Coast Environmental Law, an activist organization based in Vancouver, is the architect of a recent campaign in which municipalities write letters to 20 of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, “demanding accountability” for their contribution to climate change.
The campaign received national attention after the mayor of Whistler, B.C., sent letters to a number of major oil companies — including Canadian Natural Resources and the Calgary offices of Petrochina — and called on them to pay their “fair share” of climate-related costs. The letter received a sharp rebuttal from CNRL, which pulled out of an annual energy conference in the small ski resort town. A number of other companies soon followed suit, prompting CIBC to cancel the energy portion of the conference; Whistler mayor Jack Crompton later issued a Facebook message saying he “sincerely regret(s) that anyone felt unwelcome” due to the letter, and that he was simply pointing to the broader costs associated with climate change.
The City of Vancouver is now debating whether it will send a similar letter, joining Victoria and 15 other B.C. municipalities who are signatories to the campaign.
Not a conventional law firm, West Coast Environmental Law was founded in 1974 and works with government, First Nations and other groups to “develop proactive legal solutions to protect and sustain the environment,” according to its website.
“As a legal organization we were struck by the fact that climate change in such significant ways harms human rights, and yet it was still being treated as a political choice,” Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at the organization, told the National Post in an interview.
Municipalities involved in the campaign say they are at risk of floods due to rising sea levels, as well as more frequent forest fires and other major weather events, which can lead to wildly expensive rebuilding efforts.
Gage rejected the notion that it unfairly targets upstream oil and gas producers, saying that multinational oil producers like Exxon Mobil have known about the inherent risk of burning fossil fuels for decades without alerting the public.
“Climate change is so often portrayed as a distant problem — one that doesn’t affect us locally,” Gage said. “And yet municipalities are on the front lines of dealing with these problems.”
Oil producers are responsible for only 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions related to oil and gas, while emissions from passenger vehicles make up the other 80 per cent, according to the U.s.-based Environmental Protection Agency.
Environmental groups have repeatedly said that while total greenhouse gas emissions are largely shared by all consumers, oil companies should bear a larger portion of costs because they supply the largest portion of fossil fuels.
“Does the consumer also bear some responsibility? Absolutely,” Gage said. “But let’s have that conversation — and it’s not just going to be that it’s only the stuff that you burn directly that you are responsible for.”
Gage also pointed out that the campaign suggests municipalities target the 20 largest oil and gas companies in the world, none of which are Canadian. Whistler’s decision to include CNRL was a departure from other letters by B.C. cities and towns. West Coast Environmental Law’s campaign loosely
aligns with an increasingly popular tactic used by environmental groups in recent years, in which activist shareholders or municipalities call on oil and gas producers to divulge the “climate risks” associated with their businesses.
This summer, a U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit put forward by San Francisco and Oakland, who had called on multinational companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron to pay for climate-related damages. The decision marked a loss for the municipalities, but environmentalists say it was successful in forcing companies to now disclose to shareholders the threat of lawsuits for claims about climate change effects.
It also points to deeper questions about who should ultimately bear the financial burden for addressing climate change — an issue that is global in nature and that implicates all people in their everyday lives.
Oil and gas lobby groups have lamented the flow of U.S. money into Canadian environmental activist efforts, arguing that it is equal to foreign meddling in Canadian economic interests. They argue that Bill C-69, the Liberal’s environmental review legislation currently making its way through the Senate, would unduly open up the review process to comments from groups not directly impacted by various proposed projects, including U.S. special interest groups. “It doesn’t just open it up, it cracks it wide open,” said
MUNICIPALITIES ARE ON THE FRONT LINES OF DEALING WITH THESE PROBLEMS.
Tim Mcmillan, head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, during an interview with the Post last month.
While West Coast Environmental Law has accepted support from American donors, Gage defended his group’s acceptance of the money, saying the controversy over the issue points to an underlying contradiction. “There’s something hypocritical about saying we can have unlimited American investment in the oilsands, but any environmental organization that wants to work on climate change that receives a dollar of funding from the U.S. is somehow suspect,” he said.
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, based in San Francisco, has given West Coast Environmental Law six grants totalling $3.7 million, according to the foundation’s website.
According to its 2017 annual report, the firm also received funding last year from Tides Foundation, a leading U.S. environmental group founded in San Francisco.
The Moore Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
Vivian Krause, who has spent years tracking the flow of U.S. money into the Canadian environmental movement, said The Rockefeller Foundation has also donated funds to West Coast Environmental Law since 2006.
Gage said a U.S. organization was a donor early in the campaign with B.C. municipalities, but said it is now completely funded by Canadian groups, the majority of which has come from the Vancouver Foundation. That group gave $225,000 to the campaign in 2016, according to its website, after making several earlier donations to West Coast Environmental Law. A spokesperson at the foundation said its money comes from hundreds of individual funds, most of which are based in Canada, and some of which could be based in the U.S., but could not immediately specify numbers.