Correspondence: View Royal’s Climate Costs and Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Fair Share

Re: View Royal’s Climate Costs and Royal Dutch Shell plc’s Fair Share

We write as the Mayor and Council of the Town of View Royal, on southern Vancouver Island, Canada, to ask about your company’s willingness to take responsibility for climate costs associated with the use of your product.

Our Official Community Plan, adopted in September 2011, recognizes that the impacts of climate change must be a “key determinant” in our community’s planning:

Consider the impacts of climate change as a key determinant in community planning and land use management decisions.^1

This commitment recognizes that decisions made now, and infrastructure designed and built now, need to consider not just our current climate, but also climate for the next 20-50 or more years. We are increasingly having to prepare our community for progressively more serious impacts of climate change, and build resilient infrastructure that can withstand an increasing range of climate impacts.

As a coastal community we are concerned about rising sea-levels. Our community is bordered on two sides by tidal waters (Esquimalt Lagoon and the Gorge Waterway), and we have low-lying land on both sides. Increased winter precipitation is impacting our roads and stormwater management, while summer drought over the past several years has affected our residents.

Planning for and addressing these impacts brings real costs for us as a municipality. Costs like these will only rise as global temperatures increase.

Fossil fuel pollution is the largest cause of climate change and these new risks and costs facing our community. We live in a society which is very fossil dependent, and we recognize our role in that, even as we strive to reduce our dependence. We know that we will end up paying for our share of the costs of climate change.

At the same time, we hope that you will recognize that you too must take responsibility for your company’s role in causing climate change – particularly given the considerable profits that you have made as a result of selling fossil fuels. Your industry has known for decades that your products would compromise the global health of the atmosphere and would create risks to communities around the world. During that time you have continued marketing your products, and have not aggressively moved to a different, more sustainable business model.

Just as other industries take cradle-to-grave responsibility for their products, we believe it is only fair that you commit to pay a share of the costs resulting from climate change being borne by View Royal and other communities like ours.

It has been estimated that the emissions from your products and operations amount to fully 2.06% of historic human-caused greenhouse gas emissions,^2 and we suggest that this figure is a reasonable basis for estimating your company’s fair share of costs incurred due to climate change. If you feel that another figure is more appropriate, we would invite you to tell us what proportion you believe is your fair share, and why.

We expect your industry to take cradle to grave responsibility for your product – and that starts by taking responsibility for its effects in the atmosphere and the resulting harm to communities.

In addition, we look forward to hearing what steps you plan to take to reduce or eliminate the future impacts of your company’s products on our community.

Sincerely,

David Screech Mayor

cc: Honourable George Heyman, Minister of Environment & Climate Change Strategy, Province of British Columbia Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Environment & Climate Change, Government of Canada

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^1 View Royal Official Community Plan, September 2011

^2 Heede, R. “Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010” Climatic Change (2014) 122: 229. doi:10.1007/s10584-013-0986-y, updated to 2013 at http://climateaccountability.org/carbon_majors_update.html, last accessed 31 October 2017.